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Fri, Dec 14, 2018
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Constance Markievicz: The Rebel Countess – A comic by Dearbhla Kelly
  • Heritage
  • December 10, 2018, 06:00

A life of rebellion, revolution and politics

Let’s not beat around the badger. ‘The Irish Times’ wants to ban beards Let’s not beat around the badger. ‘The Irish Times’ wants to ban beards
  • Culture
  • Donald Clarke
  • December 14, 2018, 05:00

And Christmas. I may not have that quite right. But would everyone please calm down?

Taylor Swift used facial recognition software to detect stalkers at concert Taylor Swift used facial recognition software to detect stalkers at concert
  • Music
  • December 13, 2018, 18:57

Los Angeles venue collected images at a kiosk showing Taylor Swift rehearsal clips

Steroid abuse: ‘I hated my body. I had to do something about it’ Steroid abuse: ‘I hated my body. I had to do something about it’
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Peter Crawley
  • December 13, 2018, 13:58

‘RTÉ Investigates – Steroid Ireland’ leaves no stone unturned, no kilo unburned

Bob Dylan and Neil Young announce major concert in Ireland Bob Dylan and Neil Young announce major concert in Ireland
  • Music
  • December 13, 2018, 17:07

The two rock legends will perform at Nowlan Park, Kilkenny, in July 2019

Twisty history: RTÉ is covering Election 1918 ‘as it happens’ Twisty history: RTÉ is covering Election 1918 ‘as it happens’
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Deirdre Falvey
  • December 13, 2018, 06:00

It's the first time Edward Carson and Michael Collins will go head to head with Corrie

Waterford Whispers 2019 predictions: GAA to replace matches with 30 man brawls Waterford Whispers 2019 predictions: GAA to replace matches with 30 man brawls
  • Books
  • Colm Williamson
  • December 13, 2018, 09:32

Other predictions: Peter Casey to walk naked down O'Connell Street and the UK will postpone Brexit and take a gap year

Snow White panto review: Gleefully naughty, infectious entertainment Snow White panto review: Gleefully naughty, infectious entertainment
  • Stage
  • Mick Heaney
  • December 13, 2018, 15:12

Alan Hughes’s long-running pantomime uses raucous humour to winning effect

Are humans losing the ability to be idle? Are humans losing the ability to be idle?
  • Culture
  • Joe Humphreys
  • December 11, 2018, 13:32

Unthinkable: A new book on dossing and daydreaming seeks to challenge our traditional work ethic

Goodbye to All That is among the finest books about war ever been written Goodbye to All That is among the finest books about war ever been written
  • Books
  • Miranda Seymour
  • December 13, 2018, 06:04

The revised ‘Goodbye’ emphasised its author’s Irish heritage, not his German roots

Latest Film

New this week: Amber Heard in Aquaman Latest movies reviewed: All films in cinemas this week rated
‘I very much relate to that Peter Parker – he wears sweatpants’
When the school play was staged in 2004 or 2005, the young actor already had a life’s worth of experience Actor Barry Keoghan as you’ve never seen him before (sucking his thumb in a school play)
  • Andy Serkis revives Gollum to ridicule Theresa May’s Brexit deal
  • The 50 best films of 2018

Film Reviews

Uma Thurman and Matt Dillon: an attack on misogyny or a celebration of it? With Von Trier, you never get a chance to find out The House that Jack Built

 
Keepers of the Flame

 
Dead Souls emerges as part of a larger, urgent national project to chronicle the re-education camps before the survivors are gone. Dead Souls

 
You will rub your eyes often Aquaman

 

Latest Music

Taylor Swift performing at Croke Park in June. Photograph: Dave Meehan/The Irish Times Taylor Swift used facial recognition software to detect stalkers at concert

Los Angeles venue collected images at a kiosk showing Taylor Swift rehearsal clips

File photograph from 2013 of Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams performing. File photograph: Ian West/PA Wire Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke ordered to pay $5m in ‘Blurred Lines’ plagiarism row
Bob Dyland and Neil Young to play Ireland concert in July 2019 Bob Dylan and Neil Young announce major concert in Ireland
  • Avicii: ‘It will kill me’ – behind the devastating documentary
  • Nick Cave says cultural boycott of Israel is ‘cowardly and shameful’

Album Reviews

The Melancholy Thug: A Trip to the Sewers of Paris

 
Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert: Ghost Stories for Christmas

 
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Untethered

 
Kirsty Bertarelli: Sweet Summer Rain

 
Van Morrison: The Prophet Speaks

 
Niall Horan: Flicker: Featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra

 

