Every year it has been customary on these books pages to recall aspects of the accounts of the Nativity given in two of the Gospels. Each year, surprisingly enough, there always seems something new to say. This is as true this year as in all those earlier years; all 2,000 or so of them going…
Dirty Linen: The Troubles in my Home Place, Martin Doyle (Merrion Press, £24.99). Martin Doyle tells us in the introduction to this book that the Linen Triangle “stretched from Lisburn across the southern shore of Lough Neagh to Dungannon in Co. Tyrone and south to Newry, the heartland of a trade that was both agricultural…
In writing my selection of a ‘Book of the Year’ before Christmastide descended on us all, I ended up writing about what was for me was a special book of importance, but was not the one I first intended to celebrate. But because of that change of plan, always inherent in writing for a weekly…
It’s 1988 and we’re coming up to Christmas. Elderly Jew Sir Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) is decluttering his study to please his wife Grete (Lena Olin). In the process he discovers a scrapbook from World War II. Flash back half a century. Nazism is about to sweep across Europe. The young Nicky (Johnny Flynn) is…
When organisations are caught out doing something wrong it often happens that they get defensive and opt for cover up and obfuscation. Whistleblowers can be treated as pariahs rather than being welcomed as liberating the organisation from corruption or malpractice. This certainly seemed to be the case in Mr Bates v. the Post Office (UTV/ITV…
Looking back on the year just ended, I had a whimsical notion to reflect for a change on what we rarely if ever see in the broadcast media. And if I appear to be complaining too much, check out my Review of the Year from the December 21 edition for its positivity! It’s so rare…
A new deal on the State files annual release This year the reports on the State files’ annual release, which has become very much a fixture of the turnover between Christmas and the New Year, will take a different form as it appears in the pages of the papers and in other media. Rather than…
In the days after Christmas 1877, the Freeman’s Journal published a series of five articles that are generally acknowledged as the earliest piece of investigative journalism in Ireland.
I refused to become a Barbenheimer during the year. When I was growing up there was a perfectly respectable practice of showing ‘small’ pictures and ‘big’ ones, despite the threat of the infamous ‘Paramount decree’ of 1948.
John Mulderig One promising way to get in the holiday mood is to watch a Christmas-themed movie. And, since yuletide films naturally tend to qualify as family-friendly, they can also provide an opportunity to gather the clan, make some popcorn and relax together. Following, in alphabetical order, are capsule reviews of eight such pictures with…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan