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The Irish Times
Sun, Jul 25, 2021
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Sylvester Stallone photographed by Elizabeth Weinberg/New York Times King Shark Sylvester Stallone: ‘I’m looking for love. It’s the loneliest apex predator’
  • Film
  • Tara Brady
  • July 24, 2021, 05:00

The affable star does not phone it in even when playing a CGI fish in The Suicide Squad

Summer of Soul: rescuing a lost festival from Woodstock's unlovely shadow Summer of Soul: rescuing a lost festival from Woodstock's unlovely shadow
  • Music
  • Hugh Linehan
  • July 24, 2021, 05:00

Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969 featured a line-up of hugely influential black artists

Richard Hammond: ‘I have been unbelievably lucky’ Richard Hammond: ‘I have been unbelievably lucky’
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Donald Clarke
  • July 24, 2021, 05:00

The former Top Gear presenter on crashing at 513 km/h and making a new Grand Tour film

Donald Clarke: Gangsta rap has nothing on our violent, bloody national anthems Donald Clarke: Gangsta rap has nothing on our violent, bloody national anthems
  • Culture
  • Donald Clarke
  • July 24, 2021, 05:00

Promising to make our rivers flow with the blood of our enemies is not very sportsmanlike

The new faces of Traveller music bringing a fresh take on folk, hip-hop and rap The new faces of Traveller music bringing a fresh take on folk, hip-hop and rap
  • Music
  • Martin Warde
  • July 24, 2021, 05:00

As a country that champions its artists, focus must be shifted to creativity in the margins

Jack Antonoff: ‘Irish music has had a huge influence on me – it’s steeped in celebration and sadness’ Jack Antonoff: ‘Irish music has had a huge influence on me – it’s steeped in celebration and sadness’
  • Music
  • Ed Power
  • July 24, 2021, 05:00

Prolific producer of Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and Lorde albums on new Bleachers project

Patrick Freyne: After several episodes of Sexy Beasts, I'm attracted to many animals Patrick Freyne: After several episodes of Sexy Beasts, I'm attracted to many animals
  • Culture
  • Patrick Freyne
  • July 23, 2021, 05:00

You’ll either hate Sexy Beasts, Netflix’s new dating show, or like it so much it disturbs you

Ian Rankin on a Celtic cult legend: ‘Why isn’t he better known? He should be revered’ Ian Rankin on a Celtic cult legend: ‘Why isn’t he better known? He should be revered’
  • Music
  • Ian Rankin
  • July 23, 2021, 06:00

The novelist recalls his relationship with the singer Jackie Leven, chronicler of alienation

Artisan chocolatier is a story of resilience and reinvention Artisan chocolatier is a story of resilience and reinvention
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Old: M Night Shyamalan’s time-compressing mystery overstays its welcome Old: M Night Shyamalan’s time-compressing mystery overstays its welcome
  • Film
  • Donald Clarke
  • July 23, 2021, 05:00

Another chapter in the Sixth Sense director’s peculiarly underwhelming career

Latest Film

Old Four new films to see this week
Sylvester Stallone photographed by Elizabeth Weinberg/New York Times King Shark Sylvester Stallone: ‘I’m looking for love. It’s the loneliest apex predator’
Chloe Zhao, shown here in 2015, this year became the second woman to win an Oscar for best director (for Nomadland), following Kathryn Bigelow in 2009. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty The Movie Quiz: Who was the first woman nominated for a director Oscar?
  • Director Mona Fastvold: ‘It’s like people don’t associate female filmmakers with auteurs’
  • James Gunn: ‘If superhero movies don’t change, it’s gonna get really boring’

TV & Radio

Tattoo Redo, streaming from Wednesday on Netflix TV guide: 17 of the best shows to watch this week

Five Bedrooms, Chris Packham: The Walk that Made Me, Glórtha ón Imeall

The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown – Richard Hammond. Photograph: Amazon Studios Richard Hammond: ‘I have been unbelievably lucky’
The funeral of Dean Maguire, who died along with two other men when the car they were travelling in hit a lorry while they were driving the wrong direction up the N7 near Baldonnel. Photograph: Collins Wide-eyed Joe Duffy: Wet behind the ears or dunked in amniotic fluid?
  • ‘Get the shot’: Fox News anchors turn heads with vaccination pleas
  • Sexy Beasts, Netflix’s animal-mask dating show, is irredeemably terrible

Latest Books

Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat (1957) The Books Quiz: What was Dr Seuss’s very first book for children?

Plus: Which Irish city is the setting for Ken Bruen’s ferocious Jack Taylor crime novels?

Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher on November 15th, 1985. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh Margaret Thatcher’s moods, Garret FitzGerald’s outburst – a diplomat looks back
Bexy Cameron now lives in London and directs commercials, short documentaries and short films. My escape and recovery from life as ‘sex cult girl’
  • Translated fiction round-up: Compelling collection shifting between reality and fantasy
  • ‘It’s a fantasy, no woman is allowed to be like this anyway’

Film Reviews

Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby in The World to Come. The World to Come

 
A scene from Air Conditioner. Air Conditioner

 
Vicky Krieps as Prisca and Thomasin McKenzie as Maddox in M Night Shyamalan’s Old Old

 
A scene from I Never Cry. I Never Cry

 

Latest Music

Steo Wall: ‘Maybe there is something in the fact that music can often transcend our differences.’ The new faces of Traveller music bringing a fresh take on folk, hip-hop and rap

As a country that champions its artists, focus must be shifted to creativity in the margins

Stevie Wonder performs at the Harlem Cultural Festival in the summer of 1969 Summer of Soul: rescuing a lost festival from Woodstock's unlovely shadow
Jack Antonoff: ‘You could like Bob Dylan or not. You could like Joni Mitchell or not. You can’t ever even consider the idea that there is anyone but that one artist could do what they do.’ Jack Antonoff: ‘Irish music has had a huge influence on me – it’s steeped in celebration and sadness’
  • Ian Rankin on a Celtic cult legend: ‘Why isn’t he better known? He should be revered’
  • Britney Spears: US House of Representatives introduces Bill to end conservatorship abuse

Book Reviews

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? Remarkably funny exploration of childhood grief
Things Are Against Us: Anti-patriarchy polemic and satire
How Beautiful We Were: African trauma and corporate greed
The science of sweat: What happens when you’re feeling hot

Stage

Comedian Tom O’Connor made an impact with British TV shows including Name That Tune and Opportunity Knocks. File photograph: Getty Liverpool comedian and TV presenter Tom O’Connor dies at 81

Comedy career started out in working men’s clubs but he later broke into television

From left to right: Selina Xu, Emily Murray Nelson, Joe Reidy, Louí Montague, Michael Lavery, Aisling Murphy, Éadaoin O’Neill and Ray McHallem outside the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Photograph: Damien Eagers Young playwrights separated by lockdown come together for Abbey debut
Kathy Rose O’Brien stars as Vera in In the Middle of the Fields In the Middle of the Fields review: A timeless tale with a #MeToo edge
  • Review: The Secrets of Primrose Square
  • Cillian Murphy confesses all in pounding sound and blinding light

Art & Design

Westport, courtesy National Library of Ireland, Lawrence Collection. ‘We don’t realise what we have.’ In praise of the ‘majestic’ rural Irish town

A new book looks at the wealth we have in our Irish country towns

Sean Scully: “I’m playing around with the idea, the mutation and repetition, and of course I’m making references to 19th-century painting.” Sean Scully: 'I am an Irishman and I love a good fight'
A museum guest photographs Johannes Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Photograph: TJ Kirkpatrick/The New York Times How galleries investigate paintings to reveal secrets and uncover fakes
  • Venice Architecture Biennale’s Irish Pavilion explores our role in the data revolution
  • Diana as the Virgin Mary? The statue William and Harry have unveiled is just awful

Unthinkable

John Moriarty’s stomping ground: Gleann na gCappel, the Horses’ Glen, in the Mangerton massif, Co Kerry. Short of staycation ideas? Try a pilgrimage to Irish philosophy sites

Unthinkable: Ireland has a rich philosophical heritage – some more plaques would be nice

Irish philosopher George Berkeley believed ‘participation in social order was really central to being human’. Image: Hulton Archive Was Ireland’s greatest philosopher a hero, villain or ‘man of his time’?
Ray Griffin (left) and Tom Boland (right), authors of The Reformation of Welfare: The New Faith of the Labour Market. Work is Ireland’s new religion, unemployment its new sin
  • Searching for the ultimate meaning of life? Join the club
  • Before toppling any statues, ask yourself: Am I on the right side of history?

