Fintan O'Toole

Fintan O'Toole

Literary Editor

Fintan O’Toole is literary editor of The Irish Times, and has been an op-ed columnist for the paper since 1988. His column on political and social affairs appears every Tuesday and Culture Shock, which is mostly about the arts, runs on Saturdays. He has written over a dozen books, most recently A History of Ireland in 100 Objects, based on his Irish Times series. Awards include the AT Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism and TV3 Tonight Show’s Journalist of the Year in 2011.

Emigration story by far the most important of modern Ireland

Column: We may mark the bicentenary of the Famine knowing we are still living its demographic legacy

Commodified: the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s re-creation of the CBGB toilets for its show Punk: Chaos to Couture. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty
Punk goes down the pan at the Met

Culture Shock

Alex White and Minister for Health James Reilly. “In spite of soothing noises from Minister of State Alex White, the fact is that nothing has been done after two-and-a-half years.” Photographer: Dara Mac Donaill
Free GP care not a priority for austerity sadists

Column: It is much cheaper for the State to give people, especially those with chronic illnesses, free access to their GPs

Mapping our past: the barony of Duleek, in Co Meath, as it appears in the Down Survey. Photograph courtesy of the National Archives of Ireland
Trinity’s online Down Survey gives new life to a long-gone Ireland

Culture Shock

Independent TD Catherine Murphy last week released documents showing that, in the last six months, 58 per cent of all parliamentary questions about the operation of the Department of Social Protection were answered privately, so that the replies are not on the public record. Photograph: David Sleator
Banksterity strategy is built on ignorance

We have a clear and consistent policy of suppressing dissent and obscuring bleak realities

Nominated: Fiona Shaw, Colm Tóibín and Deborah Warner, with Pinhead, a vulture that appears in The Testament of Mary, which is up for the best-play Tony. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The New York Times
Why Tony Award nominations couldn’t save ‘The Testament of Mary’

Culture Shock

Curious onlookers and relatives of missing victims watch from behind a makeshift fence as workers start dislodging parts of the garment factory building which collapsed in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photograph: Wong Maye-E/AP
Cheap clothes can come at a high price

Column: Trade unions are the single biggest factor missing in the sweatshops of Asia

Signs at a makeshift memorial for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, near the marathon finish line. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Boston lockdown was a triumph for the demented rationale of terrorism

In the US, an improvised bomb provokes hysteria but gun murders of children lead to shameful indifference

Raw power: Fiona Shaw in ‘The Testament of Mary’. Photograph: Sara Krulwich/New York Times
Sometimes, even on Broadway, words speak louder than actions

Culture Shock

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Eoin MacNeill with his sons Brian and Niall in 1917. Brian took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War.
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Young women lay flowers near the scene of the killing of a British soldier in Woolwich, southeast London. The soldier was hacked to death by two men shouting Islamic slogans in what British prime minister David Cameron said appeared to be a terrorist attack. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters Aftermath of soldier's killing
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