Latest Blogs

Dublin Gossip

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Dublin’s Stoneybatter was a happening place well before the hipsters started moving in five years ago. The alleged doings of Doyle the publican and the delectable Miss Devine were trending back in the 1830s.
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Homes for the Blind and Deaf

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There was perfect cleanliness and order in all parts of the establishment, and a large allowance of fresh air. We took leave of the kind and courteous Brother and left the Home for Deaf-mutes, heartily wishing that the blind boys could enjoy the privilege of being under the care of the excellent and intelligent Christian Brothers.
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The Trouble With Concessions

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When nineteenth century Ireland received the benefits of British political reform the effect was the opposite of what it had been in England. Far from it being a case of being bought off, bringing the Catholic middle classes into the tent in Ireland actually resulted in greater pressure.
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A Sabbath Stroll

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A stroll down Thomas Street on a Sunday morning after divine service afforded the pious the pleasure of seeing the Dublin poor in thrall to ardent spirits and women, in their hoarse, degraded voices, singing to the praise of whiskey.
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Knocking Dublin

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A period of panic in the 1960s following the collapse of some tenement buildings led to a process that saw the destruction of much of Dublin’s architectural heritage.
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  • Homer lives

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    • 17 July 2026

    John Simmons writes: Is Homer the most influential writer of all time? We don’t know much about whoever he, she or they might have been, and we don’t know with any certainty how old The Iliad and The Odyssey are. They brought us the power of storytelling, and for that we should give them the highest praise.
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  • Spring colours in Zaporizhia

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    • 25 June 2026

    Rosemary Jenkinson writes: On April 16th, 2026 at 3 am I’m on the sleeper train to Zaporizhia in southeastern Ukraine when there is a loud rap on our four-berth compartment door.
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  • Elites and / or / versus Democracy

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    • 23 June 2026

    Michael Laver writes: Andy Burnham’s resounding defeat of the upstart right-wing Reform Party in the recent Makerfield byelection throws some light on the seemingly inexorable decline of ‘legacy’ parties on the centre right and centre left.
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  • The living and the dead

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    • 16 June 2026

    Mike Gogan writes on Bloomsday: ‘Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland.’ This is one of quite a few yeses in the last paragraphs of ‘The Dead’, the final short story in ‘Dubliners’ by James Joyce. In ‘Ulysses’, which was written after, the last word of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy faintly echoes this, ‘Yes’.
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  • Selling one’s soul and saving it

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    • 1 June 2026

    Raymond Geuss writes: Marx is generally considered to be a thinker who had little time for the spiritual dimension of human life. This is correct if the spiritual life is understood as depending on reference to theological or transhuman entities or to metaphysical properties.
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  • Michael D’s Memory

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    • 1 June 2026

    Liam Kennedy writes: Sociologists, unlike historians, have long memories. My evidence for this – historians like evidence – is a sample of one, the former president of Ireland, Michael D Higgins.
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  • For the Little People

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    • 29 April 2026

    Enda O’Doherty writes: Populists claim they represent the views of ‘ordinary people’, ignored by out-of-touch, ‘cosmopolitan’ political elites. But their methods of communicating with this segment of society are laden with calculation and condescension.
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  • Fleeing the Russian State

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    • 29 April 2026

    Alexander Obolonsky writes: Russia has something positive to present – both to itself and to the world. Alongside the dominant culture of subjugation, an alternative counter-culture of resistance has always existed and survived, even in the darkest times.
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  • Dropping the mask

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    • 29 April 2026

    Andy Storey writes: the old, better-managed order mourned by the writers in Foreign Affairs was no less violent and exploitative than Trump’s grotesque carnival of hustle and hubris.
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