While the Catholic Church in Ireland faces a weekly battering – sometimes through mismanagement and misjudgement by the Church’s own leadership – in Britain, the monarchy is the object of obloquy, sometimes driven by a similar motivation to destroy the institution. They are aware that a Netflix series is going to be produced for profit…

Elon Musk, allegedly the richest person in the world, sometimes seems a stereotype of the eccentric billionaire. He is an extraordinary innovator in areas from neurotechnology to futuristic engineering: he has controversial views about Covid-19, thinks that Artificial Intelligence is the greatest threat to the human race, and believes we should colonise Mars. He marries…

The BBC is celebrating its centenary this year – it was founded in 1922 (Radio Éireann, the ancestor of RTÉ, came along in 1926) – and has certainly become an institution with a global outreach. Those who have worked for the Beeb, as it’s sometimes known (which included my late sister, in New York City),…

It’s an old saying that ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’ – and an entirely understandable one given our mutual history. Too often Britain ignored the woes of Ireland and their responsibilities towards those woes: Ireland often had to take whatever opportunities were available. But in these days, I rather wonder if the phrase should be…

Does marriage and family life make women happier? That’s a debate going back centuries. Queen Victoria herself, though founder of a dynasty of marriages and families, opined that it was better to be happy and single than married just for the sake of wedlock. Conservative women were twice as likely to be satisfied with their…

Many aspects of a united Ireland are being currently discussed – and rightly so. What will the impact be on the economy, the health service, education? And how might we salute flags, anthems, and other symbols? And what about the role of faith in a reunited Ireland?” Shall we use kilometres or miles (or a…

It seems, according to the celebrity reports that are part of our lives these days, that Mrs Victoria Beckham, familiarly known as ‘Posh’ (from her days with The Spice Girls), is experiencing the strains of being a mother-in-law. Sumptuous wedding Her eldest son Brooklyn married a beautiful young American heiress, Nicola Peltz, and, at the…

‘A pilgrimage’ – that was one of the most frequent descriptions of the vast queue, miles long, formed by the public filing past Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin before her funeral. And pilgrimage has another dimension that is both practical and symbolic” Pilgrimage is primarily religious in nature and its main purpose is to achieve holiness and…

It’s cheering to see that Garth Brooks has, once again, had such a popular and rapturous reception in Ireland. Country and western music is a meaningful genre of ballad, lyric and narrative, reaching into human experience just as deeply as great opera. Its roots, moreover, are Irish, or at least partly Irish, the hillbilly notes…