Teresa Deevy and the secrets of the green suitcase

Best known for her productions at the Abbey, the Waterford playwright also wrote for radio, and there’s a mystery surrounding the origins of unpublished work under a pseudonym

Declan Kiberd: Irish writers were an early warning system about abuse

Artists played a vital role in the State's formation and since independence have held it to account

Eimear McBride on Edna O’Brien’s ‘rigorous, beautiful’ The Country Girls

This famous, infamous, beloved and influential novel didn’t break the mould. It made it

BBC rejected Waiting for Godot as ‘too Irish’

The BBC, formed in the same year as the Irish Free State, became an imaginary homeland for Irish writers from Yeats and MacNeice to Beckett and Bowen

Cork’s decline takes a bright star from GAA firmament

Struggle of one of the strongest counties bad for the GAA – and for Irish sport

Hardship for Art’s Sake – An Irishman’s Diary about the Art O’Neill Challenge

By the time you read this, this year’s participants should be near their destination

Anthony Cronin: last link to Dublin’s bohemian literary world

Tributes paid to poet’s part in setting up Aosdána to help artists and writers

Poet and critic Anthony Cronin dies aged 88

Co Wexford born writer served as an arts adviser to former taoiseach Charles Haughey

Diarmaid Ferriter: Creative Ireland must heal a historic rift

Since the foundation of the State, its relationship with the arts has been ambiguous

Visions of Ireland: Diarmaid Ferriter’s guide

We have had a number of ‘mission statements’ over the past 100 years, but have any visions become reality?

Higgins’s reflection on Civil War highlights edgy issues

President was right to speak of the need to recognise the atrocities committed by both sides

‘Neither citizens nor aliens’: How will Brexit affect the Irish in Britain?

Opinion: It looks likely the status quo for the Common Travel Area will remain

This is no time for indecisive, weak government

A coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would not be in national interest

There should be no dancing on the Labour Party’s grave

There may be ideological differences in next Dáil but not between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael

Dispatches from the theatrical front: a look behind the Abbey’s boardroom scenes, from 1904 to 1939

The newly digitised minute books of the Abbey Theatre’s board meetings during its early decades reveal a host of remarkable struggles, from attempted censorship by Dublin Corporation to artistic disputes at the top of the theatre

The war of two Christmases – An Irishman’s Diary about the Battle of Kinsale

Don Juan del Águila and Lord Mountjoy

Law and the Irish stage: not just riots and censorship

WN Osborough, author of The Irish Stage: a Legal History, offers a fascinating overview of the interplay of actors and lawyers with an unlikely cast from Cicero to Goebbels

Irish culture in 1945 was both lively and bleak

The ‘Irish Times’ Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks project has published its first 30 entries, covering 1916-1945 – a time of paradoxical philistinism and creativity

Review: Seán O’Faoláin: Literature, Inheritance and the 1930s

Ó Faoláin: critic, writer or both?

‘They do be saying we’ve built the finest parish priest’s home in the country’

A landmark libel case from 60 years ago, involving the English novelist Honor Tracy – Sean O’Faolain’s lover – and a fundraising cleric, shows the pitfalls that the media can still stumble into

Festivals, launches and awards

The latest books news and listings

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