Just a little over 50 years ago Telefís Éireann made its debut, helping to erode a sense of isolation that characterised Ireland in the post-war period. John Bowman’s book Window and mirror. RTÉ television: 1961–2011 addresses the personalities, programmes and controversies that helped shape Irish television over the past five decades. As the title suggests, … Read more
The governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, recently said that the bank wasn’t inclined to press for the removal of the ‘Occupy’ protest that has been camped outside it for a number of months. At the very least, the camp adds a bit of colour to the unlovely edifice that is the Central Bank. But … Read more
‘TITANICa: the Exhibition’ is located in the Transport Museum, and though there are artefacts recovered from the wreck, the focus is more on the small details, the personal objects and the human side of the people behind Titanic and her sister ships Olympic and Britannic, the Atlantic Class vessels that were all built in Belfast’s … Read more
An Conradh/The Treaty was broadcast last December on the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 2011. This prelude to a forthcoming decade of centenaries came just after news that the German Bundestag had received a sneak preview of the current Irish government’s forthcoming austerity budget. The irony of the … Read more
With some memorable exceptions—Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Stanley Kubrick’s searing Paths of Glory being chief among them—Hollywood has shown little interest in the First World War. This is partly because the received narrative of the conflict—military stalemate, futile slaughter and an unsatisfying Allied victory—does not lend itself particularly well to … Read more