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The Irish Times
Thu, Sep 23, 2021
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Macbeth: Saoirse Ronan appears opposite James McArdle at the Almeida Theatre in London Saoirse Ronan: Kim Kardashian has inspired my portrayal of Lady Macbeth
  • Stage
  • Nadia Khomami
  • September 23, 2021, 16:36

‘Power couple’ Kardashian and Kanye West helpful in interpreting Shakespeare, says actor

Derry Girls: Filming finally begins on third series, Lisa McGee confirms Derry Girls: Filming finally begins on third series, Lisa McGee confirms
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • September 23, 2021, 13:00

Nicola Coughlan, Saoirse-Monica Jackson and the rest of the cast return for a final season

First trailer arrives for Netflix’s explosive Britney Spears documentary First trailer arrives for Netflix’s explosive Britney Spears documentary
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Adrian Horton
  • September 23, 2021, 09:10

Britney vs Spears will explore legal battle over conservatorship overseen by her father

Johnny Depp says he is victim of ‘cancel culture’ as he collects film award Johnny Depp says he is victim of ‘cancel culture’ as he collects film award
  • Film
  • September 23, 2021, 08:35

Actor lost a libel case against the Sun that labelled him a ‘wife-beater’ last year

Sex Actually TV review: ‘I guess I was thinking … is Kayla enjoying it?’ Sex Actually TV review: ‘I guess I was thinking … is Kayla enjoying it?’
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Ed Power
  • September 22, 2021, 23:05

‘I was not prepared for the reality of watching people have sex two metres from my face’

Natalie Imbruglia on Torn’s success: ‘I got a bit agoraphobic. There’s a lot of pressure’ Natalie Imbruglia on Torn’s success: ‘I got a bit agoraphobic. There’s a lot of pressure’
  • Music
  • Ed Power
  • September 23, 2021, 05:00

The singer on megastardom, being ‘difficult’ and overcoming writer’s block in Nashville

‘The judge said it was too premature to offer me any time with my daughter. Ludicrous’ ‘The judge said it was too premature to offer me any time with my daughter. Ludicrous’
  • Film
  • Ciara McQuillan
  • September 23, 2021, 06:00

Fatherly: Lee Bradshaw’s fight to spend time with his daughter is the subject of a new film

Who is responsible if a self-driving car kills a pedestrian to save the driver? Who is responsible if a self-driving car kills a pedestrian to save the driver?
  • Culture
  • Joe Humphreys
  • September 23, 2021, 05:00

Unthinkable: Governments put their trust in big tech as they lack expertise

Autumn staycations: Take the low road to top value Autumn staycations: Take the low road to top value
Special Report

Ireland’s wonderful welcome and scenery is matched with innovative deals and service

Brought to you by The Irish Times Content Studio
A Calling for Charlie Barnes: Joshua Ferris finally steps up to the plate A Calling for Charlie Barnes: Joshua Ferris finally steps up to the plate
  • Books
  • Barry Pierce
  • September 23, 2021, 06:00

Book review: Exquisitely judged humour in this intriguing and intelligent novel

Latest Film

US actor Johnny Depp receives the Donostia Award for his career, in the 69th San Sebastian Film Festival. Photograph: Ander Gillenea/AFP via Getty Johnny Depp says he is victim of ‘cancel culture’ as he collects film award
Lee Bradshaw holds his daughter’s hand in Fatherly, a short documentary made by Karin Pritzel ‘The judge said it was too premature to offer me any time with my daughter. Ludicrous’
Terence Davies: ‘I look at someone else’s film and immediately feel that mine are inferior’. Photograph: David Azia/The New York Times ‘I look at someone else’s film, and I immediately feel that my films are inferior’
  • Halle Berry: ‘People think because I look a certain way I’ve been spared hardship'
  • Matt Damon: ‘Ben came over for dinner, then called me at 7am the next day and said, Let’s do this’

TV & Radio

Derry Girls: Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Nicola Coughlan, Dylan Llewellyn, Louisa Harland and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell. Photograph: Peter Marley/Channel 4 Derry Girls: Filming finally begins on third series, Lisa McGee confirms

Nicola Coughlan, Saoirse-Monica Jackson and the rest of the cast return for a final season

It is not clear if Britney Spears herself participated in the film. Photograph: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty First trailer arrives for Netflix’s explosive Britney Spears documentary
Alice Levine parachutes into the story Sex Actually TV review: ‘I guess I was thinking … is Kayla enjoying it?’
  • Willie Garson, who played Stanford Blatch in Sex and the City, dies at 57
  • The Great British Bake Off review: Remember when it was controversial?

