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Sun, Jun 20, 2021
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Matt Damon is in Byron Bay, Australia, filming his latest project, Thor: Love and Thunder. File photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage Matt Damon: ‘When this all ends we’re going back to Ireland’
  • Culture
  • Róisín Ingle
  • June 19, 2021, 06:00

The actor on childhood with Ben Affleck, being a dad, staying grounded and loving Ireland

The Saw Doctors, 1991: ‘For about a year, you couldn’t hear anything else on the radio’ The Saw Doctors, 1991: ‘For about a year, you couldn’t hear anything else on the radio’
  • Music
  • Ed Power
  • June 19, 2021, 05:00

In March 1991, the band hit the streets with their fathers and photographer Frank Miller

Hugh Linehan: Ireland is now an outlier in the restrictions it places on entertainment Hugh Linehan: Ireland is now an outlier in the restrictions it places on entertainment
  • Culture
  • Hugh Linehan
  • June 19, 2021, 07:00

A recent Iveagh Gardens gig looked nice but gave no data for returning to normality

Irish Times Summer Nights festival: Final details revealed Irish Times Summer Nights festival: Final details revealed
  • Culture
  • Róisín Ingle
  • June 19, 2021, 06:00

Chris O’Dowd and Mary Lou McDonald among those appearing at this year’s event

Felispeaks: ‘We’re still scared of bleeding rainbow blood’ Felispeaks: ‘We’re still scared of bleeding rainbow blood’
  • Culture
  • Felispeaks
  • June 19, 2021, 06:00

Poet Felispeaks reimagines Over the Rainbow to mark Pride 2021

From ‘credit-card movies’ to a billion-dollar franchise From ‘credit-card movies’ to a billion-dollar franchise
  • Film
  • Donald Clarke
  • June 19, 2021, 05:00

Justin Lin on starting out as an indie director, diversity in film, and making Fast & Furious 9, the latest in the superhit series

Karin Slaughter: ‘I have a lot of readers who probably are Trump supporters’ Karin Slaughter: ‘I have a lot of readers who probably are Trump supporters’
  • Books
  • Catherine Conroy
  • June 19, 2021, 06:00

Novelist talks of violence, rape and socially conscious storytelling in False Witness

Donald Clarke: Sing it with me – the musical will outlive its boring detractors Donald Clarke: Sing it with me – the musical will outlive its boring detractors
  • Culture
  • Donald Clarke
  • June 19, 2021, 05:00

It has been driven underground at times, but the form remains reassuringly resilient

Family takes centre stage in new Abbey Theatre production Family takes centre stage in new Abbey Theatre production
  • Music
  • Sara Keating
  • June 19, 2021, 05:00

One Good Turn by Úna McKevitt will be performed to a limited live audience – and online

One Irish singer makes the cut for music streamer’s 100-strong ‘billions club’ One Irish singer makes the cut for music streamer’s 100-strong ‘billions club’
  • Music
  • Ed Power
  • June 18, 2021, 15:36

Spotify unveils 100 tracks that have each clocked up at least a billion streams

Latest Film

Fast & Furious 9: On its initial release in eight countries it scored, with $163 million, the highest opening weekend for a Hollywood film since the pandemic began. From ‘credit-card movies’ to a billion-dollar franchise
The Movie Quiz: Which Oscar winner has been a guest voice on The Simpsons?
Inside No 9: Reece Shearsmith Reece Shearsmith: ‘We were nerds in that vicious way’
  • Elia Suleiman: ‘Palestine has become globalised’
  • Bob Odenkirk does a Liam Neeson, punching Russians unconscious by the dozen

TV & Radio

Some of the young stars of Our Town: ‘You’ve got working-class Bray. You’ve got middle-class Bray... It’s in the shadow of Dublin, so it has this identity thing.’ Photograph: Arthur Janowsky This is Bray: Nine lives in an Irish seaside town

A new TV series, Our Town, follows a diverse group of young people with big dreams

Rose Byrne in Physical, a new dramedy on Apple TV+. Physical: Rose Byrne stars in a bleak and disdainful portrayal of the 1980s
2FM Breakfast: Donncha O’Callaghan, Doireann Garrihy and Carl Mullan Want a rude awakening? Switch from Morning Ireland to 2FM Breakfast
  • Together: Sharon Horgan digs deep in a pained performance opposite James McAvoy
  • Official trailer for Netflix Sophie Toscan du Plantier true-crime series released

