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  • A talent too big for the stage

    There is something about the Irish character that seems to breed actors in great quantities. Maybe it's the national gregariousness, the joy in language or just the native propensity for showing off. Whatever the reason there's never been a time, thank goodness, when a fresh wave of talent hasn't been breaking on the theatre doors in defiance of the rocks of constant unemployment, inadequate pay and rotten working conditions that await these hopefuls. Some of them sink without trace, some struggle on to make a living of one kind or another, and just a very few rise above the difficulties to become among the leaders of their profession and to set a standard for everyone who comes after. p

  • Blade runners

    The cafe on the Place de la Bastille falls silent at 11 p.m. on a balmy Friday night. All eyes turn towards the river, straining to see down the empty Boulevard Henri IV. From the quayside, a phalanx of motorcycle police moves forward with flashing red lights and sirens. They reach us in just a few moments, followed closely by a horde of whooping, cheering men and women on roller-blades. p

  • Living and thriving in LA

    At the end of the interview I go to pay for our drinks - a coffee for me and a pint of Guinness for him - and the woman behind the bar says sotto voce, "Who is it that he is again?" When I tell her that Glen Quinn played Becky's layabout husband in Roseanne, her face clears and she agrees that's who he is alright. It's hardly surprising that she didn't know him immediately - although his face is familiar after seven years on the highly popular sit-com, there is no reason why he should be sitting in an Irish bar. Apart from the fact that Quinn, who plays a typical American mid-west trailer trash guy in Roseanne, was born and reared in Ireland. Now it seems unlikely that he will remain anonymous - he has a key role in Angel, the much-hyped US TV spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the teen series with the ridiculous name and the huge ratings. p

  • World Music

    The oddly named "Ricciotti" are a Dutch 40 piece band who are none too fussy about where they play. In the past few years, they've performed on table mountains, in Sarajevian refugee camps and in hospitals and shopping centres. Next Tuesday they'll be in Waterford's Jenkins Street Car Park (9pm) under the ruins of the City Walls for a free night of musical entertainment. Having just gone down a storm at the Galway Arts Festival, Ricciotti will be performing a musical thriller called Lynch, which tells the story of Galway Mayor James Lynch Fitzstephen's condemnation of his own son to death in 1492. Love, hate, jealousy and death all combine in this intriguing and dramatic musical work and the admission is free. p

  • Rock

    The soul legend who nearly got away, Terry Callier is currently being restored to his rightful place in music history, following a long period of self-imposed exile. The Chicago-based singer-songwriter began his career at the vanguard of the urban-folk boom of the 1960s, releasing his debut album, The New Folk Sound Of Terry Callier, in 1964. By the 1970s, Callier had established a strong cult following for his jazz-influenced, socially-aware r&b style, but, disillusioned by the record industry, he abandoned his musical career after just four albums. Callier's name may have faded into oblivion were it not for some 1990s English acid-jazz aficionados who uncovered Callier's early works. Soon, the likes of Gilles Peterson, Dr Bob Jones and Pete Tong were spinning Callier tunes on the dance floor, and it wasn't long before Callier himself was lured out of retirement to record last year's Time Peace album. Now fully rehabilitated into the music scene, Callier closes this year's Guinness Blues Festival with a gig in Vicar Street tomorrow night. p

  • Trad

    At times, it has seemed De Dannan was more a launching pad for Irish singers than anything else. Yet, despite the loss of vocalists who have since gone on to achieve solo success (Mary Black, Dolores Keane, Maura O'Connell, Eleanor Shanley and Tommy Fleming), the core aesthetic of this inventive traditional group remains the same: Frankie Gavin (left) and Alec Finn investing traditional music with a rousing and rocking dynamic that takes some beating. Currently on a tour of Ireland to celebrate their 25th year (they have also landed a Platinum disc for the sales of their compilation album, How The West Was Won), De Dannan play Galway's Town Hall tonight, Dublin's Olympia theatre tomorrow, Limerick's Univesity Concert Hall on Tuesday and Cork's Opera House on Wednesday. p

  • Jazz

    Jazz and Latin drummer Conor Guilfoyle's latest venture looks to be the most exciting Latin group since his own Night In Havana Orchestra - which, by the way, is still going strong. Havana' che is an 11-piece band playing modern Cuban salsa, whose authenticity is grounded in four Cuban musicians and by Guilfoyle and guitarist Nigel Flegg, both hugely experienced in the idiom, and a brass section which includes trumpeters Mark Bradley and Patrice Brun. An all-Cuban vocal section is headed by Antonio Oscar, while Havana pianist Cucu Castellano fits into the exciting rhythm section led by Guilfoyle. p

