Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Pregnant, Seeking Asylum
In 2004 a majority endorsed the removal of the right to citizenship of children born in Ireland to non-Irish parents. Along the way, pregnant women legally seeking asylum were cast as illegal immigrants abusing Irish hospitality. A new book argues…
Liberal, but to a Degree
Neoconservatives have argued that liberty and democracy tend not to exist in the absence of markets and free enterprise, and that they in turn are dependent on a vigorous middle class. But the middle class has not been, everywhere and…
Joy for the Disillusioned
At a time when the Bible’s importance is no longer at the centre of secular cultures, it is timely to consider the contribution of the Norton Critical Edition of the King James Bible. Detailed, yet accessible annotations demonstrate its continuing…
The People’s Parties
If Sweden and Ireland are ever compared, it is almost always to the detriment of the latter and many on the left entertain the notion that we would be a lot better off if we could be more like the…
Guns and Chiffon
Nationalist women in early twentieth century Ireland had a sometimes difficult relationship with the conservative mainstream. Yet while they were often quite bohemian they were alive to the need to build a constituency and, as it were, advance with a…
Apples at World’s End
Czesław Miłosz lived through a century in which many thought they could take History by the scruff of the neck, for the aggrandisement of their own nation or the betterment of mankind. The notion at one stage half-appealed to Miłosz…
Commemorating what? And why?
Our acts of remembrance in this decade of commemoration should perhaps include some consideration of the failures of the past as well as its successes, and indeed the failures of the present. And might this not be a good time…
Bohemian Rhapsodist
Walter Starkie was an enthusiast for Gypsy music and culture, a professor of Romance languages, a director of the Abbey Theatre, an accomplished violinist, a literary translator and a harbourer of the hope that Ireland might experience a spiritual awakening…
The Black Diaries: the Case for Forgery
In spite of television documentary investigations proclaiming the notorious Black Diaries of Roger Casement to have been solely his own work, there is still an excellent case to be made that they are forgeries, based on erasures and interpolations, designed…
Easy Does It
Angela Merkel’s style, which is based on caution, analysis and calm calculation married with a commitment to tolerance in the public sphere, has seen her win three successive election victories. Will she be able to add political imagination to these…
Discovering Shan Bullock
Patrick Maume illustrates this overlooked author’s contribution to Irish literary fiction, focusing on how Bullock’s own childhood and relationship with his father was integral to his depiction of small farming society in the borderlands of South Ulster.
Punished for being Poor
It is clear that no real effort was made by the Irish government to seriously consider alternatives to the strategy of institutionalisation developed in the nineteenth century. Adoption was illegal until 1952 and boarding out was resisted on the religious…