Heritage

Frederick Douglass: escaped slavery and became a prominent abolitionist, orator and writer. Photograph: MPI/Getty Images Frederick Douglass walking trail unveiled in Cork to highlight links to anti-slavery activist

Orator visited Ireland in 1845 to build support for the abolitionist cause in America

The main entrance at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. Photograph: AP Photo/Markus Schreiber When is the history of the Holocaust relevant today?
Irish emigrants embarking for America at Waterloo Docks, Liverpool, 1850. From The Illustrated London News, July 1850. Photograph: Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images. The doctor who saved thousands of Irish lives but lost his own
  • When Lloyd George met de Valera: ‘Why do you insist upon Republic? Saorstat is good enough'
  • How many teenagers can a Bean an Tí fit in her house? One more

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

Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde i bpairt Phadaí Mhicheáil Airt i radharc ón fhadchlár faisnéise The Queen v Patrick O’Donnell de chuid ROSG do TG4. I ngreim i seoda na staire sa chartlann

Rith sé liom nach fótachóipeanna saorga a bhí i mo lámha agam ach na buncháipéisí stairiúla a bhí in úsáid ag na pearsana a bhí luaite iontu

‘Ach b’í an chúis ba mhó, thar amhras anonn, ná go ndúirt MMáirtín ar thairseach na vótála go raibh sé ar son foireann Shasana i gcluiche ceannais sacar na hEorpa.’ Grianghraf: Catherine Ivill /Getty An mhaidin dar gcionn
Ón 1,600 duine a d’fhreagair suirbhé, d’aontaigh beagnach 80 faoin gcéad gur mhaith leo níos mó Gaeilge a úsáid gach lá agus bhí Gaeilge in úsáid i gcónaí nó go minic sa bhaile ag 28.7 faoin gcéad. Grianghraf: Getty Plean Teanga Chathair na Gaillimhe
  • Sos Cogaidh
  • Leasuithe ceadaithe chun Bille na dTeangacha Oifigiúla a neartú

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Subscriber Only

Séamas O’Reilly’s family. O’Reilly is one of 11 children and their mother died when he was five years old Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? Remarkably funny exploration of childhood grief
The bookstore, Les Vraies Richesses, which published Albert Camus’ Nuptials, as well as other novels, in the 1930s. Photograph: Youcef Krache/For The Washington Post via Getty Images Translated fiction round-up: Compelling collection shifting between reality and fantasy
British comedy writer Lucy Ellmann: “Men have wrecked everything of beauty and cultivated everything putrid on the face of the earth.” Photograph: Colin McPherson/Corbis Things Are Against Us: Anti-patriarchy polemic and satire

Most Read in Culture

1 Sylvester Stallone photographed by Elizabeth Weinberg/New York Times King Shark Sylvester Stallone: ‘I’m looking for love. It’s the loneliest apex predator’

2 The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown – Richard Hammond. Photograph: Amazon Studios Richard Hammond: ‘I have been unbelievably lucky’

3 Bella Mackie’s first book, called Jog On: How Running Saved My Life, was a non-fiction best-seller. Photograph: David M Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images ‘It’s a fantasy, no woman is allowed to be like this anyway’

4 Séamas O’Reilly’s family. O’Reilly is one of 11 children and their mother died when he was five years old Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? Remarkably funny exploration of childhood grief

5 Veteran war correspondent John Simpson: Fiction is a very convenient way of just being able to lift off the carapace of straightforward, decent reporting and express what you are thinking. John Simpson: My torture was ‘deeply humiliating, wounding to the spirit’

6 The bookstore, Les Vraies Richesses, which published Albert Camus’ Nuptials, as well as other novels, in the 1930s. Photograph: Youcef Krache/For The Washington Post via Getty Images Translated fiction round-up: Compelling collection shifting between reality and fantasy

7 In her prime: a youthful Whitney Houston on stage in June 1988. Photograph: RDA/Getty Images The sad, secret life of Whitney Houston

8 Welcome to Dublin, unless you're black

9 Great Irish movies: Eamonn Owens as Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy, directed by Neil Jordan The 50 best Irish films ever made, in order

10 The funeral of Dean Maguire, who died along with two other men when the car they were travelling in hit a lorry while they were driving the wrong direction up the N7 near Baldonnel. Photograph: Collins Wide-eyed Joe Duffy: Wet behind the ears or dunked in amniotic fluid?

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Music Quiz

The Music Quiz: Which album did Harry Styles call ‘completely perfect’? The Music Quiz: Which album did Harry Styles call ‘completely perfect’?

Plus: Who is the pop star with the sometimes songwriting alias ‘Nils Sjoberg’?

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

Confusion at Cannes as Spike Lee reveals Palme d’Or winner too soon 0:38 Confusion at Cannes as Spike Lee reveals Palme d’Or winner too soon
Spike Lee leads female majority Cannes Film Festival jury 2:10 Spike Lee leads female majority Cannes Film Festival jury
Battle of the Somme: 'a shared history and a shared heritage' 2:52 Battle of the Somme: 'a shared history and a shared heritage'
'I just run with the mistakes': Artist 'Salvatore of Lucan' on working during lockdown 2:03 'I just run with the mistakes': Artist 'Salvatore of Lucan' on working during lockdown

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
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