Latest Books

If you buy The Irish Times in Eason this weekend, you can save €5 and buy The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen for just €4.99 A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Buy The Wife Between Us for €4.99 with The Irish Times in Eason this weekend

British soldiers go over the top in June 1916 to attack the German trenches somewhere in France. Photograph: Mirrorpix via Getty Images Goodbye to All That is among the finest books about war ever been written
Pigeon fancier: A camera-shy Rosemary Jenkinson with her uncle Donald, mother Denise and father James in Trafalgar Square, 1970 Brexit, a view from over the Border
  • Waterford Whispers 2019 predictions: GAA to replace matches with 30 man brawls
  • Richard Power: ‘The Hungry Grass’ author a great loss to Irish letters

Book Reviews

Friday Black review: a bracing, ultramodern debut collection
How to Be Invisible by Kate Bush review: Not a spare word anywhere
The Mere Wife review: rich modern reworking of ‘Beowulf’
The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965–2005 review

TV & Radio

Steroids, like addictive substances, enslave the user Steroid abuse: ‘I hated my body. I had to do something about it’

‘RTÉ Investigates – Steroid Ireland’ leaves no stone unturned, no kilo unburned

A vote for a young maths teacher Eamon De Valera Twisty history: RTÉ is covering Election 1918 ‘as it happens’
Hits of 2018: Cant's Cope Won't Cope, Finding Joy, Taken Down, Daniel and Majella’s B&B Road Trip, Patrick Kielty’s My Dad, the Peace Deal and Me and Young Offenders The best (and worst) TV of 2018
  • Review of 2018: Reality TV becomes preferable to actual reality
  • Taken Down: Everybody here had blood on their hands

Stage

Alan Hughes as Sammy Sausages, Mary Byrne as Fairy Mary and Rob Murphy as Buffy in the Cheerios Panto Snow White and the Adventures of Sammy Sausages & Buffy Snow White panto review: Gleefully naughty, infectious entertainment

Alan Hughes’s long-running pantomime uses raucous humour to winning effect

Our hero is Boy, a large-headed, stick-limbed boy with a wondrous capacity for adventure. How to Catch a Star review: Visually stunning with a twinkling score
Alice: The Musical Panto review: Alice: The Musical at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast
  • Panto review: Jack and the Beanstalk
  • Panto review: Aladdin at the Cork Opera House

Art & Design

Windfall by Paul Ringrose A stark climate change warning in a devastated Cork woodland

Paul Ringrose’s new paintings address show a shattered place where trees have been snapped like matchsticks

Art highlights from 2018 include the Roderic O’Conor show at the National Gallery (centre) Art is thriving in a time of cultural disruption
Cattle in Winter, Phoenix Park, Oil on board, John Skelton. Jorgensen Fine Art Strange Bedfellows and stocking fillers: this week’s best visual arts
  • Art in Focus: For GRS by Colin Davidson
  • Do you want to see all of Vermeer’s works in the world? Now you can

Unthinkable

Even when relaxing, people feel an urge to read something ‘improving’ or useful. Photograph: Noel Hendrickson/Thinkstock/Getty Are humans losing the ability to be idle?

Unthinkable: A new book on dossing and daydreaming seeks to challenge our traditional work ethic

Children prepare for a nativity play: “Religion is filled with fantastical superheroes and stories.” Photograph: Frank Miller Is religion better than atheism as a coping mechanism?
Muslim praying in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Islam has ‘given rise to remarkably free societies as well as depressingly intolerant ones’. Photograph: AP/Muhammed Muheisen What can the West learn from the rest?
  • Is economics corrupting our idea of human worth?
  • Is it time to cut back on criticism?

Michael Viney's Another Life

Illustration: Michael Viney Poisoned and preyless: obstacles to rewilding Ireland with eagles

Restoring the golden eagle to the west has found the limits to bringing back a carnivore

“Like our neighbours, we once depended wholly on the stream, piped to the house by gravity from one of its higher pools.” Nature takes refuge as drought dries the landscape
“The view from the top balcony can be sublime.” Illustration: Michael Viney Clifftops have given me some of the high point of my life
  • For peat’s sake, our uplands need rain – just not too much at once
  • Michael Viney: The beauty of weeping beeches

Heritage

Mary Clarke from Dundalk welcomes her daughter June from San Diago. Photographer: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times Home or away? Tell us how you are spending Christmas this year

Repatriating grief, Irish doctors down under, and other top stories from Irish Times Abroad this week

