Believers make use of supernatural stories to give detailed content to and make more tangible the sense of openness to the transcendent, openness to strangers.

A history of Oscar Wilde’s reputation in Ireland is uplifting and rhetorically adroit. But perhaps we should also ask if it is true.

Markets on their own will neither guarantee their own continuation nor broader societal prosperity. They rely on inclusive and adaptable political institutions, which in turn are created by political choices.

The British are good at remembering their history in Afghanistan, but then so are the Afghans. The two versions are irreconcilable.

Hugh Trevor-Roper was an historian of exceptional gifts, but some wondered why he needed to spend so much time hating people.

The so-called Night of the Broken Glass, which the Hitler government represented as a spontaneous irruption of anger, was a cynical and carefully choreographed attack on Germany’s Jewish population with the aim of demoralising them and despoiling them of their…

As we try to recover from the bubble and bust we might ask whether we as a nation take more risks than others, or to what extent gambling is an entrenched characteristic of the Irish.

Whatever about questions of mandate or democratic legitimacy, the bravery of the insurgents who fought in 1916, and of those who were executed for their role as leaders of the Rising, is beyond dispute.

Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, is best seen not as a renegade liberal but as a sympathiser with a very different movement, which sought to break the grip of Thomism and return to the early sources of the Church.