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Wed, Nov 25, 2020
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Donal Ryan: “Books, like all art, offer an escape route, however temporary, from the relentlessness of this year of fear and isolation, and I’m happy to have been able to offer some tiny break in the clouds for my readers.” Photograph: Clare Keogh An Post Irish Book Awards 2020 winners revealed
  • Books
  • Martin Doyle
  • November 25, 2020, 20:25

Donal Ryan, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Graham Norton, Luke O’Neill and Dara McAnulty among winners

Michael Kiwanuka: ‘If you’re a creative, you don’t try and be that, you just are’ Michael Kiwanuka: ‘If you’re a creative, you don’t try and be that, you just are’
  • Culture
  • Shilpa Ganatra
  • November 25, 2020, 05:00

Mercury-prize winner on perseverance, lockdown and his latest album

The Hands of Franky Machine: A musical movie for the ears The Hands of Franky Machine: A musical movie for the ears
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Peter Murphy
  • November 25, 2020, 05:00

Hour-long audio drama is a love letter to 1950s noir, set in a dirty near-future cityscape

Grammys 2021: Fontaines DC get best rock album nomination as Beyoncé leads way Grammys 2021: Fontaines DC get best rock album nomination as Beyoncé leads way
  • Music
  • November 24, 2020, 19:54

Beyoncé gets nine nominations with six each for Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, rapper Roddy Ricch

The Crown’s Josh O’Connor: ‘I’m a republican. I’m not interested in the royal family’ The Crown’s Josh O’Connor: ‘I’m a republican. I’m not interested in the royal family’
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Kathryn Shattuck
  • November 25, 2020, 06:00

As Prince Charles on The Crown, the ‘liberal left-winger’ has thrived in a role he never really sought

The Music Quiz: What was Shane MacGowan’s first band called? The Music Quiz: What was Shane MacGowan’s first band called?
  • Music
  • Tony Clayton-Lea
  • November 25, 2020, 07:08

Plus: Lou Reed’s literary Walk, that bogus Beatlemania, eight decades in the top 5

Chopin’s interest in men airbrushed from history, programme claims Chopin’s interest in men airbrushed from history, programme claims
  • Music
  • November 25, 2020, 12:47

Journalist says he has found overt homoeroticism in Polish composer’s letters

Hands off the Toy Show: Why the Grinch can’t steal our Late Late Christmas Hands off the Toy Show: Why the Grinch can’t steal our Late Late Christmas
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Róisín Ingle
  • November 24, 2020, 15:00

The Level 5 exit plan just can’t compete with the best television programme in the world

Michelle Gallen and Eavan Boland shortlisted for Costa Book Awards Michelle Gallen and Eavan Boland shortlisted for Costa Book Awards
  • Books
  • Martin Doyle
  • November 24, 2020, 19:30

Author’s debut novel and poet’s posthumous final collection in running for prestigious prize

Patrick Freyne on Christmas ads: ‘No one belongs on the naughty list.’ This should be big news Patrick Freyne on Christmas ads: ‘No one belongs on the naughty list.’ This should be big news
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Patrick Freyne
  • November 24, 2020, 06:00

Tesco abolishes the rule of law, and the grotesque yuletide freak Kevin the Carrot is back

Latest Film

Alan Ball: “After I won the Oscar for a moment everybody agreed with everything I said. I could do no wrong.” Photograph: Mike Pont/WireImage ‘After I won an Oscar everybody agreed with everything I said’
Anthony Hopkins says he is at peace, after a long life, and hopes ‘to go on for another 20 years’. Photographs: Ryan Pfluger/New York Times Anthony Hopkins: ‘I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be rich’
Cronenberg’s new film, Possessor, shows a corporation that hijacks people’s bodies to kill others. Photograph: Neon Brandon Cronenberg: ‘I feel like I’m playing a video game about releasing a movie’
  • The Movie Quiz: Wild Mountain Thyme is based on what Irish play?
  • Four new films to stream this weekend

TV & Radio

Josh O’Connor at his home in London. Photograph: Charlotte Hadden/The New York Times The Crown’s Josh O’Connor: ‘I’m a republican. I’m not interested in the royal family’

As Prince Charles on The Crown, the ‘liberal left-winger’ has thrived in a role he never really sought

The Hands of Franky Machine is designed to be experienced in one continuous hour-long sitting, like a film or a play The Hands of Franky Machine: A musical movie for the ears
The Truth About Amazon: Helen Skelton and Sabrina Grant’s programme is consumer telly done right How much damage might your money be doing on Black Friday?
  • I’m a Celebrity: Police investigating concerns of non-native wildlife escape
  • Hands off the Toy Show: Why the Grinch can’t steal our Late Late Christmas

Latest Books

Donal Ryan: “Books, like all art, offer an escape route, however temporary, from the relentlessness of this year of fear and isolation, and I’m happy to have been able to offer some tiny break in the clouds for my readers.” Photograph: Clare Keogh An Post Irish Book Awards 2020 winners revealed

Donal Ryan, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Graham Norton, Luke O’Neill and Dara McAnulty among winners

