Ray Burke

Exactly 400 years before Brexit, a French ship sailed into Galway Bay in mid-winter 1620-21 and caused an international dispute that vexed the diploma(...)

‘Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.” Dr Samuel Johnson’s quip about the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim still invites a chuckle , even if th(...)

If you Google “shaky start” and “Irish politics”, the inevitable dates crop up: 1997; 2011; 2017; and 2020. What unites them is this: new governments (...)

Political life goes through cycles, with times of heightened drama followed by periods that are taciturn and mundane. Over four months, the negotiati(...)

When he opens his front door in Killiney, Co Dublin, Sean O’Rourke bows to me instead of shaking my hand. “That’s what Charlie Haughey used to like hi(...)

Every person he met, every colleague he worked with and every issue he raised benefited from Gay Byrne’s presence, input and wisdom. His absence now l(...)

On building sites, there used to be a tradition of sending the callow young apprentice on his first day to ask for the rubber hammer and the glass nai(...)

Revisiting another facet of the colourful history of print journalism in Ireland would hardly justify even a faint cry of “Hold the front page”. At le(...)

Margaret Thatcher told Peter Mandelson “you can’t trust the Irish; they’re all liars”. That was a bit harsh, maybe. But we’re certainly not above the (...)

A number of serious allegations against former Garda commisssioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and others have been strongly challenged by the evidence heard ov(...)