Patrick Kavanagh

Weeks of cold, raw, early rain, then droughty weeks of a misplaced summer; weeks of showery rain again, some of it teasingly warm: such are the mood s(...)

‘The Irish Press reviews are good”, the future British poet laureate John Betjeman told the London book publisher Hamish Hamilton in September 1942. H(...)

In the midst of all the rheumy-eyed reminiscence about Italia 90, it’s easy to forget that it was supposed to represent an existential threat to the G(...)

The young American poet Claire McAllister, mentioned in today’s letters by Peadar MacMághnais, was also known to her friends as “Marmalade”. This was (...)

Tell us about your new work and how it came about – the story behind the story. My new book is a work of historical fiction and is called The Secret o(...)

Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh once described the Palace Bar on Fleet Street in Dublin city centre as the “most wonderful temple of art”. T(...)

Among the latest non-events in this year of things that didn’t happen was Mylesday at Dublin’s Palace bar. An annual feature since 2011, it commemorat(...)

Happy the man, whose wish and care/A few paternal acres bound/content to breathe his native air/In his own ground. (Alexander Pope) I wandered lonely(...)

The poet Patrick Kavanagh had a curious expression for discouraging the revival of Irish, which he considered a lost cause. The old language was dead(...)

Patrick Kavanagh spent much of his life in penury. Samuel Beckett resorted to translating articles for the French edition of the Reader’s Digest. Bria(...)