Building scan image of Main Hall, Trinity Museum Building revealed in Making Victorian Dublin Hidden history of Trinity’s Victorian marble wonder revealed
Women queuing to cast their votes for the first time in the 1918 general election. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Getting women out to vote: The 1918 election campaign
  • Encouraging women to participate in politics from the ground up
  • Ivana Bacik: We need to hold true to the feminist ideals of the suffragists

Treibh

grianghraf: debbi smirnoff/getty images Na críocha déanacha

Má tá fonn ort an pláinéad a shlánú, ba cheart duit níos lú stuif a cheannach

grianghraf: getty images/istock An crann a thit ina chodladh
Duilleoga seaca. grianghraf: nick bradshaw/the irish times An sioc agus an dorchadas
  • Athrú réime
  • An chritic úr agus Irisleabhar Mhá Nuad

Sponsored

The Lidl Christmas Coach: Fireside Feasts The Lidl Christmas Coach: Fireside Feasts

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Believe in dreams: step inside Wonderland with Tiffany & Co. this Christmas Believe in dreams: step inside Wonderland with Tiffany & Co. this Christmas

Zoe Kravitz falls into a spectacular New York daydream at Tiffany & Co.'s Fifth Avenue store in the latest campaign from the luxury jewellery brand

Vote 100 Celebrating a century since Irish women won the right to vote
 

Most Read in Culture

1 Bob Dyland and Neil Young to play Ireland concert in July 2019 Bob Dylan and Neil Young announce major concert in Ireland
2 Taylor Swift performing at Croke Park in June. Photograph: Dave Meehan/The Irish Times Taylor Swift used facial recognition software to detect stalkers at concert
3 Avicenna developed ‘probably the most influential and interesting medieval attempt to show that God exists’, says Prof Peter Adamson. Photograph: Detlev van Ravenswaay/ Getty images Unthinkable: The Islamic thinker who ‘proved’ God exists
4 Ashley Blaine Featherson and Logan Browning in the US Netflix comedy ‘Dear White People’, which explores the dynamics of modern race relations. Photograph: Eddy Chen/Netflix Can you be racist against white people?
5 John Cooney: “In the light of the astonishing failure of writers to examine seriously the suicide possibility, my conclusion, therefore, is that Merton regretted giving up Margie and was so eaten with remorse that she had married someone else, he no longer felt it worthwhile living” Thomas Merton: the hermit who never was, his young lover and mysterious death
6 Same same but different, a short story by Anne Hayden
7 Avicii performing in 2013 in New York. Photograph: Mike Pont/WireImage/Getty Images Avicii: ‘It will kill me’ – behind the devastating documentary
8 British soldiers go over the top in June 1916 to attack the German trenches somewhere in France. Photograph: Mirrorpix via Getty Images Goodbye to All That is among the finest books about war ever been written
9 Allie Sherlock poses with producer and singer Ryan Tedder. Photograph: Instagram/Allie Sherlock 12-year-old Irish busker Allie Sherlock signs five-year record deal
10 In her prime: a youthful Whitney Houston on stage in June 1988. Photograph: RDA/Getty Images The sad, secret life of Whitney Houston
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Theresa May gives a statement at Downing Street. It is easier to keep pretending that, if only May had stuck it to the Europeans in the negotiations, the perfect have-cake/eat-cake Brexit would have been delivered. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Fintan O’Toole: Brexit ultras haven’t the guts to do the only logical thing
(Original Caption) 'Germany: World War I Armistice: Officers celebrate at captured German canteen.' In reality, the industrial nature of the slaughter destroyed all the notions of individual heroism and chivalry. Fintan O’Toole: The first World War is still being fought
Leo Varadkar is hoisted on shoulders after being elected as leader of Fine Gael at the Mansion House, Dublin. File photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times ‘Leo Varadkar: A Very Modern Taoiseach’ is shallow, flimsy and exaggerated

On My Culture Radar

Seána Kerslake: On My Culture Radar Seána Kerslake: On My Culture Radar

The actor on her love of Gena Rowlands, FaceGym and why she’s impressed by Summer 1993

Lisa Harding: “handles a profoundly difficult issue with absolute care and multitudes of heart”
The Book Club Click to join in the discussion about this month's book, Harvesting by Lisa Harding
 
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
 

Culture Videos

Hidden history of Victorian Dublin revealed8:27 Hidden history of Victorian Dublin revealed
Avicii True Stories - official trailer1:21 Avicii True Stories - official trailer
Mortal Engines - official trailer 2:24 Mortal Engines - official trailer
Free Solo - official trailer2:21 Free Solo - official trailer

Galleries

Bono and Adam Clayton on stage... Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times In pictures: U2 at 3Arena, Dublin
Photograph: Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker In Pictures: U2 live in Belfast
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