Brendan O’Regan rounds up “a flurry of election activity” and “broken pro-life promises” There was a flurry of election activity on Thursday of last week to squeeze in as much political commentary as possible before the moratorium kicked in at 2pm that day. On Newstalk’s Breakfast that morning, comedian Oliver Callan was particularly hilarious doing…
The Forest (15A) Horror films aren’t my preferred genre. You can be brave in a cinema seat in the middle of the day with a bag of popcorn in your hand but when you’re out at the coal shed that night and a squawking cat upsets a bin-lid you’re liable to jump a foot in…
“Give me the child, and I will mould the man”, Grace Bozzino at quadrapheme.com quotes St Francis Xavier as having said. “If that’s the case,” she points out, “then parents have some fairly important questions to ask. To whom are we giving our children? What sort of men – and women –will be returned to…
The White Heat: My Autobiography by Tomás Ó Sé (Gill & Macmillan 2015) The narrative in this autobiography is simple and direct, the way Tomás played his football: An Módh Díreach, as he himself would put it. Another refreshing aspect of it is the paucity of expletives. Notoriously his uncle Páidí’s autobiography was vitiated by an overload…
Ireland’s troubles in fact and fiction It is inevitable that the flood of books about 1916 should include some novels. But the precedents for such fictions are not good, as I know from reading many of them while writing my account of the literary revival and the Irish revolution, The Heart Grown Brutal (1977). There…
“interesting conversations” dominated this week’s viewing, writes Brendan O’Regan It was a week of interesting conversations. There was that meeting of two of Ireland’s best known ‘Grumpy Old Men’, George Hook and Vincent Browne on The Right Hook (Newstalk), Tuesday of last week. They knocked strips off each other as they cranked up the crankiness,…
The Oscar ceremonies are taking place on February 28 this year but I don’t think I’ll be booking my seat, despite all the Irish nominations for Room and Brooklyn, etc. Spike Lee and Will Smith are boycotting the event because of the virtual exclusion of black performers this year. This isn’t the only prejudice it’s…
The Book of Margery Kempe translated and edited by Anthony Bale (Oxford World’s Classics, £8.99) In 1934 an extraordinary literary discovery was made in the library of an Old Catholic family in England. It was a medieval manuscript that had escaped the dissolution of the monasteries. Found in the Derbyshire home of the Butler-Bowdons, it had…
T. J. Morrissey Big Jim Larkin: Hero or Wrecker? by Emmet O’Connor (UCD Press, €40.00) This is an important book by a historian who follows the evidence where it leads, ‘let the chips fall where they may’. The work is marked by extensive research. It benefits from fresh evidence: from the Russian State Archives, from police files on…
Brendan O’Regan reflects on the Election’s media debates being delivered by a “bunch of actors” In every media debate on the General Election it’s like we’re getting the same script, but spoken by a different bunch of actors each time, so I prefer the independent analysis. I’m not a fan of Newstalk’s Breakfast Show, but…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly
Peter Costello