News features
- Unravelling repossession
Statistics can only hint at what is happening with house possessions in the Republic. The real picture won’t become clear until the autumn - Tapping the tourist trap PRESENT TENSE: SOMEWHERE BACK IN the 1970s, an advertising executive thought up of an ad for Irish tourism, and ever since it has acted as a template, only to be updated depending on the fashions, and given fresh music every now and again.
- A breakthrough victory for new media? As news anchors filled time with little information, Twitter gave better value
- Not just cuckoo's clock that's upset by climate change Bats falling from trees. Cranes staying put. Whales losing weight. Global warming is causing havoc, writes
FIONA McCANN
- The long wait for change
A Kilkenny girl will travel to London for surgery to correct curvature of the spine following long delays at Crumlin children’s hospital – but attempts to blame delays on recessionary cutbacks ignore the roots of a long-existing crisis - Making a stand on the front line of homophobia
Young gay people are more confident and self-assured than ever before – but bullying and prejudice are still major problems - Time for one last question
THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW: Although he turns 67 in July and ‘Questions and Answers’ airs for the last time on Monday, John Bowman has no plans to wind down towards retirement - Seven Days A glance at the week that was
Seen & Heard
- 'I'm here to see Rebecca Healy of HDYS - or How Do You Sleep?' The old pair are giving me four hundred Ks to buy myself a penthouse, but anything I can get knocked off goes straight in the old Sky Rocket
- The froth and the serious
TV REVIEW: Saturday Night With Miriam RTÉ1,
Saturday Mistresses RTÉ1, Tuesday
ER RTÉ1,
Sunday Flight of the Conchords BBC4, Tuesday - So, when did you first know you were heterosexual? RADIO REVIEW: JUST WHEN you thought it was safe to discuss matters of sexuality on live radio . . . He’s back! Ryan Tubridy, that most recession-proof of broadcasters, had a bumpy landing on
The Tubridy Show (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays).
Arts
- In a category all of his own
Novelist and playwright Michael Frayn’s advice for success is to write the same thing over and over again, a path the astonishingly diverse writer has certainly not followed himself - Coming to a screen near you: theatre ARTSCAPE : CINEMA IS the new theatre, writes Sara Keating. London’s National Theatre launched a landmark initiative last Thursday with a live broadcast of Ted Hughes’s relentless translation of Racine’s Phèdre, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Helen Mirren, at 200 cinemas all over the world, including four in Ireland.
- How AC/DC conquered the globe
AC/DC have been on the road for more than two decades and, in record sales at least, can legitimately claim to be the biggest band in the world – beating U2 and catching up fast with The Beatles - How 'Darby O'Gill' captured an Ireland rapidly fading
CULTURE SHOCK : There is more to the film ‘Darby O’Gill and the Little People’ than meets the eye and, 50 years on, it is still oddly relevant
Book Reviews
- Portrait without the artist
BIOGRAPHY : T
he Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys By Lilian Pizzichini Bloomsbury, 322 pp. £18.99 - Chant, castrati and chesting top C
MUSIC :
Tenor: The History of a Voice By John Potter Yale University Press, 305pp. £20 - A dirty old town debut FICTION: The Runners By Fiachra Sheridan New Island Books, 196pp. €9.99
- A magnet for evil
CRIME :
The Lovers By John Connolly Hodder Stoughton, 390pp. £11.99 - The accidental feminist BIOGRAPHY :
Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown By Jennifer Scanlon Oxford University Press, 288pp $27.95
- Out of Africa, into decline NATURAL HISTORY :
Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo By Michael McCarthy John Murray, 243pp, £16.99
- Getting over Charlie FICTION: Letters to a Love Rat By Niamh Greene Penguin, 325pp. £11.99
- LOOSE LEAVES Posthumous honour: The late Siobhan Dowd (below), born in London to Irish parents – and much of whose work is set in Ireland – this week won the prestigious Cilip (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Carnegie Medal in children’s literature for her fourth and final novel, Bog Child.
- Brushing against joy
To Wake To This By Enda Wyley Dedalus, 66pp. €11
Heather Island By Joan McBreen Salmon Poetry, 50pp. €12pb/€18hb
Frog Spotting By Peggy O’Brien Dedalus, 88pp. €12
In Sight of Home By Nessa O’Mahony Salmon, 196pp. €12 - A bewildering failure FICTION: This Is How By MJ Hyland Canongate, 376pp, £12.99
- AUDIOBOOKS A selection of audiobooks reviewed by
ARMINTA WALLACE
Heritage & Habitat
- Humane hanging and other stories
The Trinity College Science Safari is a free walking tour that takes the visitor on a journey through 400 years of science in Ireland, relating some strange but true stories along the way - Islands' abandonment complete as the economy ebbs
ANOTHER LIFE: THE SEA PINKS along our garden path are not the right sort at all. Armeria hybrids – I should have known – have turned out all Chelsea Flower Show, waving multicoloured pom-poms on two-foot stems. Pretty enough, but not sea pinks, trembling on wind-dwarfed cushions at the cliff’s edge. - Horizons GO BATTY: Are you interested in learning a new skill? If so, consider joining in the Daubenton’s bat waterway survey.
Ford's focus on performance results in a RS that's in a class of its own