Nick Maxwell

EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum, Custom House Quay (www.epicchq.com) By Donal Fallon Forty-eight hours before visiting this exhibition exploring the experience of Irish migrants in Britain, I had been sitting in a room in Hackney interviewing Spider Stacy and James Fearnley of the Pogues. Marking the 40th anniversary of the Pogues’ début album, Red Roses … Read more

Gate Theatre, 5 April–12 May 2024 Directed by Louise Lowe By Sylvie Kleinman Fictionalising the past is a creative process that can make historians uneasy, though many admit enjoying a well-researched costume drama or novel. We quickly identify what is plucked out of context to validate or mirror present-day concerns or norms, and this reviewer … Read more

BBC Northern Ireland 27 March 2024 By Brian Hanley Reviewing John Bowyer Bell’s The secret army in January 1971, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh recommended the book ‘highly’, calling it ‘required reading’ for ‘all with a deep interest in Ireland’. Ó Brádaigh was a senior figure in the newly formed Provisional IRA, whose Belfast paper, Republican News, … Read more

BBC Radio 4 16 March 2024 By Eoin Dillon When Brendan Behan is being discussed as a writer, very often it is mentioned early on that he was also a house-painter, and it is left at that as though a sense of incongruity is warranted but not to be pursued any further. Trades are an … Read more