Culture

The stereotypes about Europeans, traced in Tintin books, are changing

Marina Carr brings back the script, to Anna Karenina at the Abbey

The 2016 Man Booker Prize, arguably the biggest literary prize of the English language, was awarded this year to American author, Paul Beatty. ‘The Sellout’ saw off a shortlist containing ‘Hot Milk’ by Deborah Levy, ‘His Bloody Project’ by Graeme Macrae Burnet, ‘Eilleen’ by Ottessa Moshfegh, ‘All That Man Is’ by David Szalay and ‘Do […]

More or less pulsating since its quiet birth in 1994, the Dublin ‘Tiger’ Fringe Festival has an unusually well-defined theatrical remit, stated in its Memorandum of Association as: “the encouragement and promotion of the development of new theatre companies, younger actors and directors and to encourage more innovative theatre and performance”. While the Gate is […]

Abortionist sentenced to death sixty years ago

Good or bad not right or left What does “left” mean today now that socialism is no longer on offer? By Desmond Fennell My exasperation with the use of language in current political commentary has culminated with a word that is now much-favoured by the commentators, namely, “populist”. The Oxford English Dictionary says that populist […]

It seems significant that the documentary film ‘Bobby Sands: 66 Days’ has come out this year, the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Brendan J Byrne’s impressive account of the H-Block hunger strike of 1981 claims, through its interviewees and in its own narration, that nothing was quite the same in this country after those traumatic […]