Ireland's political and cultural magazine
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The poisoning of a Russian espionage agent and the naming of a politically coercive company in March 2018 proved a rare set-back for two British apparatchiks. Normally regarded as masters of their craft – and tradecraft – Christopher Steele and Alexander Nix were hoist by their own petard in areas of proven expertise, Espionage and Influencing. Steele’s […]
After completing his Ph.D in the University of Pennsylvania, the former Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, lectured in financial economics at the elite Ivy League Wharton School in the US. Among his students was a brash undergraduate named Donald Trump who did little study, flunked his exams and was expelled from the university. With the […]
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Unthinkable suffering The Syrian army’s apparent chemical attack on Douma on April 7 was the worst atrocity of an infernal six-week military campaign in Eastern Ghouta. This in turn was the latest horrific chapter in a war lasting seven years which has brought unthinkable suffering to millions of innocent civilians. The relentless bombardment of Eastern […]
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On a recent drive to Cape Town International airport the ‘Rainbow Nation’ was nowhere to be seen. Instead it was like old times when I was the Irish Times Correspondent there in the 1990s. The scene carried a strong message of the work that faces the country’s new President Cyril Ramaphosa. Along the motorway known […]
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Since the Brexit referendum in June I have been rapporteur of a Private Study Group of Irish economists and constitutional lawyers who have been examining what we should do when and if the UK leaves the EU. In August their report was sent to the Taoiseach, his Ministers and the Secretary-Generals of all Government Departments. It […]
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North Oxford is a heartland of academia where leafy halls of residence mingle with stately homes and rarefied hostelries. Situated in almost the very centre of Britain a windless calm favours scholarly reflection removed from modernity’s fugue. Even the traffic is orderly with bicycles sensibly preferred. It is one of the most attractive places in the […]
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Back in the 1960s I once stood on the plinth of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, London, between Landseer’s lions, at a Connolly Association rally against anti-Catholic discrimination by the Northern Ireland Stormont regime. Lots of people were waving tricolours. Forty years later I spoke again in the same spot, at an anti-EU rally organised by […]