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Wed, Jan 27, 2021
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Paul Howard stands next to a statue of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly in Dublin. “I set out to make him the most hateful character in the books.” Photograph Nick Bradshaw Paul Howard: ‘Ross O’Carroll-Kelly was born out of anger’
  • Culture
  • Tanya Sweeney
  • January 26, 2021, 21:10

The author discussed comedic gold and the origins of Ross at The Irish Times Winter Nights Festival

Snowpiercer: Think of it as Mad Max – The All Ireland Final Matchday Special Snowpiercer: Think of it as Mad Max – The All Ireland Final Matchday Special
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Ed Power
  • January 26, 2021, 17:00

TV review: Who can object to a show that gives us Jennifer Connelly as a neurotic anti-hero?

Irish booksellers have record year as lockdown helps boost sales Irish booksellers have record year as lockdown helps boost sales
  • Books
  • Ronan McGreevy
  • January 26, 2021, 15:49

More than 13m books, worth €161.5m, sold in 2020 despite shops being closed for months

Katie Price: Harvey and Me – Celebrities are real people, too Katie Price: Harvey and Me – Celebrities are real people, too
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Ed Power
  • January 26, 2021, 12:52

TV review: The former glamour model has especially acute worries about her son

The Irish Times Winter Nights festival day 2: Paul Howard and Edith Eger The Irish Times Winter Nights festival day 2: Paul Howard and Edith Eger
  • Culture
  • Róisín Ingle
  • January 26, 2021, 12:40

Series of online talks featuring Irish Times journalists and guests runs until Friday

Judi Dench: ‘In my mind’s eye I’m six foot and willowy and about 39’ Judi Dench: ‘In my mind’s eye I’m six foot and willowy and about 39’
  • Film
  • Xan Brooks
  • January 26, 2021, 06:00

The actor on ghosts, Harvey Weinstein and definitely not being a British national treasure

Blindboy Boatclub: ‘I had the choice of being a psychotherapist or a mad bastard’ Blindboy Boatclub: ‘I had the choice of being a psychotherapist or a mad bastard’
  • Culture
  • Patrick Freyne
  • January 25, 2021, 22:36

Mask-wearing podcaster and author is first guest at the Irish Times Winter Nights Festival

Sonia O’Sullivan: ‘At the Sydney Olympics I didn’t have the killer instinct’ Sonia O’Sullivan: ‘At the Sydney Olympics I didn’t have the killer instinct’
  • Culture
  • Sylvia Thompson
  • January 26, 2021, 06:00

Athlete gave whistle-stop tour of life on opening night of Irish Times Winter Nights festival

Friend or foe? How WB Yeats damaged the legacy of Arthur Griffith Friend or foe? How WB Yeats damaged the legacy of Arthur Griffith
  • Heritage
  • Colum Kenny
  • January 26, 2021, 05:00

The poet and politician were influential in each other’s lives until a parting of ways

The Capote Tapes: From impoverished childhood to cocaine-fuelled decline The Capote Tapes: From impoverished childhood to cocaine-fuelled decline
  • Film
  • Tara Brady
  • January 26, 2021, 05:00

‘I felt like his story hadn’t been told,’ Ebs Burnough says about his Truman Capote documentary

Latest Film

Judi Dench: ‘national treasure’ is ‘a terrible label. So dusty, so dreary’. Photograph: Jimmy Fontaine/New York Times Judi Dench: ‘In my mind’s eye I’m six foot and willowy and about 39’
The Capote Tapes features taped interviews utilised by George Plimpton for his definitive 1997 biography of the author Truman Capote. The Capote Tapes: From impoverished childhood to cocaine-fuelled decline
Keira Knightley: ‘I don’t want it to be those horrible sex scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting. I’m not interested in doing that.’ Photograph: Tim P Whitby/Getty Keira Knightley: I won’t shoot any more sex scenes directed by men
  • Ralph Fiennes: ‘English society is built on hierarchies’
  • James Bond film No Time to Die delayed again by Covid pandemic

TV & Radio

Snowpiercer: the Netflix series chugs ahead on all cylinders as it returns for an enjoyable second run Snowpiercer: Think of it as Mad Max – The All Ireland Final Matchday Special

TV review: Who can object to a show that gives us Jennifer Connelly as a neurotic anti-hero?

