Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick at Cannes – Tom Cruise returns in a masterful sequel

Cannes Diary: As the 75th festival kicks off, our correspondent settles in for a feast of cinema

John Legend: ‘What my mother needed was help; she didn’t need to be in jail.’ Photograph: Elizabeth Lippman/The New York Times
  • Music
  • Ammar Kalia
  • 06:00
John Legend: ‘When you lose a pregnancy, you have to go through that grief together’

The US singer on resilience, his mother’s addiction, Kanye West and Roe v Wade

May 18, 2022
‘Imagine waking up in a bright and clean place, a hospital. Why am I here, I think?’
  • Books
  • Kitty Purdue
  • 00:00
Time seems to stand still when a life is on the line, even more so when its yours

A Perspective in Time, a story by Kitty Purdue (14), Mount Temple Comprehensive School, Dublin 3

May 17, 2022
Facing My Childhood widens its scope beyond Joe Wicks’s personal circumstances
Joe Wicks’s heroin-addict father, OCD mother and agonising childhood

TV Review: Facing My Childhood sounded an urgent warning on mental health in families

May 18, 2022
Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany as Vision in Marvel’s WandaVision. Photograph: Marvel Studios
  • Film
  • Neil Jordan
  • 00:00
Neil Jordan: In defence of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

The MCU offers myth, spectacle and the fun that’s vanished from independent films

May 18, 2022
Meili Li (33) is China’s first countertenor. Early on in his musical life he started singing in falsetto without even knowing what that was. Nor did he know what a countertenor was. ‘It just wasn’t a thing in China at that time. I thought I was a freak.’
Countertenor Meili Li: ‘It’s not easy as a Chinese person to be accepted’

Finding a footing in the world of opera takes grit but this is a singer who likes a challenge

May 18, 2022
Michelle Yeoh attends the opening night premiere of Everything Everywhere All At Once during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at The Paramount Theatre on March 11th in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Rich Fury/Getty Images for SXSW
  • Film
  • Steve Rose
  • 00:00
Michelle Yeoh: ‘I always wanted children, but unfortunately, physically, I’m not able to’

The Hong Kong actor on family, career and being a martial arts hero in your 60s

May 16, 2022
Author David Park: ‘It can be an affliction of old age, wanting to set right when it’s too late to set right. But maybe better late than never.’ Photograph: Alan Betson
Making amends: David Park on loss, regret and youthful idealism

Belfast writer has set his ninth novel, Spies in Canaan, during the Vietnam war

May 17, 2022
Sasha Lane and Alison Oliver in Conversations with Friends. Abrahamson cast American actress Lane as Bobbi because “there aren’t a lot of people who are charismatic in that very particular and quiet way that she is”.
Conversations With Friends, episodes 1-2: Awkward snogs, intense dialogue and a future star

TV review: Alison Oliver communicates her character’s hyper-introversion brilliantly

May 15, 2022
Future Limerick:Climate Arts Festival curators Hildegard Ryan and Eva O’Connor from Sunday’s Child Theatre.
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Limerick festival lights the way in tackling climate change through the arts

Future Limerick: Climate Arts Festival takes place May 16th to 21st with a packed programme focusing on climate challenge through drama, poetry and music

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Steve Coogan: ‘I don’t have all the answers. I doubt things.’ Photograph: Jamie McCarthy/Getty
‘I flattered him, knowing he’d try to kiss me’: Alan Partridge interviews Steve Coogan

‘It’s the oldest journalistic trick in the book. Coogan has fallen for it hook, line and sinker’

May 16, 2022
Bloody Sunday - 50 Years On Remembering the events of January 30th, 1972, when 14 people lost their lives
 

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Daniel Shand’s book is a witty, scabrous satire of fin de creation capitalism.
Model Citizens by Daniel Shand: witty, scabrous satire
Louise O’Neill’s new novel is her best yet.
Idol by Louise O’Neill: A thrilling, psychologically complex novel
David Park. Photograph: Sophie Park
Spies in Canaan by David Park: Masterful storytelling that deserves a wide readership

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Latest Film

Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick at Cannes – Tom Cruise returns in a masterful sequel

Cannes Diary: As the 75th festival kicks off, our correspondent settles in for a feast of cinema

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany as Vision in Marvel’s WandaVision. Photograph: Marvel Studios
Neil Jordan: In defence of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Françoise Lebrun (centre) with Jean-Pierre Léaud in Jean Eustache’s 1973 film La Maman et la Putain (The Mother and the Whore): ‘I always listen to directors.’
Françoise Lebrun: ‘I’m just an actor. I can only interpret’
Michelle Yeoh attends the opening night premiere of Everything Everywhere All At Once during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at The Paramount Theatre on March 11th in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Rich Fury/Getty Images for SXSW
Michelle Yeoh: ‘I always wanted children, but unfortunately, physically, I’m not able to’
Dublin Theatre Festival 2021 Reviews, news and interviews from Ireland’s premier theatre festival
 