  • Comedy

    A Firm favourite with Irish audiences, mainly due to his storming appearances at the Kilkenny Cat Laughs festival over the years, American Rich Hall makes a welcome return this week with a gig in the Murphy's Laughter Lounge, Eden Quay, tonight (9pm). Having earned his spurs in the US with numerous appearances on the Letterman show as well as Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, Hall is one of the best US stand-ups in the business. Deliciously off-beat and skewed observations mingle with some wry geo-political commentary in a blockbusting set. If nothing else, go along just to hear his routine about Third World countries and nuclear bombs. Support on the night comes from Des Bishop and Eddie Bannon. p

  • `We're just so happy to be served food for a change'

    One of the disadvantages of being a chef is that people are reluctant to invite you over for dinner. They seem to think that their best would never be good enough. Having relatively recently moved back to Dungarvan, Co Waterford, after 14 years away (on my part), Maire and I are keen to meet new people. Not having a house of our own at the moment, our entertaining is fairly restricted. p

  • Travel Log

    Lone travellers always seem to get a poor deal when it comes to holidays - package holidays are based on sharing and it can be difficult for lone travellers to find someone to travel with. Help is at hand from New Horizons, a new travel club for singles. Set up in conjunction with travel firm, the Travel Broker, New Horizons has planned a number of trips for the rest of the year and will be adding others as demand grows. The first brochure has a selection of holidays to Spain, Italy, Thailand, as well as Galway and a Christmas package in Ireland. The brochure is available from Miriam Stafford - phone (01) 2782114 or write to 11 Vernon Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3. p

  • Radio Previews

    If long summer days make you dream of romance then The Book On One (RTE Radio 1, 2.45 p.m., Monday to Friday) choice of Four Letters Of Love by Niall Williams will tickle your fancy. This openly romantic bestseller is about destiny and illuminates the power of love. p
WINGING IT

  • A rumble down memory lane

    Last week I wrote about the iniquities of email and the drivel everyone gets sent on a routine basis. This week I'm sitting in front of my screen, blitzed by a voice that has come echoing out my past via the Internet. Some four years ago, shortly after finishing college, I decided to swop my Manolo Blahniks for a pair of Birkenstocks and head off to Central America to work in an orphanage. p
QUIDNUNC IN STRASBOURGBack to Top

  • Facing the first hurdle

    Ireland's commissioner-designate David Byrne and his incoming colleagues were presented to the new European Parliament by EU Commission president, Romano Prodi, on Wednesday. As they gazed at the ranks of new members they came face-to-face with what could happen to them should they fail in their task. The former president, Jacques Santer, sits there as an ordinary MEP as does the former high-profile Italian commissioner, Emma Bonino. p

  • Shuffle off to Europe

    The election of Dana Rosemary Scallon in Connaught Ulster last month shocked FF to the core, but Noel Treacy may yet make it. Word in Europe is that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern may appoint MEP Pat the Cope Gallagher to the EU Court of Auditors in Luxembourg when Barry Desmond retires at the end of the year. Gallagher is an accountant and a highly regarded member of the budget committee. If he goes, Treacy would step into his seat. There are several advantages here for FF - Dana no longer has the south of the vast constituency to herself and Bertie has an opening for a new junior minister. And there's no nasty by-election. Treacy would leave Government, but not the Dail. p

  • Flynn memoirs on the boil

    As incoming commissioner, David Byrne was learning the ropes, the outgoing man, Pee Flynn was on private business in Ireland this week and, unusually for him, missed the commission meeting here on Tuesday. But then he is preparing his memoirs. Flynn is writing a book about his life in politics and is already collecting material. He intends getting down to the task at his homes in Dublin and Castlebar; the third, in Brussels, is about to go, once he is out of a job in mid-September. The restriction on cabinet members and officials writing books did not exist in Flynn's day and the bar on commissioners spilling the beans only holds while they are serving. p

  • Flight plight

    The last parliament, elected in 1994, was no fan of Strasbourg as a location for the plenary sessions, and became even less happy about it over the years. Nonetheless, governments and members gave in to the French and allowed the parliament to be permanently located here and a splendid new building created. Once the decision was made, the heavily subsidised Air France direct fights from the peripheral regions were discontinued and the Irish in particular have been seriously hindered in their journeys. p

  • Paisley's seat?

