Robert Louis Stevenson

The Ireland of the 1930s was an austere place in which barefoot children played in the streets of a young country where the Catholic Church was all-po(...)

The past is a foreign country, as LP Hartley said. Viewed from the exile of this pandemic-haunted summer, even last January now seems like an exotic p(...)

Is the art of potting dead and gone? I know many of us make jam, chutneys and other preserves, but what about potted meat and fish? In James Joyce’s U(...)

“Doldrums. Doldrums,” warns Willem Dafoe’s salty lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake. “Eviler than the Devil. Boredom makes men to villains.” Following on(...)

THE MAN WHO CREATED THE WORLD OF GAME OF THRONES ON SNOBBERY, FANDOM AND WHY DUBLIN’S WORLDCON NEXT WEEK WILL BE LIKE A FAMILY REUNION Geor(...)

Watching BBC’s Newsnight programme on Thursday, I was intrigued to hear presenter Kirsty Wark use the word “thrawn” in a question to an interviewee. I(...)

Christmas is promoted as a time of rest and idleness but for many of us it’s just another opportunity for work. There are events to organise, presents(...)

Households around the country will be on World Cup lockdown at 7pm tonight, as England takes on Croatia in the semi-finals. However for those who don’(...)

Five years after the jolt of Seamus Heaney’s unexpected death we are back at a moment. Back with Heaney, whose poems resonate with the rhythm of the l(...)

Like their beloved fictional cousin the unreliable narrator, the inadequate narrator of a novel draws the reader into a tale by forcing them to take a(...)