Culture
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Ancient myths for today’s dreams
The highest compliment I can pay Mark Williams is that after reading his ‘Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth’, I have an appetite to learn the Irish language. He exposes to the light a literary inheritance that has barely flickered in the Irish national consciousness since independence in 1922. It allows […]
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Our exquisite recent Architecture
Even if most of the recent legacy is subpar
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Ancient myths
From the eighth to the eleventh century Ireland nurtured an outstanding vernacular literature
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Posted in:
Our exquisite recent Architecture
Kathleen James-Chakraborty reviews ‘One Hundred & One Hosannas for Architecture’ by Shane O’Toole, Gandon Edition. Designed much like a guidebook, to fit into the pocket of a good tweed jacket, and with not one but three ribbons to hold one’s place, ‘One Hundred & One Hosannas for Architecture’ is in fact a collection of essays […]
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The idea for a television licence decoupled from ownership of a television, proposed by Fine Gael as long ago as the 2011 election campaign as a “content tax” or “public broadcasting charge to apply to all households and applicable businesses, regardless of the device they use to access content” has undergone several iterations since, but […]
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Central Bank’s expensive atonement
The suppurating carcass of the proposed Anglo Irish Bank headquarters on North Wall Quay in Dublin became a symbol for Ireland’s economic collapse. Its original architects Traynor O’Toole Ltd – in what is best seen as a fitting gesture – eventually went bust. In plain view of all on Dublin’s regimented riverside, the country ogled […]
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I recall a vivid simile used by Professor Tom Bartlett when I was a student in UCD. He likened Irish history to a pint of Guinness, “with black representing ownership of the land, and the white froth, including all the political movements, everything else”. Old habits die hard. An obsession with property endures. By the […]