    Ian Paisley nearly made it into the chair of the European parliament on Tuesday. Before the new president of the parliament is elected, the oldest member takes the chair. Former Portuguese PM, Mario Soares was the man, but since he was running for office he couldn't preside. There was a sigh of relief when the next in line, Italian socialist, Giorgio Napolitano, born 1925, was ready and able. (The ascent to the chair of the next eldest - Belgium fascist Karel Dillen, also born in 1925 - would have caused uproar and walkouts.) Even Paisley, next in line, born in 1926, would have been a relief after that. p

  • Right move for Cox

    One MEP very happy with his lot in the new Parliament is Munster's Pat Cox. The voting figures in this week's elections for the new president and vice-presidents confirmed that the deal his 50-strong Liberal group made with the largest party, the European People's Party, will work and see him take the presidency of the parliament in two and a half years. p

  • Trimble on the double

    As his brother Bobby was being mentioned in Euro circles as a possible member of David Byrne's new cabinet, Philip McDonagh, who is in the Department of Foreign Affairs, was responsible for a first in Anglo-Irish relations. David Trimble met the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, on Tuesday in the Irish Embassy in London - the last time, Trimble insisted on the neutral territory of a hotel. Then, on Tuesday night, Trimble returned to the embassy for a farewell party for McDonagh who is off as ambassador to India. Trimble's double first visit gladdened the hearts of all Irish diplomats bogged down in the quagmire of the Northern peace process. p

  • Eighteen plus one MEPs

    Ireland has 18 MEPs, 15 in the Republic and three in the North. Right? Wrong. There is a 19th. He lives in Abbey Street, Howth and is Danish Eurosceptic Jens Okking. An actor and writer, he has lived in Ireland for four years. "I was in love with an Irish girl but I was a Protestant and in the Royal Danish navy, so I wasn't very popular in Wexford. I lost the girl but found Ireland." p

  • Stars of Strasbourg

    Ireland's celebrity MEP is Dana Rosemary Scallon, but there are a few others in Strasbourg too. The most celebrated is probably Gen Philippe Morillon, the UN commander in Bosnia in 1992/93, a French member of the EPP. p
PARENTHOODBack to Top

  • Could you pass the teenager test?

    Scene 1: It's the end-of-year school concert at your child's convent school. Aren't they sweet, you think, those beautiful girls in their unflattering uniforms, shiny hair, shiny faces, so confident, so poised, so . . . innocent? p
INTERVIEWBack to Top

  • How an `embryo writer' was born again

    Novelist Marika Cobbold, whose fourth novel, Frozen Music, has just been published, lives in an imposing Victorian Terrace house a stone's throw from Sloane Square. Petite, and attractive, with a ready smile, Marika is enormously likeable, bubbly and open. Her accent swings from English to Swedish, and our conversation is punctuated by shrieks of laughter. p

  • Yah, he's still the Man

    The train is late and a well-preserved bearded man stands at the station doorway scanning the alighting passengers. You are right in front of J.P. Donleavy, staring hopefully at him, before he realises it is you he is collecting and he asks why the train was late, and the first thing that strikes you about this American of Irish parentage is the drawling English accent. He says "yah", for example, instead of "yes". p
MUSICBack to Top

  • Learning Latin

    Frankly, it's difficult not to lay some of the blame for the present global domination by Latin-American culture on Carmen Miranda and Desi Arnez. Miranda's dancing style was reminiscent of a flock of seagulls at feeding time (always in a hurry) and was complemented by what looked suspiciously like a bowl of fruit on her head. She was one of the first flowerings of crossover success for Latin Americans. Biographical location didn't seem to matter - as Miranda was born near Lisbon, Portugal - once you had the rhythm in your system, you were one of the chosen people. Another of the chosen ones, Desi Arnez, was born in Santiago, Cuba, and arrived in the US at 16, a refugee of the Batista revolution. In 1986, he died a very rich man, leaving behind him a comic legacy of I Love Lucy TV shows and the knowledge that he was one of the most successful of Latino immigrants. p

  • Kitsch and tell

    The Irish composer Stanford, whose long years of living in England did not kill off his Dublin sense of humour, used to say whenever Richard Strauss and his music were mentioned: "If it's Strauss, I prefer Johann, if it's Richard I prefer Wagner." The curious thing is that Strauss in a sense was heir to both of these composers, something which at one time would have seemed impossible, or at least incompatible. p
ARTBack to Top