Jamie O’Connell’s writing desk Writer’s block: how to be creative even in crisis
Yusef Salaam, one of the five boys once known as the Central Park Five. Photograph: Clarence Davis/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images YA fiction: Growing up black in the US
  • Michelle Gallen and Eavan Boland shortlisted for Costa Book Awards
  • The gift of an Irish children’s book for a difficult Christmas

Film Reviews

Jack Charlton at a friendly between the Republic of Ireland and England at the Aviva Stadium in 2015. Photograph: David Maher/Sportsfile Finding Jack Charlton

 
Dolly Parton in Dolly Parton’s Christmas On The Square Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square

 
Patrick is set in a nudist colony Patrick

 
Director Nanau and his crew shot footage for 14 months Collective

 

Latest Music

Shane MacGowan at the Olympia Theatre on March 14th, 2003. Photograph: Haydn West The Music Quiz: What was Shane MacGowan’s first band called?

Plus: Lou Reed’s literary Walk, that bogus Beatlemania, eight decades in the top 5

Fontaines DC will compete in the best rock album category against The Strokes, Grace Porter, Sturgill Simpson and Michael Kiwanuka, who won the Mercury Prize this year. Photograph: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/New York Times Grammys 2021: Fontaines DC get best rock album nomination as Beyoncé leads way
Luther Vandross, Kelly Clarkson, Leroy Clare and Britney Spears. Photographs: Getty Images Ten of the best Christmas songs (that aren’t by Mariah Carey)
  • 'Pain and passion': The artists giving voice to the black Irish experience
  • Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard H Kirk: ‘I don’t want to go down the road of nostalgia’

Book Reviews

Fathoms: The World in the Whale goes deep
The Dead of the Irish Revolution: An absorbing book that counts the cost of war
Fuel by Seán O’Brien: engagingly frank but could have shed a few pages
When the Lights Go Out: Changing climate of a marriage

Stage

A new play seeks to challenge Samuel Beckett’s instructions that only men may appear in Waiting for Godot. Photograph: Ali Wright Waiting for Gobnait? Beckett’s ban on women challenged

Female and non-binary performers are tackling Beckett’s rigidity in a new play

Callan Cummins Matthew Malone and Mary Murray in Fishamble: The New Play Company’s Embargo by Deirdre Kinahan. Photograph: Anthony Woods Embargo review: Deirdre Kinahan’s new play is unashamedly humanistic
Niall Henry, artistic director of Blue Raincoat Theatre Company in Sligo. Director Niall Henry takes on the lockdown challenge
  • The Party to End All Parties: There is a lot going on in one-and-a-half smallish packages
  • Looking for América review: Memory tells a different kind of truth

Art & Design

The object was spotted in Utah by state officials who were helping to count sheep from a helicopter. Photograph: Utah Department of Public Safety/PA New wave art or Kubrick homage? Pilot spots ‘strange’ monolith

Utah helicopter pilot noticed mysterious metal structure amid red rocks while counting sheep

Christmas displays in the Belgian city of Oudenburg. Photograph: Anthony Dumarey A Belgian city’s unintentionally phallic Christmas lights
Detail from The Red Carpets (1906). Image copyright Succession H Matisse Henri Matisse: A jolt of happiness from a humanist painter
  • Why I hate the Mary Wollstonecraft statue: would a man be ‘honoured’ with his schlong out?
  • Another Ireland: the revealing photographs of Tony O’Shea

Unthinkable

Abeba Birhane: ‘You do find a lot of people adhering to this illusion of objectivity – this illusion that they are doing science from “the view from nowhere”.’ Who is more racist, sexist and biased: You or your computer?

Unthinkable: Algorithms embed prejudice with ‘no accountability’, says Abeba Birhane

Mind the mind: According to panpsychists, consciousness is not exclusive to humans; it’s in rocks, carrots, molecules and anywhere else you can mention. Photograph: Getty Images Carrots with minds of their own? The weird theory of panpsychism
Stoic standard-bearer Marcus Aurelius used to go to a quiet place at daybreak to meditate upon the stars and rising sun. Photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto Five lessons of Stoicism: What I learned from living for a week as a Stoic
  • Why work more than 15 hours a week?
  • Ask yourself before reading: Is this newsworthy?

Heritage

Lieut Peter Ames Bloody Sunday 1920: The 32 killed at home, at Croke Park, in Dublin Castle or who died later of wounds received

Lieut-Colonel Hugh Montgomery was the highest ranked British agent to die, while Tipperary captain Michael Hogan was also captain of an IRA company

After Bloody Sunday November 21st 1920, the bodies of British officers assassinated in Dublin during the Irish War of Independence are taken back to England for burial. The men were members of British intelligence cell, the Cairo Gang. File photograph: Getty Diarmaid Ferriter: Bloody Sunday 1920 changed British attitudes to Ireland
Julianne McKeigue, a great-niece of Michael Hogan(photo on wall in background). Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times Bloody Sunday 1920: Michael Hogan’s family’s second tragedy
  • Bloody Sunday 1920: Who were Michael Collins’s hit team ‘The Squad’?
  • Bloody Sunday 1920: The 32 killed at home, at Croke Park, in Dublin Castle