Latest Books

This year’s Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival includes the Aislings, Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, in their first event for the imminent Aisling & the City. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Dromineer Literary Festival; UL poet in residence; Waterford Writers Weekend

A preview of Saturday’s pages and a round-up of the latest book news

The Square, Kenmare Sex, ‘savages’ and starvation: The survival of Kenmare in Famine times
Gail McConnell’s Dad Box ‘Writing of, and to, and with the dead is a fraught undertaking’
  • The Guinness Girls and the Devil’s Decade: how to show the bigger picture of the 1930s
  • Fountains of wine: the drunken excesses of Georgian Ireland and the end of an era

Film Reviews

Ann Skelly Rose Plays Julie

 
Lou de Laâge and Mélanie Laurent in The Mad Women's Ball The Mad Women's Ball

 
Talented newcomer Max Harwood plays Jamie, a sweet teenager who dreams of a world of feathers and sparkle Everybody's Talking about Jamie

 
Mark Cousins The Story of Looking

 

Latest Music

Björk: ‘She was also possibly the best gig I ever saw at Electric Picnic’. Photograph: Santiago Felipe/Getty ‘I’d cross the ends of the earth to see Björk again’

The author and journalist Séamas O’Reilly on his favourite songs, from Busta Rhymes to Bach

Natalie Imbruglia: ‘It was the next level obviously compared to Neighbours. This was around the world’ Natalie Imbruglia on Torn’s success: ‘I got a bit agoraphobic. There’s a lot of pressure’
Garth Brooks at Croke Park, Dublin, in January 2014. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire Three Garth Brooks concerts at Croke Park are approved by council
  • The Music Quiz: Who covered Kirsty MacColl’s hit single They Don’t Know?
  • José González: ‘As a father, I felt the urge to show my creative and playful sides’

Book Reviews

A Calling for Charlie Barnes: Joshua Ferris finally steps up to the plate
The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben: Critical mass
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead: a pacy, rollicking read
Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin: Escaping from maternal control

Stage

Macbeth: Saoirse Ronan appears opposite James McArdle at the Almeida Theatre in London Saoirse Ronan: Kim Kardashian has inspired my portrayal of Lady Macbeth

‘Power couple’ Kardashian and Kanye West helpful in interpreting Shakespeare, says actor

Backwards up a rainbow: Rosaleen Linehan’s ease and synchronicity with her son Conor are a pleasure to watch. Photograph: Barry Cronin Backwards Up a Rainbow: Rosaleen Linehan still knows how to put on a great show
Phillip McMahon: ‘I think Irish society has, in a way, put a full stop on gay people. We voted in marriage equality and that was it.’ Photograph: Nick Bradshaw ‘The country has yet to come to terms with its Aids crisis’
  • Tonic: The utopia of 2021, revisited with the Amazing Calibri Triplet Family Band
  • Rescue Annie: A grim history of loneliness

Art & Design

Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window undergoing X-ray fluorescence analysis. Photograph: Maria Körber/Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden After nearly three centuries, a naked Cupid surfaces in one of the world’s best-loved artworks

The restoration of Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window has quite changed the Vermeer

Izzy Wheels was founded by Galway sisters Izzy and Ailbhe Keane to help bridge the gap between disability and style Disney x Izzy: Irish sisters team up with film studio to design wheelchair wheel covers
Oisín McKenna In Speak Softly, Go Far audience members are invited to go to a place in Dublin that was important to them, but which is now gone. Walking through a Dublin city I no longer recognise
  • Launch of Jack B Yeats exhibition a red letter day for National Gallery of Ireland
  • Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: A staggering new view of the Troubles

Unthinkable

‘If you look at the AI system Tesla uses for their self-driving cars, it’s pretty much inscrutable even to the people who built it.’ Photograph: Getty Who is responsible if a self-driving car kills a pedestrian to save the driver?