  • Taking a bite of the big apple

    Modern art may not regard the realistic representation of the world around us as a priority, but the imitative power of art still exerts a powerful hold on the imagination. Mind you, Plato would have none of it, and was all for excluding artists from his ideal society. Representation was a lie, a pathetic imitation of reality, good only for fooling children and simpletons. p
SCREEN WRITINGBack to Top

  • Dancing with Mr K

    Any film directed by Stanley Kubrick has 22-caret publicity value locked into its DNA: think Lolita, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Dr Strangelove. In Eyes Wide Shut, his latest and last, the already volatile mix of fantasy sex with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman ignited when the maestro died three weeks after finishing the final cut. p
THE INDEFINITE ARTICLEBack to Top

  • Simone, the greatest protest singer of them all

    Where to start with Dr Simone? According to legend she's the hardest of tickets, the toughest of cookies and quite the most difficult interviewee on this or any other planet. And so, when word comes that "the Doctor will see me now", I cautiously enter her suite armed only with the smallest of offerings - a CD of the American poet Langston Hughes with whom she collaborated on Backlash Blues. p
TV REVIEWBack to TopRADIO REVIEWBack to Top

  • Nice Nelly blues

    Oh yes, we've been burned more than once by the promising descriptions and pathetic reality of what BBC Radio 2 sees fit to call music documentaries. A case in progress at the moment is Millennium Jazz with Courtney Pine (Wednesday), a six-part history of the genre, at just a half-hour a pop, in which the saxophonist awkwardly reads from an uninspired, uninformative script between terrific but familiar and badly-explained bits of the music. With Jazz Century available every Saturday all year on BBC Radio 3, why would anyone bother with this - except, perhaps, to pick up a smattering of cocktail-party "knowledge"? When, on Wednesday evening, the same clip of Louis Armstrong playing West End Blues that had aired last week on Millennium Jazz turned up near the start of Jerry Wexler - Soul Man (BBC Radio 2), I got that queasy sense that the documentary assembly line was back at work. p
MEDICAL DRAMABack to Top

  • Doone the right thing

    Hardly a day goes by at the moment without an issue of medical ethics being raised in the media. Whether it's racist donors attempting to insist that their organs should go only to white people, courts deciding that teenagers should receive heart transplants against their will, or the perennial problems raised by different definitions of the right to life, the ethical quandaries faced by the medical profession become ever more complex, along with the potential legal ramifications. Hence the latest addition to hospital staff - and now to TV medical drama - the clinical ethicist. p
LITERARY CRITICISMBack to Top

  • `We can read Banville a la carte, but the most rewarding approach is to stay the full course'

    The first full-length study of John Banville, Rüdiger Imhof's A Critical Introduction (1989), was republished in 1997 to coincide with the renewed attention given to Banville following the publication of The Untouchable. Other than Imhof's new chapters, which took the discussion up to Athena (1995), comparing his editions was mainly a matter of spotting some added introductory paragraphs, his premises having changed little over a decade. While the erasure of the vague subtitle of the second comprehensive book on Banville, Joe McMinn's John Banville: A Critical Study (1991), is welcome, McMinn's promise that The Supreme Fictions is a "completely revised version" of its earlier manifestation also requires some qualification. p
POETRYBack to Top

  • Place, place, place

    `The best words in their best order." Coleridge wished the "clever young poets" of 1811 would remember this definition of poetry. Some contemporary poets, whether young or "mature," need to be reminded of this dictum. Their great precursors were masters of ordering sentences in dynamic relation to the rhythmical and formal structures of their poems. Seatown, Conor O'Callaghan's impressive second collection, is flawed by inattention to syntax. He likes to launch his poems at his reader from what the late William Stafford called a "scat start, straight out of the blocks." This is commendable, but about a dozen poems use fragmented sentences which convey a kind of verbal tic to the ear. Yet poems like "In the Neighbourhood," a kind of free-verse sestina, and "The Oral Tradition" show that he can be quite adept at running sentence-patterns against the verse lines. And he provides bountiful examples of his wide-ranging intelligence and considerable wit. He is astute with the uses of punning, comic and serious, though frequently his off-hand slant-rhymes are too obtrusive. p
SHORT STORIESBack to Top

  • Chekhov's stories are to read, re-read, and remember forever

    Whenever writers and critics attempt to define the mysterious art of the short story, the work of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) is evoked. No single influence is more pervasive. No claims to complete mastery of the form are greater than his, based as they are on a diverse canon of more than 220 stories written in a short life which also produced the four major plays on which his reputation as an international dramatist rests. p
JOURNALISMBack to TopNORTHERN IRELANDBack to Top