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

Dan Donnelly: Tharla an troid ba cháiliúla ar an 13 Nollaig 1815 nuair a chuaigh Donnelly i gcoimhlint leis an Sasanach George Cooper i gcoire nádúrtha beag in ‘Belcher’s Hollow’ sa Churrach. Dan Donnelly: Curadh Trodach na nGael in am an ghátair

Istigh i gcás gloine os cionn mhatal an teallaigh bhí lámh dheas mhumaithe Dan Donnelly

Tá seans maith ann go mbeadh Alba níos fearr as ar fhágaint na Banríochta dóibh. Tá seans eile nach mbeadh... Grianghraif: Andy Buchanan/Getty Images An Ghaoth Anoir Aduaidh
Máirtín Tom Sheáinín ar a lá deireanach ag cur Ardtráthnóna i láthair ar RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, Dé Céadaoin 4 Samhain 2020 ‘Níor chuimhnigh mé riamh ariamh sa saol go ndéanfainn aon chraoltóireacht’
  • Tost an tSlua
  • Gan Eolas

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Subscriber Only

Yusef Salaam, one of the five boys once known as the Central Park Five. Photograph: Clarence Davis/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images YA fiction: Growing up black in the US
“Blue whales are creatures so large that, when they exhale, rainbows can form,” writes Rebecca Giggs. Fathoms: The World in the Whale goes deep
1920: A casualty is carried away during the Irish War of Independence when Sean Treacy of the Irish Volunteers’ South Tipperary Brigade shot and killed two RIC constables at Talbot Street in Dublin. Photograph: Sean Sexton/Getty Images The Dead of the Irish Revolution: An absorbing book that counts the cost of war

Most Read in Culture

1 Josh O’Connor at his home in London. Photograph: Charlotte Hadden/The New York Times The Crown’s Josh O’Connor: ‘I’m a republican. I’m not interested in the royal family’
2 Donal Ryan: “Books, like all art, offer an escape route, however temporary, from the relentlessness of this year of fear and isolation, and I’m happy to have been able to offer some tiny break in the clouds for my readers.” Photograph: Clare Keogh An Post Irish Book Awards 2020 winners revealed
3 Michael J Fox has published his fourth memoir. Photograph: Celeste Sloman/The New York Times Michael J Fox: ‘In the wheelchair, I’m luggage. No one listens to luggage’
4 Ryan Tubridy takes aim. Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times Patrick Freyne: The Late Late Toy Show is coming, there’s no need to be afraid
5 Shane MacGowan at the Olympia Theatre on March 14th, 2003. Photograph: Haydn West The Music Quiz: What was Shane MacGowan’s first band called?
6 Fontaines DC will compete in the best rock album category against The Strokes, Grace Porter, Sturgill Simpson and Michael Kiwanuka, who won the Mercury Prize this year. Photograph: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/New York Times Grammys 2021: Fontaines DC get best rock album nomination as Beyoncé leads way
7 After Bloody Sunday November 21st 1920, the bodies of British officers assassinated in Dublin during the Irish War of Independence are taken back to England for burial. The men were members of British intelligence cell, the Cairo Gang. File photograph: Getty Diarmaid Ferriter: Bloody Sunday 1920 changed British attitudes to Ireland
8 Douglas Stuart, the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction for his book “Shuggie Bain”. Photograph: Clive Smith/thebookerprizes/AFP via Getty Images Douglas Stuart on writing Shuggie Bain: 'It was a difficult process'
9 Alan Ball: “After I won the Oscar for a moment everybody agreed with everything I said. I could do no wrong.” Photograph: Mike Pont/WireImage ‘After I won an Oscar everybody agreed with everything I said’
10 The Covid crisis has given Michael Kiwanuka time to ruminate over the next album which he again hopes to record with Danger Mouse and Inflo. Photograph: Olivia Rose Michael Kiwanuka: ‘If you’re a creative, you don’t try and be that, you just are’
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Music Quiz

The Music Quiz: What was Shane MacGowan’s first band called? The Music Quiz: What was Shane MacGowan’s first band called?

Plus: Lou Reed’s literary Walk, that bogus Beatlemania, eight decades in the top 5

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
 

Culture Videos

Heartwarming Woodie's Christmas ad brings feelgood smile to the face 0:59 Heartwarming Woodie's Christmas ad brings feelgood smile to the face
Wild Mountain Thyme - official trailer 2:51 Wild Mountain Thyme - official trailer
The Crown season four - official trailer 2:28 The Crown season four - official trailer
James Bond actor Sean Connery dies aged 90 2:24 James Bond actor Sean Connery dies aged 90

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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

Sean Connery will forever be associated with Ian Fleming's James Bond. The actor most closely associated with the suave 007 operative. File photograph: PA Sean Connery: A life
Olivia de Havilland in 1938. Photograph: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Olivia de Havilland 1916-2020: A life in pictures
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