Katie Price: it’s her fight for her son’s future that makes Harvey and Me such powerful watching Katie Price: Harvey and Me – Celebrities are real people, too
Part two, F**k Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob, turns to Jules (Hunter Schafer) Euphoria: The show that makes teenage self-destruction look weightless and beautiful
  • TV guide: 23 of the best shows to watch this week
  • US talk show host Larry King dies aged 87

Latest Books

Covid restrictions: social distancing at Hodges Figgis bookshop in Dublin last May. Photograph: Laura Hutton Irish booksellers have record year as lockdown helps boost sales

More than 13m books, worth €161.5m, sold in 2020 despite shops being closed for months

Geraldsine Mitchell: Remembering is an act of refusal, it blocks silence’s attempt to obliterate the past. Forgetting is the biggest ally silence has. To remember is to break the silence: Geraldine Mitchell on Mute/Unmute
Cover stars: indie publishers recommend their books to watch out for in 2021 A host of books to watch out for in 2021 – all from independent publishers
  • The Books Quiz: What is Bram Stoker’s Dracula short story called?
  • Growing up in Derry: ‘We were carrying trauma right into our bones’

Film Reviews

Thin stuff: Alison Steadman and Dave Johns in 23 Walks 23 Walks

 
The access is startling and occasionally disconcerting 76 Days

 
The White Tiger: Adarsh Gourav as Balram and Priyanka Chopra as Pinky Madam. Photograph: Singh Tejinder/Netflix White Tiger

 
In Away, a boy finds himself on a mysterious island Away

 

Latest Music

Suzi Quatro: 'I didn’t go out there to change the world. All I wanted to do was play.' Photograph: Richard Ecclestone/Redferns/Getty Suzi Quatro: ‘If he’d done that backstage he’d have been singing soprano for the rest of his life’

The ‘quintessential rock chick’ on fame, sexual harassment and fighting her corner

Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar of Bicep. Photograph: Dan Medhurst ‘Electronic music is in for an extremely challenging five years’
Arlo Parks: ‘When you think about the young artists making music together, the young painters, the young fashion designers – the future of art is bright.’ Arlo Parks: ‘We’re all individuals in Generation Z’
  • Glastonbury Festival 2021 cancelled due to coronavirus pandemic
  • Radio still plays ‘staggeringly, shockingly’ more male Irish artists

Book Reviews

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: A masterclass in how to write by George Saunders
Luster: Forceful and funny tale of race, gender and desire
Exiles: Irish emigrant life in postwar Britain
Yeats Now: How WB’s poetry still echoes in our lives

Stage

Aisling O’Sullivan, Cathy Belton and Derbhle Crotty in The Approach by Mark O’Rowe. Photograph: Patrick Redmond '2020 was going to be the most amazing year ever for us'

Producer Anne Clarke on experiencing live performance for first time since pandemic

When the curtain came down on Our New Girl, did it come down on innovative programming along with it? Photograph: Ros Kavanagh Live theatre was getting interesting. Then Covid arrived
Owen Roe pictured after winning Best Supporting Actor Award at the The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards last year. Photograph: Aidan Crawley Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards for 2020 deferred because of Covid-19
  • Eddie Izzard to use the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’
  • Chief Justice Frank Clarke: ‘Judges are not immune from the human condition’

Art & Design

Francis Bacon in his early twenties photo by Francis Julian Gutmann, Courtesy MB Art Collection ‘I’d go for a pint with Willem de Kooning and dinner with Francis Bacon’

A new biography sheds new light on the enigma that is Francis Bacon

The two €3 stamps reproduce one of the artist’s trademark abstract compositions, Meditation 28. Patrick Scott: New An Post stamp marks centenary of the artist’s birth
Painting Dublin: detail from Winetavern Street, 1934, by Harry Kernoff; The Fishmarket, Patrick Street, 1893 by Walter Frederick Osborne; The Leinster Market, c.1915, by Estella Frances Solomons, Painting Dublin: A visual history of Ireland’s capital city
  • Raphael: A celebration of his life and work, on his 500th anniversary
  • Perma-peeved: Melania Trump’s White House photo (plus 11 other revealing first lady portraits)

Unthinkable

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has been railing against state-led ‘health terror’ and ‘techno-medical despotism’. Photograph: European Graduate School The left’s lockdown critique: Right on, or dangerous prattle?

Unthinkable: Philosopher Giorgio Agamben carries the flame for anti-capitalism through the crisis

Wollstonecraft, painted by John Opie, was disgusted at how intelligent “society” women were groomed for submission under marriage. Photograph: The Print Collector/Getty Images Never mind the Bridgertons, meet England’s first feminist
An air guitarist, or is it a philosopher? Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Is philosophy becoming ‘air guitar to the music of science’?
  • Enough of the ‘hot takes’ already: A philosophical wish for 2021
  • Would Jesus approve of Christmas?