  • Not fair to Orangemen

    Orangeism: The Making of a Tradition. By Kevin Haddick-Flynn. Wolfhound Press. 400pp. £30 p
FICTIONBack to Top

  • Finding an emotional home in other people's roots

    Lisa St. Aubin de Teran left her home in a south London suburb aged sixteen to marry an exiled Venezuelan and travel around Italy with him and his friends. For seven years subsequently she lived on his remote sugar-cane hacienda in the Venezuelan Andes. Both experiences provided material for novels, published in the early 80s, and more recently for The Hacienda, a memoir. Her penchant for posing languidly in Edwardian dress (see the cover of The Hacienda) gives the impression that St. Aubin de Teran is a less-than-serious writer, which is a pity. p
LOOSE LEAVESBack to Top

  • Aran's word fest

    Come summer time, festivals are two-a-penny in Ireland - indeed the whole island is in danger of becoming the living embodiment of a David Lodge novel. However, a literary festival that kicks off on August 15th has a line-up that demands attention. p
MY WRITING DAYBack to Top

  • From the heart, in the happy twilight

    When you have been writing poetry for forty years there is no exclusive routine that you follow. Day by day it is more a sense of general alertness, so that when something explodes, however mildly, in your head, you take the time to reach for a notebook and scribble down whatever line or image has struck you, or even a subject. You have written so many poems before that you recognise whatever impulse it is. p
FICTION FILESBack to TopFOREWORDBack to Top

  • The doubting spy

    It was David Neligan who gave himself the soubriquet "The Spy in the Castle." When his account of his work for Michael Collins was published in 1968, it was greeted as a significant contribution to the history of the troubled 1916-1921 period in Ireland. But the story which it told is only a part of his life, spanning just a few years of the decade-and-a-half over which he was centrally involved in the evolution of a new Ireland. He was born in Templeglantine, Co Limerick, in 1899, where his parents were national school teachers. At 18 he decided to become a policeman, taking a path which was customary for many a young Irish countryman with the foundations of a good education and a bit of ambition. His career began in the Dublin Metropolitan Police, patrolling the streets of the capital, unarmed, in the days before the Irish War of Independence. He graduated relatively quickly to the detective branch and it was in his role as a member of `G' Division that he found himself uniquely placed to play a key role in Collins's intelligence war. p
TRAVELBack to Top

  • Please don't call her a fisherwoman

    When Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm was published to critical acclaim two years ago, it came with a slightly misleading sub-title. p
PAPERBACKSBack to Top

  • The Sopranos by Alan Warner (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)

    A busload of Scottish schoolgirls goes to Edinburgh for a day from the Highlands for a televised choral competition. The gang of friends called The Sopranos peel off from the rest and go on their own personal odysseys for the day, through the medium of much alcohol, some sex, and many revealed secrets. It's a simple structure, but within it Alan Warner has brilliantly created an entire world with these characters; Fionnula, Kylah, Manda, Chell, Kay, and Orla. The narrative examines social, moral, and emotional boundaries without a screed of sentimentality and a great deal of hilarious black humour. This male writer has captured the preoccupations and complexities of teenage girls with uncanny realism and the sharpest of ears for the way teenagers use language. p

  • The Friendship Tree: The Life and Poems of Davoren Hanna by Jack Hanna (New Island Books, £7.99)

    The oft-quoted expression "difficulty generates meaning" is elevated to a higher level of significance on reading this memoir of the highs and lows Jack Hanna and his wife, Brighid, experienced with their physically handicapped and intellectually gifted son, Davoren. While Davoren Hanna's poems stand on their own merit as testimony to the potential for creative energy to shine through great physical disabilities, journalist and writer Jack Hanna is brutally honest yet strikingly eloquent in his diary-like account of life for this small, unusual family. With both his wife and son now dead, Jack Hanna has provided a wonderful and emotionally challenging read for anyone willing to enter a space where physical handicap and poetic expression become a centrifugal force in the lives of so many people. p

  • The Time of Our Time by Norman Mailer (Abacus, £12.99 in UK)