Latest Books

Maggie O’Farrell and Elaine Feeney win 2021 Dalkey Literary Awards

Authors of Hamnet and As You Were win prizes worth £30,000

Karin Slaughter: ‘I have a lot of readers who probably are Trump supporters’
A photograph from 100 years ago of Maeve’s Cairn, a Neolithic passage grave on Knocknarea Seafaring brought to life with studies of Waterford port and Dunbrody Famine ship
  • Eimear Ryan: ‘I thought that there was some trick to writing a novel’
  • Books in brief: From young Nick Cave to 60-year-old Laura Lippman

Film Reviews

The Money Order (Mandabi), Ousmane Sembène’s 1968 film. The Money Order (Mandabi)

 
In the Earth asks some indulgence of its audience. In the Earth

 
Whither the urban grit? In the Heights

 
Jacob Tremblay and Jack Dylan Grazer lend their voices to Luca and Alberto – two sea monsters who look human when they’re out of the water. Photograph: Disney/Pixar Luca

 

Latest Music

Writer Úna McKevitt and director Emma Jordan at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin where One Good Turn will open on June 21st. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times Family takes centre stage in new Abbey Theatre production

One Good Turn by Úna McKevitt will be performed to a limited live audience – and online

The Saw Doctors album ‘If This is Rock and Roll, I want my Old Job Back.’ is turning 30. Photograph: Frank Miller The Saw Doctors, 1991: ‘For about a year, you couldn’t hear anything else on the radio’
The new playlist will add fuel to the argument that Spotify only cares about megabucks artists One Irish singer makes the cut for music streamer’s 100-strong ‘billions club’
  • Eurovision winners on drug controversy: ‘We know we are clean. We have nothing to hide’
  • Alison Spittle’s Spotify playlist: ‘I love Kanye. He’s an idiot, but I’m overwhelmed by his talent’

Book Reviews

The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird – an accumulating song of loss, and hope
The First Irish Cities: An Eighteenth-Century Transformation – A tale of 10 towns
The Night Always Comes: Lonely times and hardscrabble lives
Grown Ups: Sisterly hatred and the shifting parameters of adulthood

Stage

Happy Days: Lisa Dwan in rehearsals for Trevor Nunn’s 60th-anniversary production. Photograph: Helen Maybanks/Riverside Studios Lisa Dwan: ‘I was a blond, blue-eyed, pretty actress playing one vacuous role after another’

Then came Samuel Beckett, and his plays set the Irish actor on a new artistic path

Mespil in the Dark: Director Gavin Quinn says the impulse for the series has been percolating for a long time. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh Mespil in the Dark: A twist on the something everyday
Marie Mullen in Landmark Productions’ The Saviour. Photograph: Patrick Redmond Deirdre Kinahan: ‘I had about six plays opening. Then I got fecking cancer’
  • Playwright Marina Carr takes a gamble and wins
  • What Did I Miss? A children’s theatre space comes back to life

Art & Design

RIAI Public Choice Award 2021: voting is open until Friday, July 2nd From a cliff house to a castle: Help choose Ireland’s best new architecture

RIAI Public Choice Award 2021 shortlist features almost 40 building projects

Napoleon Crossing the Alps at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris. Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP via Getty Napoleon’s stolen masterpieces: The plunder that formed the Louvre
The argument that garish colours make safer vehicles seems to be at the heart of why buses look the way they do these days. From Faecal Brown to Loop-the-Loop: the changing colours of Dublin Bus
  • Richard Mosse: ‘The idea of the artist going it alone is bogus’
  • Portraits of the artists: Anne Madden and Francis Bacon

Unthinkable

Posters from last year’s general election campaign. What slogan would Immanuel Kant approve of? Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times Would you vote for a philosopher to become taoiseach?

Unthinkable: Covid-19 has exposed societal injustices. Persuading people to address them remains a challenge

Rob Grant, academic, musician and author of The Philosophy Resistance Squad. Are you capable of listening without ‘waiting for your chance to talk’?
TCD academic Dr Roja Fazaeli says when researchers are penalised for highlighting issues it signals ‘there are doctrinal lines of inquiry that are to be crossed at a researcher’s own peril’. Photograph: Laura Hutton Speak out at your peril: Self-censorship and the smothering of academia
  • If people are naturally kind, why is there so much cruelty?
  • Five (and a bit) steps to a better life: What philosophy tells us

Heritage

Members of the London Irish Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans network. Photograph: James Berkery Placing queerness at the heart of the Irish emigrant experience

A new exhibition celebrates the cultural and social impact of Ireland’s LGBTQ+ diaspora