Heritage

Arthur Griffith (1921) by John Lavery. Copyright: Hugh Lane Gallery Friend or foe? How WB Yeats damaged the legacy of Arthur Griffith

The poet and politician were influential in each other’s lives until a parting of ways

The diningroom in the Georgian House Museum. Photograph: ESB 2:55 ESB seeks to turn museum into luxury apartments for sale
The phrases and terminology that I was given made clear just how profound our understanding of coastal ecosystems had become The hundreds of Irish words for sea and sea life
  • Real-life Peaky Blinders: How the IRA sourced guns from the ‘Birmingham mob’
  • 2021’s truce, treaty and Northern Ireland commemorations will test our goodwill

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

Gary Cooper sa scannán High Noon (1952). Grianghraph: United Artists Draíocht na scannán fadó: Faoiseamh ó chruatan agus leadrán an tsaoil

Ní raibh teilifís sa teach s’againne

Cén fáth an raibh an reacht morálta seo ann agus daoine ag géilleadh dó? Grianghraf: Niall Carson/PA Wire Cé bhí ciontach ?
Finné: Tugtar insint ar scéal Liam Uí Mhaolaodha ar an dara clár den tsraith nua de Finné. Tá an sraith is déanaí léirithe ag Aisling Ní Fhlaitheartha do Tua Films na Gaillimhe. Finné: scéal tromchúiseach Liam Uí Mhaolaodha
  • Mórshiúl agus Máirseáil
  • Aon scéal eile?

Sponsored

HBAN virtual conference to showcase 2021 angel investment opportunities HBAN virtual conference to showcase 2021 angel investment opportunities

Join some of the world’s most influential start-up visionaries on February 11th for a look at the best angel investment opportunities across the island of Ireland

How digital technology can play a role in building workforce resilience How digital technology can play a role in building workforce resilience

Aon reveals the important role technology can play in improving health, building resilience and offering personalised benefits choices to the workforce

Subscriber Only

George Saunders’ new book A Swim in a Pond is truly worth its weight in gold. Photograph: Johnny Louis/FilmMagic A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: A masterclass in how to write by George Saunders
Luster: Forceful and funny tale of race, gender and desire
Dónall Mac Amhlaigh’s original novel, Deoraithe, was published in 1986 Exiles: Irish emigrant life in postwar Britain

Most Read in Culture

1 Paul Howard stands next to a statue of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly in Dublin. “I set out to make him the most hateful character in the books.” Photograph Nick Bradshaw Paul Howard: ‘Ross O’Carroll-Kelly was born out of anger’

2 Merlin Holland: British biographer and the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde. Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images Oscar Wilde, my grandfather, ‘talked himself into prison’

3 Judi Dench: ‘national treasure’ is ‘a terrible label. So dusty, so dreary’. Photograph: Jimmy Fontaine/New York Times Judi Dench: ‘In my mind’s eye I’m six foot and willowy and about 39’

4 Suzi Quatro: 'I didn’t go out there to change the world. All I wanted to do was play.' Photograph: Richard Ecclestone/Redferns/Getty Suzi Quatro: ‘If he’d done that backstage he’d have been singing soprano for the rest of his life’

5 George Saunders’ new book A Swim in a Pond is truly worth its weight in gold. Photograph: Johnny Louis/FilmMagic A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: A masterclass in how to write by George Saunders

6 Ryan’s World: Ryan Kaji ‘unboxes’ and reviews toys on his YouTube channel. Photograph: Kaji family/YouTube Nine-year-old earns €24m as the highest-paid YouTuber of 2020

7 Katie Price: it’s her fight for her son’s future that makes Harvey and Me such powerful watching Katie Price: Harvey and Me – Celebrities are real people, too

8 The Capote Tapes features taped interviews utilised by George Plimpton for his definitive 1997 biography of the author Truman Capote. The Capote Tapes: From impoverished childhood to cocaine-fuelled decline

9 Part two, F**k Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob, turns to Jules (Hunter Schafer) Euphoria: The show that makes teenage self-destruction look weightless and beautiful

10 Blindboy Boatclub: He calls the choice to wear a bag as “establishing consent around the data of my face”. Photograph: Alan Place. Blindboy Boatclub: ‘I had the choice of being a psychotherapist or a mad bastard’

Real news has value SUBSCRIBE

Music Quiz

The Music Quiz: Which old punk rocker produced Declan O’Rourke’s new album? The Music Quiz: Which old punk rocker produced Declan O’Rourke’s new album?

Plus: Vogue’s first cover boy and Victoria’s Secret’s garage rock theme tune

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

US talk show host Larry King dies aged 87 2:51 US talk show host Larry King dies aged 87
Behind Her Eyes - preview 0:48 Behind Her Eyes - preview
40 Irish female artists cover Cranberries 'Dreams' to raise money for abuse victims 4:26 40 Irish female artists cover Cranberries 'Dreams' to raise money for abuse victims
Tanya Roberts, Bond girl and Charlie's Angel, dies aged 65 0:41 Tanya Roberts, Bond girl and Charlie's Angel, dies aged 65

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

Late Late Toy Show 2020: Children from Spotlight Stage School and little puddle jumpers from Miss Ali Stage School rehearse Singin' in the Rain with show host Ryan Tubridy. Dublin. Photograph: Andres Poveda The Late Late Toy Show 2020
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
Great reads From crosswords to great wines and the best bits from The Irish Times - Buy an Irish Times Book today
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