    Norman, Norman, Norman - all that swagger, all that bluster, all that ego, paranoia, vanity and, above all, hectic ambition directed at becoming the "great American writer." Well, as this 1,281-page cross-section spanning 50 years of his dappled oeuvre (as selected by him) suggests, the great literary pugilist may not be quite as great as he, for one, has always maintained. With the death of Hemingway, America needed another writer as public man complete with messily public private life. Enter Norman "Nobody calls my dog a queer" Mailer. Of that immediate post-second World War generation of Mailer, Capote and Gore Vidal, the bitchy little Truman was probably the most gifted. If Norman is the loudest, Vidal is certainly the smartest. Neither are inspired fiction writers and Vidal, king of the one-liner, and Mailer, the chat-show host's guest from Hell(as is also reported in this book), are deadly rivals as well as social opposites, the Southern mandarin versus the Brooklyn street fighter. It is true that Mailer's powerful debut, The Naked and the Dead (1948), deserves its place as an angry anti-war novel written by a participant. But otherwise, aside from The Fight, and his obvious interest in the history of the American century, as well as his complex love-hate relationship with his country, Mailer is not a unique commentator, and his prose, for all its bombast, is at best laboured. Read this hefty collection at one go and wonder at his reputation. Should you enjoy journalists writing about themselves in the third person, it may well be for you, but it is heavy-handed, irritating and testifies to his undying fascination with one Norman Mailer. There is some light, though - Tough Guys Don't Dance still amuses, while The Gospel According To The Son is unexpectedly graceful. p

  • Blooming Meadows: The World of Irish Traditional Musicians by Fintan Vallely, Charlie Piggott and Nutan (Town House, £13.99)

    If you've any ear-hold on the music at all, you'll relish this affectionate and humorous lucky bag of pen-and photo-portraits of musicians such as Brendan Begley, Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, traveller piper Paddy Keenan, Mary Bergin, Maighread ni Dhomhnaill or oldsters like Paddy Canny, Johnny O'Leary and Peter Horan, or the late great Micho Russell and Joe Cooley. The sideways humour of Nutan's photographs capture all the musicians on high stools: out in front of post offices, in the middle of roads and rivers, or caught like Sharon Shannon laughing down at a garden leprechaun baring its cheeky little arse. The mirth, music and personalities radiate from this browse-worthy sourcebook, which is perfect for bedroom, bogroom or study. p

  • Mother of All Myths: How Society Moulds and Constrains Mothers by Aminatta Forna (HarperCollins, £7.99 in UK)

    This contribution to the great motherhood debate cannot be read alone - it is too full of those "Oh my God! I never knew that before" moments which just call out to be shared. Forna, who has no children, was brought up in Britain by a Scottish mother and in Sierra Leone by her father and his wife, whom she also viewed as her mother. This multicultural background puts the Independent on Sun- day journalist in an ideal position to expose our Western socially-constructed notions of motherhood, which are used to control women by guilt and scape-goating. A fascinating explanation of the history and conflicting scientific evidence behind the myths of modern motherhood, this book could liberate childless women, pregnant women and mothers - and men - from the straitjacket of "supermom," and Forna's blueprint for a new family unit based on the realities of modern life could possibly save the family from self-destruction. p

  • Desire and Pursuit by Frank Delaney (HarperCollins, £6.99 in UK)

    `Burial is always a big symbol in a country where the land is what matters," says a character in Desire and Pursuit, and it's hard to disagree as this uncannily topical, outlandishly emotional, sharply observed love story unfolds. Christopher Hunter is a journalist who is covering Ireland for an English quality paper; when he glimpses Ann Halpin, the daughter of a nouveau riche country bookmaker, on the day of her wedding to a brash business colleague of her father, he falls in love with her. He is destined to worship her from a distance, however, and in chapters narrated alternately by the two main protagonists, a horrifying tale of cruelty and breakdown emerges against a background of political unrest and social greed. Delaney has an unfailing grip on his material, and this is a quality page-turner - moving, compelling, satisfying. p

  • Through Gypsy Eyes: My Life, the '60s and Jimi Hendrix by Kathy Etchingham with Andrew Crofts (Orion, £6.99 in UK)

    Kathy Etchingham lived with Jimi Hendrix for almost three years in the late '60s when the guitarist's potent, far-out music shook the world. This sincere memoir tells of those times, reaffirming the cult of Hendrix as a hard-living genius with a gruelling weakness for drugs, booze and women. Few new insights are offered, however. Domestic life was near impossible and Hendrix was dogged by dope merchants to whom he could not say no. When he died of an overdose in 1970, Etchingham had already left to marry (unwittingly) an associate of the notorious drug trafficker Howard Marks. Overall, this ghost-written book is weakened by sloppy stereotypes and cliches. The most irritating of these concern Etchingham's Irish family - her father was a Dubliner - some of whom are smelly potato-eaters, while others have serious penchants for either prayer or drink. Very passe. This is a book for ardent Hendrix fans only. p
SELF HELPBack to TopCLASSICALBack to Top

