A bad advert for cinema?There's nothing new about product placement in the cinema, but Shane Meadows's 'Somers Town' is fully funded by Eurostar, which it depicts in fluffy soft-focus - a trend that would be much easier to condemn if the film wasn't so good, writes Mary Andrews

The non-sectarian singer of the Ulster song traditionCULTURE SHOCK:IN THE OPENING essay of his collection, The Government of the Tongue, Seamus Heaney recalls an evening in Belfast that must be Bloody Friday.

• From the fringes to the FringeWhen the Dublin Fringe Festival begins next weekend, almost half of the 100 or so shows will be Irish, the remarkable result of measures the festival has taken to encourage local talent. Sara Keatinglooks at some Fringe benefits

Arts

• 'They were trying to isolate me'Ann Marie Hourihaneresponds to Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the declaration
• Graham Linehan's 11 steps to classic comedyARTSCAPE:LOTS OF COMICS at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe would have been hoping for their big break, the Fringe having long ago turned into a massive trade fair for TV-hungry performers.

Heritage & Habitat

• Through a door to the pastNo matter what part of the country they're from, visitors to a lovingly restored family cottage in Co Mayo recognise something about their own past there
• Zen and the art of corncrake surveillanceANOTHER LIFE:IN THE RATHER less rained-upon west of Connacht, it has been a modestly good summer for corncrakes.
• EYE ON NATUREReaders' observations on nature
• HORIZONSDates for your diary
• ECOWEBWebsite of the week

Book Reviews

• Founding fathers of a powerful brotherhoodHISTORY:Edmund Rice emerges as a divisive visonary in an account of the early years of Christian Brothers schools
• Watching the detectivesTRUE CRIME:AGATHA CHRISTIE'S play, The Mousetrap, opened in London's West End in 1952. Fifty-six years and 23,000 performances later, business each night in St Martin's Theatre is as brisk as ever for the famous play whose ending is kept secret by those who have seen it.
• The long wait for the starting gunLIFE STORY:THIS IS NOT a long book, but the author is so generous with the first-person pronoun that it is only a few pages before the reader feels cornered and is reminded of the old gag:
• Handling Handel with careBIOGRAPHY:Despite fears that Dublin would 'kill him with good living', Handel, a great eater and drinker (though a mystery sexually), thrived to be a composer of colossal output
• A byword for pandemoniumHISTORY:ONE SIMON FITZMARY, who had a particular veneration for the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Star of Bethlehem, as a result of his experiences as a crusader, founded, in 1247, Bethlehem Hospital in Bishopsgate, in the heart of the City of London.
• Lesser-known BowensSHORT STORIES:A FEW, VERY FEW, novelists make even better short-story writers, and Elizabeth Bowen's extensive body of shorter fiction establishes her as one of the most important practitioners of the form in the 20th century.
• LOOSE LEAVESLedwidge movesThe unreliable August weather has necessitated a change of venue for this year's Ledwidge Day, which normally takes place at the poet's cottage home at Janeville in Slane, Co Meath.
• Anguish in AfghanistanFICTION:WAR LEAVES DEADLY secrets and, in their wake, grieving survivors seeking answers. When Pakistan-born Nadeem Aslam published his first novel, Season of the Rainbirds, in 1993, there was no doubting the beauty of his formal, almost old-style prose, the artistry of his storytelling.
• Writing up the deadFICTION/NON-FICTION:THIS IS A BOOK about the writing of itself. Part fiction, part travelogue, part meditation, it tells of the twinning of two lives - the narrator, Brik, a grant-supported Bosnian writer living in present-day Chicago, and a Russian Jewish immigrant, Lazarus Averbuch, resident of the same city at the turn of the 20th century.
• PAPERBACKSThe latest paperbacks reviewed
• SECOND READINGNumber 26:The Radetzky MarchBy Joseph Roth (1932)

Seen & Heard

• The executioner's swansongTV REVIEW:This week its PierrepointUTV, Monday The Rose of TraleeRTÉ1, Monday, Tuesday Mutual FriendsBBC1, Tuesday My Zinc BedBBC2, Wednesday
• Fun with the Famous FiveRADIO REVIEW:THERE WAS something deliciously ironic about The Tubridy Show (RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) discussing the jolly middle-class antics of Enid Blyton's Julian, Dick and Anne, George and Timmy the Dog.
• 'Every single head turns our way. A hundred and fifty kids, like Ronan, kacking themselves but not wanting anyone to know'Ronan's acting tough on his first day in secondary school, but take it from a certain celebrity past pupil - nothing prepares you for Castlerock