TV & Radio

Facing My Childhood widens its scope beyond Joe Wicks’s personal circumstances
Joe Wicks’s heroin-addict father, OCD mother and agonising childhood
Sasha Lane and Alison Oliver in Conversations with Friends. Abrahamson cast American actress Lane as Bobbi because “there aren’t a lot of people who are charismatic in that very particular and quiet way that she is”.
Conversations With Friends, episodes 1-2: Awkward snogs, intense dialogue and a future star
Jemima Kirke, Sasha Lane, Allison Oliver and Joe Alwyn in Conversations with Friends. The Irish drama begins Wednesday on RTÉ One
TV guide: 23 of the best shows to watch this week, beginning tonight
Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine. Eurovision 2022
Eurovision 2022: Ukraine ignore political rules to make ‘help Mariupol’ plea

Culture Videos

Eurovision: Ukraine sweeps to victory on wave of public support 0:46 Eurovision: Ukraine sweeps to victory on wave of public support
Irish artists in France: What is it like to do an artist residency? 5:59 Irish artists in France: What is it like to do an artist residency?
Andy Warhol’s Marilyn sells for record $195 million at auction 2:31 Andy Warhol’s Marilyn sells for record $195 million at auction

Latest Books

Sally Hayden with Irish Times foreign editor Chris Dooley at the launch of My Fourth Time, We Drowned, which has been shortlisted for an Orwell Prize and the Michel Déon Prize. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Three Irish authors on Orwell Prize shortlists; Sally Hayden also on Michel Déon list

A preview of Saturday’s pages and a roundup of the latest literary news

Exploring femicide and the broader issue of violence against women in Ireland
Marc-Ivan O’Gorman: When I think of the bricks and concrete of my hometown, am I bringing to mind nothing more than a fiction?
Place and story: Where you are is a function of fiction
Beatrice Blyth, right, of the Liverpool Vigilance Association, a group of housewives organised to fight vice, greets new arrivals from Ireland in May 1958. Ann Hughes (18), Noreen Byrne (18) Rose Maguire (19) and Irene Mullen (19) all from Dundalk, Co Louth, were bound for London to train as nurses. Photograph: Charlie Owens/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
Diarmaid Ferriter: How the Irish became Britain’s oldest, loneliest ethnic group

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
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The Irish Times Books Podcast Remembering Maeve Binchy
The Irish Times Books Podcast Remembering Maeve Binchy
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Film Reviews

An Cailín Ciúin: The action is unsettling throughout
An Cailín Ciúin review: Delicately beautiful Irish film lives up to its billing

This unsettling 1980s-set drama has a pervasive sense of unspoken menace

Using split screen, Vortex establishes the isolated rhythms of an elderly couple
Vortex: Gaspar Noé’s hardest-hitting film to date
Leah Purcell: Enormously charismatic
The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson – A class on colonialism
Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once
Everything Everywhere All at Once: Wacky adventures in the multiverse

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Latest Music

John Legend: ‘What my mother needed was help; she didn’t need to be in jail.’ Photograph: Elizabeth Lippman/The New York Times
John Legend: ‘When you lose a pregnancy, you have to go through that grief together’

The US singer on resilience, his mother’s addiction, Kanye West and Roe v Wade

Derry band The Undertones, who gave us Teenage Kicks with its opening lyrics ‘Teenage dreams so hard to beat’
The Music Quiz: ‘Teenage dreams so hard to beat’ is inscribed on whose gravestone?
Members of the band Kalush Orchestra pose onstage with the winner’s trophy and Ukraine’s flags after winning on behalf of Ukraine the Eurovision Song contest at the Pala Alpitour venue in Turin. Photograph: Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty
Eurovision 2022: Ukraine sweeps to victory on wave of public support
Emmy winner Lynn Whitfield in the 1991 HBO biopic The Josephine Baker Story
The Music Quiz: Who is playing legendary Josephine Baker in a new TV series?

Music Quiz

The Music Quiz: ‘Teenage dreams so hard to beat’ is inscribed on whose gravestone? The Music Quiz: ‘Teenage dreams so hard to beat’ is inscribed on whose gravestone?

Plus: Which legendary rock’n’roller is the subject of a new film by Ethan Coen?