  • An all-Mozart affair

    The Aerfi Killaloe Music Festival is the home festival of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. The programme, naturally enough, peaks with an appearance by the ICO itself, under principal guest conductor, Bruno Giuranna. p
CINEMABack to Top

  • Weekend of gay cinema

    The seventh Dublin Lesbian and Gay Film Festival opens at the IFC next Thursday night with Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, Tommy O'Haver's film in which Billy, an out-of-work photographer, is smitten by the handsome Gabriel (Brad Rowe), a musician of indefinable sexuality. p
CD CHOICEBack to Top

  • Rock/Pop

    Kristin Hersh: Sky Motel (4AD) p

  • Jazz

    Joe Temperley: Double Duke (Naxos) p

  • Classical

    Raymond Lewenthal plays Alkan and Liszt (RCA) p
EATING INBack to TopFOOD & DRINK - STYLINGBack to Top

  • Smile for the camera!

    We live in challenging times. Our Taoiseach wears make-up and has forsaken his anorak for a suit, Fine Gael has completely updated its election campaign, unsigned pop bands worry more about their wardrobe allowance than their recording advance and women get given birthday presents of cosmetic surgery. Presentation has been the defining factor of the decade. Remember Michael Douglas's reaction to the hot dog he ordered in Falling Down? This "false advertising" or embalming to appetise, is the food stylist's job description. Just as the clothes in glossy magazines will never look like that on real human beings, it is equally likely that the supermarket food you select because of its appealing/appetising packaging will look very different in the light of your kitchen. In short, it's lying for a living. p
GETTING OUTBack to Top

  • A race against time for dinner

    At long last we managed to get a table at Icon at Leopardstown Racecourse, but let me tell you it wasn't worth the wait. Ever since it opened a few months ago we have tried on and off to get a table there, just to see if the place is as kitsch as it sounds. Each time it was booked out, until last week. I asked for 8.30 p.m., but was told that we would have to be there at 8.15 p.m. sharp, because after that the kitchen would be cooking for a large group and there could be delays on the food. Fair enough. We did try to be there on the dot, but it didn't work and at 8.10 p.m. we were only setting out. p
WINEBack to Top

  • Master class

    Time to get smart, it has suddenly struck me. Why wade through an ocean of bottles, looking for elusive beauties, when the indolence of high summer is so hard to resist? Why not winkle this week's wine tips out of the finest palates in the land? p

  • Bottle Of The Week

    Martin Moran's sunny reverie about the Hunter Valley is a reminder of how delicious (and how unjustly overlooked) Semillon from this patch of Australia tends to be. Tesco Hunter Valley Semillon 1997 (£7.99) is an easy introduction, ripe and quite weighty in the mouth but immediately lifted by lovely, lemony acidity. Try it with fish, or a pork or chicken stir-fry. p
DESTINATION/BALIBack to Top

  • Next door to paradise

    Does anywhere on earth sound more exotic? Or does the name, Bali, evoke an image, long since passe, of a Mecca for artists in the 1930s and hippies in the 1960s? Does it offer adventure, romance, peace and quiet, spiritual rejuvenation? Well, um, yes. p

  • Getting There

    Thai Airways will quote you a fare of £625 from Dublin to Denpasar. Singapore Airlines' fare is £770. The Thai flight leaves London Heathrow daily at 11:50 a.m. and takes 17 hours 55 minutes, with a stop in Bangkok. p
ANOTHER LIFEBack to Top

  • Growing pains

    A tiny, dense cloud whizzed across the hillside and resolved itself into a flock of starlings - around 100 of them, flying in a tight bunch in mobbing pursuit of a kestrel. The kestrel backed off and hovered in a furious flicker of wings. The starlings became a coiling snake, a rolling wave, a cannonball, and bowled themselves at the falcon. It backed off again, hesitated and hovered, then shrugged away up the hill. p

  • Eye On Nature

    Recently, while walking on Slieve Bawn, I saw a small four-legged animal come out of the forest, cross the trail in front of me and disappear into the long grass. It was black with elongated neck and about 18 inches in height. It had a long tail with the end turned up. - Kenneth Kelly, Strokestown, Co Roscommon. p
GARDEN ENTHUSIASTBack to Top