Unthinkable: Governments put their trust in big tech as they lack expertise

Anil Seth: ‘Things exist. The world is real. It is the way it appears to us in our experience that’s a construction.’ Is your sense of reality in fact a hallucination?
‘Smell is almost like touching the invisible world.’ Photograph: Getty How well do you understand your sense of smell? Try these three experiments
  • Can a bad historian be a good politician?
  • Short of staycation ideas? Try a pilgrimage to Irish philosophy sites

Heritage

Erwin Schrödinger with Mgr Paddy Browne, who was a close friend despite the physicist’s unusual family life Schrödinger’s Dublin: Cycling in the trail of exiled physicist

Cultural commute takes in sites associated with his 17-year stay in Ireland

Trevor White, director of the Little Museum of Dublin: ‘One of our challenges is to make people look at themselves anew.’ Photograph: Simon O’Connor Starting a museum: 10 lessons I learned in 10 years
Stasi material at the headquarters of the East German state security apparatus in Normannenstrasse, Berlin. The material includes files on individuals as well as jars in which odour examples from individuals were preserved. Photograph: PF Hullstein bild via Getty Images Accessible Stasi archive offers a model for Catholic Ireland’s troubled past
  • Underground Dublin: A pilgrimage through an ancient tunnel network
  • GAA and the Troubles: Remembering club members killed in the conflict

Michael Viney's Another Life

Gannet with fish: Anyone who has watched the birds plunging vertically from the sky to seize mackerel deep beneath the surface must marvel at their anatomy. Illustration: Michael Viney Gannet population continues to thrive despite human threat to its numbers

Michael Viney: Irish numbers have more than doubled since the counts of Operation Seafarer in 1970

Fox with prey: The urban adult is “thin and exhausted” from finding and ferrying food to its cubs. Illustration: Michael Viney Another Life: The fox as he dwells among us
Choughs. Illustration: Michael Viney The declining choughs of Dursey island need decision makers’ help
  • Super grass: the arching, architectural forms of wild meadows
  • Between cliff and sea: The curious trail of a puffin

Tuarascáil

Na Náisiúin Aontaithe: deis iontach don stát a bheith ina cheannródaí idirnáisiúnta chun oidhreacht teangacha an cine daonna a chosaint. “Ní neart go cur le chéile”

D’fhéadfaí cruachás teangacha an domhain atá á ndíothú a tharraingt anuas sna Náisiúin Aontaithe

An iarThaoiseach Liam Cosgrave. Grianghraf: Paddy Whelan/The Irish Times Cróiníneachas nó cairde sa chúirt
‘Is ionann boilsciú grád sna scrúduithe stáit agus nach ionann an luach mar a bhíodh nuair a bhí an caighdeán óir sin ann fadó.’ Boilsciú agus bladar
  • Codarsnacht agus cosúlacht
  • An Fiolar Dubh

Sponsored

The safety of women and children is everyone’s business The safety of women and children is everyone’s business

“If we want to reduce the menace of domestic violence we have to work together, to make it our collective business,” says Safe Ireland’s CEO, Mary McDermott

Marketers must be aware of changes in family life to effectively engage parents Marketers must be aware of changes in family life to effectively engage parents

Advertising that doesn’t pigeonhole parents and smart communications will win out

Subscriber Only

Joshua Ferris. Photograph: Stefano Guidi/LightRocket via Getty A Calling for Charlie Barnes: Joshua Ferris finally steps up to the plate
‘If you look at the AI system Tesla uses for their self-driving cars, it’s pretty much inscrutable even to the people who built it.’ Photograph: Getty Who is responsible if a self-driving car kills a pedestrian to save the driver?
Gribben’s book highlights the what-might-have-beens of Christianity in Ireland. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben: Critical mass

