Michael Viney
34 results

The Irish Times view on the Mother and Baby Homes report: a culture of silence and shame
- Editorial
- January 12, 2021, 17:33
Shame breeds shame. The shaming of women and children was, as the report of the commission of inquiry into the system of Mother and Baby Homes shows, (...)

We’ve gone from housing hens to online supermarket dependency
- Environment
- April 4, 2020, 06:00
The song thrush joins me half an hour before dawn, perching on the bare, topmost branch of the hawthorn outside my workroom window. He sings steadily(...)

Why is Ireland having a bumper year for blackberries?
- Food & Drink
- October 11, 2019, 06:00
According to folklore, you shouldn’t pick blackberries after Michaelmas (September 29th) because they will be bitter, the devil having spit on them to(...)

The secret to growing tremendously tasty tomatoes
- Gardens
- August 10, 2019, 00:00
How totally terrific are your tomatoes this year? The reason I ask is that the utterly splendiferous annual event that is the Totally Terrific Tomato(...)

The best of Eileen Battersby, from Tolstoy to Paul Simon
- Books
- December 29, 2018, 06:00
Eileen Battersby, the late Irish Times literary correspondent, who died on Sunday, December 23rd, after a car crash in Co Meath, was renowned for both(...)

Small woods of native trees are beautiful but ecologically dodgy
- Environment
- October 21, 2017, 06:00
When this column began in October, 40 years ago, the acre had scraggy hawthorns leaning from the ditch, a big, wild willow sprawled across the stream (...)

Michael Viney: The false widow spider is not dangerous, but ...
- Environment
- October 7, 2017, 06:00
A column that brackets a hare with a spider could hint at an echo of an Aesop fable, but when both are invasive aliens to Ireland, facts are what we n(...)

Naming nature’s creatures – great, small and microscopic
- Environment
- August 12, 2017, 06:00
All summer, fresh images of Irish wildlife have appeared in the inbox of “Eye on Nature”, often through capture with smartphones that are also cameras(...)

History preserved in the whorls of Irish tree-rings
- Environment
- July 29, 2017, 05:00
Our young beech tree, clearly drunk on excess CO2, flings its branches ever skyward. But the yew inside the gate pursues its destiny with measured con(...)

Michael Viney elected to the Royal Irish Academy
- Environment
- May 26, 2017, 21:27
The Irish Times columnist, environmentalist and natural-history author Michael Viney was among 18 people whose election to the Royal Irish Academy was(...)