  • To the manor Born

    I don't know if it's because I learned to drive just a few short years ago, and am still feeling the first flush of excitement at being able to guide my little red car across the asphalt of Ireland, but I love the approach to a country garden almost as much as the experience of the garden itself. My pulse quickens as I shift down the gears and turn onto the final stretch of road, and I'm pleasurably alert, looking for clues in the landscape that my destination is near. p

  • Garden Work July 24th - 30th

    At this point in the summer, many border perennials are looking decidedly tired, but timely action will rejuvenate them and coax some of them into a second flush of flower - not as spectacular as the first, but equally welcome. Tidy up bedraggled foliage and cut back spent flowering stems and, if you like, give them a restorative feed. Roses which flower throughout the summer should be dead-headed regularly with a sharp secateurs. With cluster-flowered or floribunda varieties cut out the whole truss of old blossom. With hybrid tea types snip the flowering stem back to where a healthy appears. Be sure to give them a feed also. p

  • Diary Date

    September 24th - 26th, at Hillsborough Court House, Co Down. The Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Committee Conference, "The Future of Historic Gardens". Among the 11 speakers are Penelope Hobhouse, Stephen Anderton and Donal Synnott. Conference fee: £100 sterling. Inquiries: Belinda Jupp, NIGHC, PO Box 252, Belfast BT9 6GY. Tel: 0801232668817, fax: 0801232-666506. p
THE LAST STRAWBack to Top

  • Giant asteroid hits earth, please

    One of the many indirect effects of recent developments in mobile phone technology is that it's now socially acceptable to talk to yourself in public. You see someone unaccompanied but apparently having a conversation, and you automatically assume he has a mobile phone somewhere on his person, even if you can't see an earpiece, or a mouthpiece, or a wire. p
ON THE TOWNBack to Top

  • A new thingamy is born

    They'll hate us for saying it, but the Internet just isn't sexy anymore. All that web-tastic multimedia ballyhoo - so two years ago, chaps. Not that we're trying to be party poopers or anything, but there were some stifled yawns when a lavish Telecom Eireann launch - presaged by levels of hype usually reserved for Papal visits or first contact with aliens - fizzled towards its denouement on Tuesday night. p

  • Fruit is, eh, big

    Nothing like a basket of giant fruit and veg to add a dash of the surreal. Little wonder that US ambassador Michael J. Sullivan seemed a tad startled by the metre-high apples, plums and celery on Monday evening at the Solomon Gallery's exhibition of bronze sculpture by category defying Florida art collective Popliteo. p

  • Outdoing the dreadful Davids . . .

    Spooky goings on at the Crypt Art Centre, Dublin Castle, for the Tuesday night premiere of noir-ish cyberthriller New World Order, a stark slice of pseudo sci-fi which, in its more unpleasant moments, echoed the accomplishments of cinema's most infamous Davids, Lynch and Cronenberg. Grim, gritty, often gut-wrenching . . . yes, it must have made a pleasant change for director/producer John O'Brien who, at the aftershow reception, recounted his behind-the-camera experiences on the Wicklow set of last year's lurid US TV action show, Mystic Knights of Tir na nOg, brainchild of the people who gave us Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger and touted as a shillelagh-wielding rival to innuendo-laden sword'n'sorcery ham-fest Xena - Warrior Princess. Another Celtic hokum refugee, New World Order leading man Ben Palmer, seemed relieved to be back treading the boards. Playing the Mystic Knight of the Forest did not, one suspects, require de Niro levels of intensity. p

  • Cliches get the boot

    He has a lot to answer for, has Michael Flatley. Sure, sure, The Lord of the Dance may have been an irresistably debauched dollop of Wagner-esque excess but, what with all the thunder and bodygrease, it can't have done much to dispel the notion that Irish dancing is synonymous with heroic quantities of flesh baring and groin thrusting. Enter original Riverdance star and archetypal red-tressed cailin, Jean Butler, who at the launch of University of Limerick's new MA in dance performance, revealed plans to collaborate with London impresario Harvey Goldsmith on a new production. She's eager to avoid the cliches of sweaty torsos and self-aggrandising story-lines. "It won't be a miniskirt and push-up bra show," Jean explained to UL's Irish World Music Centre director Micheal O Suilleabhain. We wait with baited, though hushed, breath. p

  • Donal will be sleepless in Seattle

    Traditional music maestro Donal Lunny hardly has a moment to himself at the minute. Barely had the curtain dropped on Wednsday night's sell- out National Concert Hall show than he was beating a path to Dublin Airport for a long-haul US tour. p
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