Most Read in Culture

1 The Square, Kenmare Sex, ‘savages’ and starvation: The survival of Kenmare in Famine times

2 Lee Bradshaw holds his daughter’s hand in Fatherly, a short documentary made by Karin Pritzel ‘The judge said it was too premature to offer me any time with my daughter. Ludicrous’

3 Alice Levine parachutes into the story Sex Actually TV review: ‘I guess I was thinking … is Kayla enjoying it?’

4 Macbeth: Saoirse Ronan appears opposite James McArdle at the Almeida Theatre in London Saoirse Ronan: Kim Kardashian has inspired my portrayal of Lady Macbeth

5 Terence Davies: ‘I look at someone else’s film and immediately feel that mine are inferior’. Photograph: David Azia/The New York Times ‘I look at someone else’s film, and I immediately feel that my films are inferior’

6 A satirical print of drunken soldiers published in Dublin c1784. Photograph: The Trustees of the British Museum © Fountains of wine: the drunken excesses of Georgian Ireland and the end of an era

7 Kevin McCloud on Grand Designs: ‘It’s the last great big adventure that we can all go on, and, therefore, we all connect to the idea of that.’ Photograph: Channel 4 Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud: ‘I’m proud but poor. I invested a vast amount in that business’

8 Garth Brooks at Croke Park, Dublin, in January 2014. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire Three Garth Brooks concerts at Croke Park are approved by council

9 People gesture in front of US Futenma airbase during a demonstration in Ginowan on Okinawa in 2010. Some 17,000 people took part in the protest. Photograph: Reuters/Kyodo On the edge in Okinawa: a postcard from occupied paradise island

10 It is not clear if Britney Spears herself participated in the film. Photograph: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty First trailer arrives for Netflix’s explosive Britney Spears documentary

Real news has value SUBSCRIBE

Music Quiz

The Music Quiz: Who covered Kirsty MacColl’s hit single They Don’t Know? The Music Quiz: Who covered Kirsty MacColl’s hit single They Don’t Know?

Plus: What was the name of model Naomi Campbell only album, from 1994?

Macnas, whose parades are a core part of their work, receive this year’s special tribute award. Photograph: Brian Arthur
Irish Theatre Awards Find out who won this year, plus all our other coverage
 

The Books Podcast

The Irish Times Books Podcast - Darran Anderson, author of Inventory The Irish Times Books Podcast - Darran Anderson, author of Inventory 33:48
The Irish Times Books Podcast The best crime fiction of 2019 The Irish Times Books Podcast The best crime fiction of 2019 40:49
The Irish Times Books Podcast Remembering Maeve Binchy The Irish Times Books Podcast Remembering Maeve Binchy 35:01
The Irish Times Books Podcast Danielle McLaughlin The Irish Times Books Podcast Danielle McLaughlin 33:47

Culture Videos

'We're playing for you': Rolling Stones start first tour without Charlie Watts 1:15 'We're playing for you': Rolling Stones start first tour without Charlie Watts
Highlights from the 2021 Emmy Awards 2:06 Highlights from the 2021 Emmy Awards
Meet Ireland's only full-time botanical forager 2:46 Meet Ireland's only full-time botanical forager
800 years of history on display at Howth Castle ahead of auction 2:08 800 years of history on display at Howth Castle ahead of auction

Food & Drink Club

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Shelved: a selection of books by Irish women writers. Might some of these names figure in the final 12?
Women writers Putting Irish women writers back in the picture
 

Galleries

Errigal Nightscape, by Patryk Sadowski: the night sky at Loch an Ghainimh, or Lough Agannive, in Co Donegal, with Mount Errigal in the background Reach for the Stars: The best of Irish astrophotography
Perfect shot: the murmuration of starlings that James Crombie photographed over Lough Ennell, in Co Westmeath, on Tuesday evening. It became the front-page photograph of The Irish Times of March 4th, 2021. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho Murmurations over Lough Ennell
Great reads From crosswords to great wines and the best bits from The Irish Times - Buy an Irish Times Book today

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