To be ‘a citizen of nowhere’, as nativist politicians sometimes like to smear city dwellers, is a nonsense. The very idea of citizenship grew out of cities and city states. The Londoners of Linda Grant’s ‘A Stranger City’ belong in…

The writer Fang Fang’s honest, poignant reports from Wuhan won her immense popularity and were read by millions of desperate people on social media. But when her diary was published in Britain, she became a state traitor who had empowered…

August Kleinzahler has worked chiefly in blue collar jobs, shunning the mainstream poetry scene and often adopting a pugilistic stance. He has, however, taught in creative writing courses, even if he sees them as being as destructive of true growth…

Society’s losers suffer not just from economic but cultural deprivation and loss of self-esteem. The winners have the opposite condition, hubris and a tendency to preen themselves on their success while refusing to accept that much of it has come…

In 2016, the Colombian constitutional court accorded rights to the Atrato river. The historic decision affirmed that nature itself had legal standing. A river is not just a source of water or a channel for transportation but a living entity…

Vincent Van Gogh travelled a rough road, often of his own making. His chief artistic master, Jean-François Millet, said that art was a battle, and one that you had to put your whole life into. Van Gogh took this, as…

Donal Ryan has, in previous work, established his facility for inhabiting the minds and spirits of his characters

The proportion of Irish men who acknowledged responsibility for the

It is curious how ‘mimesis’, the ability to accurately depict nature, ‘skill’, the deployment of acquired manual dexterity, and ‘beauty’, formerly

The runaway slave Tony Small saved the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald

What is alluring about dogs includes ‘their freedom, their lack of inhibition’, their dwelling in the moment – without apprehensiveness, but without hope. This is enviable in a way, yet we don’t entirely want it. Having a pet can extend…

It is not in the nature of states to give up territory. Why did the Provisionals, after several years of conflict, continue to believe that a few hundred men with Armalites could defeat a nuclear power? How could they claim…