Lord mayor of Cork Tomás Mac Curtain was murdered at his home on March 20th, 1920 Lord mayor of cork Tomás Mac Curtain was murdered by Black and Tans – historian
Reading Gaol: Oscar Wilde’s prison cell. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Reading Gaol: The battle to save Oscar Wilde’s prison cell
  • Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith expected a 28-county Irish State
  • Best fiction of the Irish War of Independence

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

“An íomhá ba mhealltaí agus ba thochtmhaire dar liom ná an meaisín lomtha féir capaill á nochtadh as grinneall an locha.” Grianghraf: An Garda Síochána/Twitter Baile na hAbhann i gCill Mhantáin: An Baile Fearainn a bádh

Baile tuaithe ba ea é Baile na hAbhann ina raibh 76 teach cónaithe, 300 feirm agus 5,500 acra de thalamh ann

B’fhéidir gurb ait le duine go bhfágfaí cúrsaí reiligiúin lasmuigh den doras in aon chóras oideachais, agus b’in an socrú a rinneadh i dtosach sa bhliain 1831. Grianghraf: iStock Scoileanna le Chéile
Slua den Oglala Lakota Sioux i mbun Damhsa na dTaibhse, Iomaire na Giúise, Dacóta Theas, 1890. Pictiúr: Library of Congress. James Mooney: Finné báúil ar chultúr i mbaol
  • Osaka gan Freagra
  • An Dream Dearg: Ag tarraingt aird ar chearta teanga

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Subscriber Only

View of Dublin, from the Magazine, Phoenix Park, 1795. Photograph: Buyenlarge/Getty The First Irish Cities: An Eighteenth-Century Transformation – A tale of 10 towns
Pillow Queens (L-R) Sarah Corcoran (vocals, guitar, bass); Pamela Connolly (vocals, guitar, bass); Cathy McGuinness (guitar) and Rachel Lyons (drums) – playing at Rock Against Homelessness Pillow Queens perform, President Higgins and Colm Tóibín chat: This week’s unmissable online events
Posters from last year’s general election campaign. What slogan would Immanuel Kant approve of? Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times Would you vote for a philosopher to become taoiseach?

Most Read in Culture

1 Matt Damon is in Byron Bay, Australia, filming his latest project, Thor: Love and Thunder. File photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage Matt Damon: ‘When this all ends we’re going back to Ireland’

2 GB News: Dan Wootton, Andrew Neil and Michelle Dewberry GB News, week 1: It takes until Tuesday to go full wingnut

3 The Saw Doctors album ‘If This is Rock and Roll, I want my Old Job Back.’ is turning 30. Photograph: Frank Miller The Saw Doctors, 1991: ‘For about a year, you couldn’t hear anything else on the radio’

4 Irish Times Summer Nights festival: Final details revealed

5 John Oates (left) and Daryl Hall: ‘We had a lethal ability to experiment’ Hall & Oates: ‘They said, Who do these guys think they are? They will never appear on TV again’

6 The murder of Shane O’Neill: In the mid-1500s, Sean or Shane O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, was causing so many problems for the English crown that Elizabeth I banned the name O’Neill, on punishment of death and forfeiture of property. She would not be pleased to know that today O’Neill is a top ten Irish surname, and Sean is a top ten Irish given name. Photograph: Getty Images A dozen things you might not know about Irish names

7 2FM Breakfast: Donncha O’Callaghan, Doireann Garrihy and Carl Mullan Want a rude awakening? Switch from Morning Ireland to 2FM Breakfast

8 Miracle warnings and a lack of bull

9 Mr Salary – a short story by Sally Rooney

10 ‘Living a philosophical life is seen by some to be necessary to live a good life.’ Photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto Why we need ‘community philosophy’

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Music Quiz

The Music Quiz: Which Scandis recorded Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town? The Music Quiz: Which Scandis recorded Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town?

Plus: Sugababes and Girls Aloud cover Aerosmith, Liverpool fans back Pink Floyd

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

Official trailer for Netflix Sophie Toscan du Plantier true-crime series released 2:00 Official trailer for Netflix Sophie Toscan du Plantier true-crime series released
New famine memorial features 1,845 handblown glass potatoes 1:29 New famine memorial features 1,845 handblown glass potatoes
Behind the lens of wildlife photography: 'Sometimes I'm planing for weeks' 1:37 Behind the lens of wildlife photography: 'Sometimes I'm planing for weeks'
Meet the milliner who transforms into James Joyce once a year 2:46 Meet the milliner who transforms into James Joyce once a year

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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