By Daragh Fitzgerald The O’Brien Press celebrated its 50th anniversary in November 2024, and to mark the occasion it released a new edition of its first publication, Éamonn MacThomáis’s classic Me jewel and darlin’ Dublin. While the book, I am sure, occupies a special place on many readers’ shelves, this edition offers much to the … Read more
MONAGHAN COUNTY MUSEUM By Donal Fallon Visiting Monaghan, I decided to leave bright and early to include Inniskeen, home place of Patrick Kavanagh. ‘All great civilizations are based on the parish’, insisted the poet, and in this parish his legacy is championed. Across the road from Daniel McNello’s public house, which includes Kavanagh in its … Read more
TG4 and BBC2 NI, 9 and 13 October 2024 By Sylvie Kleinman ‘Did you never hear tell of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin, ranged out like blue jugs in a cabin of Connaught?’ A character in Synge’s Playboy of the Western World (1907) had supposedly seen them in Trinity College, Dublin. … Read more