Ireland have culture, coaches and players to make history by finally beating New Zealand

Composing the Island festival is huge, but it neglects women and living composers under 30

The greatest shock of the Australian writer’s new novel about a misogynistic dystopia is that it is based on a real girls’ home from the 1970s

Thinking Anew

Beekeeping, Belfast and Buddhism: books of lectures by Harry Clifton, Paula Meehan and Michael Longley cast the net wide

Is selling Alec Soth’s ‘intangible’ photographs a cynical ploy to feed the First World’s need to need, or does it reveal something about the parts of us that only art can reach?

The golden age of this ancient enamelling technique is given an exceptional showcase

The band want to bring back the fine art of loafing, along with a few more serious concerns

Alain de Botton explains the thinking that prompted him to marshal leading writers into closed organisations

Hearing a Philip Larkin poem on his car radio caused Roger McGough to pull in and weep uncontrollably

Whether in a book or on ‘Mad Men’, ‘Breaking Bad’ or ‘The Simpsons’, poems change people’s understanding of what’s going on in the world

Colum McCann’s ‘Irish book’ is an emigrant’s take on Frederick Douglass and George Mitchell in Ireland