Book Reviews

Daniel Shand’s book is a witty, scabrous satire of fin de creation capitalism.
Model Citizens by Daniel Shand: witty, scabrous satire

Novel brilliantly evokes a consumerist hellscape but ultimately runs out of steam

Louise O’Neill’s new novel is her best yet.
Idol by Louise O’Neill: A thrilling, psychologically complex novel
David Park. Photograph: Sophie Park
Spies in Canaan by David Park: Masterful storytelling that deserves a wide readership
The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest particle accelerator. Photograph: CERN/PA Wire
The Matter of Everything, Twelve Experiments that Changed our World: Rich rewards
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
 
Great reads From crosswords to great wines and the best bits from The Irish Times - Buy an Irish Times Book today

Stage

Choreographer Áine Stapleton will premiere a dance film installation, Somewhere in the Body, at this year’s Dublin Dance Festival. Photograph: José Antonio Muñoz
Somewhere in the Body: shining a light on the real Lucia Joyce

Choreographer Áine Stapleton has spent eight years exploring Joyce’s artistry

Constellations. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh
Constellations: A what-if rom-com with too many parallel universes
Nish Kumar: ‘You have to take charge of your own mental health’
Nish Kumar: ‘The Conservative government in Britain are cultural vandals’
James Hindman in What Doesn’t Kill You. Photograph: Andrea Phox
What Doesn’t Kill You is heartwarming but Quilt is disjointed

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

Art & Design

A 1964 Andy Warhol silk screen, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, is auctioned at Christie’s on Monday in New York. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/The New York Times
Andy Warhol’s Marilyn sells for record $195 million at auction

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn depicts actor in vibrant block colours on blue background

Helena Gorey’s interest is closely attuned to seasonal changes in the detailed fabric of the landscape around her. Photograph: Jenny Callanan
Understory: A detailed exploration of rural landscape
Town House Kingston University London. Photograph: Dennis Gilbert
Grafton Architects win European prize for contemporary architecture
The US Navy also said it would name a ship after the former Supreme Court Justice. Photograph: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s auction to include Picasso ceramics

Unthinkable

Noga Arikha, author of The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind: ‘My mother wasn’t aware what was happening to her. So she was actually very happy, blissfully happy, living in the present.’
Can someone with dementia access a deeper kind of wisdom?

Unthinkable: Philosopher Noga Arikha seeks to make sense of dementia

Intellectual heavyweights: Donegal-born John Toland (left) and Kilkenny native George Berkeley
Be thankful for intellectual rivals, they can sharpen your mind
Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Photograph: EPA
If you feel like the world is ending, you are not alone
Peter Sarsgaard, as hotshot intellectual Professor Hardy, with Jessie Buckley, playing Leda, in The Lost Daughter. Photograph: Yannis Drakoulidis/Netflix
The meaning of facial hair, from ‘patriarchal’ beards to commitment-phobic stubble

Heritage

A ceremonial flypast on the Main Square, at The Defence Forces Training Centre, in The Curragh Camp. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times
Ceremony recalls handing over of seat of British military power in Ireland

The Curragh was the largest British military barracks in Ireland in 1922

Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann stands in a protective glass booth flanked by Israeli police during his trial in Jerusalem in 1961. Photograph: GPO via Getty Images
The senior Nazi who became postwar Germany’s top civil servant
WB Yeats wanted to decolonise Irish art. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Irish culture’s remarkable response to the political turmoil from 1891 to 1922
Herbert Woods, centre, shot dead an IRA man, Micheal O’Neill, who had broken into his relatives’ home, Ballygroman House, in April 1922. Wood and two relatives were killed in revenge and 10 more local Protestants were also shot dead.
Bandon massacre showed roots of internecine violence ran deep

Michael Viney's Another Life

A surging flood in Dublin’s Liffey meeting a record storm surge in the bay would be one fearful scenario, that might concentrate minds in Ireland.
If fear won’t work, how can we encourage climate action?

Michael Viney: Studies suggest positive messages about post-carbon society more effective

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
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

Tuarascáil

Tá go leor taighde agus réamhullmhúcháin déanta cheana féin chun dúshraith fheidhmiúil a chur faoin tionscadal nua agus tá triúr eagarthóir le fostú anois. Grianghraf: Andrew Downes, xposure
Abhóga chun tosaigh: foclóirí nua ar na bacáin

Eagarthóirí á n-earcú le haghaidh foclóirí nua Gaeilge agus Gaeilge-Béarla

Bhí guagacht riamh ann, agus beidh an crandaí ag bogadaigh i gcónaí i measc na bpáirtithe beaga. Grianghraf: PressEye/PA Wire
Conablach an lae
Buaiteoiri ar an comórtas díospóireachta ‘Abair Gael Linn 2022’. Grianghraif: LiamMcArdle.com
‘Tá píosa fada le dul againn - aithníonn gach duine é sin’ - Ó Ciaráin
“Níl aon oidhre ar mhuintir Mariupol ach saoránaigh Stalingrad ina gcónaí faoi thalamh, beo ar bheagán ar éigean, gan solas lae ná leictreachais.” Grianghraf: EPA/Maxar Technologies.
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Advertising agencies are increasingly run by finance people rather than creatives. Photograph: iStock
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Advertising guru rails against narrow view of creativity

Martin Sorrell discusses the ad agency landscape and his new venture S4 Capital

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