June 16th. Another cloudless summer day. The RTE Six O’Clock News finishes with a montage of boater hats, round spectacles, moustaches and parasols. Colourful crowds gather each side of the River Liffey and also at the cream-grey Martello Tower in Sandycove. All the while, the rallying voice of David Norris holds sway over tourists and Dubliners alike, uttering the onomatopoeic, bubbling words of James Joyce. This year is different. There will be no Joyce Tours through sunny Dublin streets, pop-up …
Month: June 2020
Halfway into my week’s holiday at the end of March, our bookshops closed due to Covid-19. It was unwelcome but not unexpected news. The stress which had made concentrating on …
Sally Rooney’s excellent novel Normal People has shown us what friendship, romance, and growing-up really looks like in all it’s ugly raw reality. Once the brilliant TV series also finished, I …
Music to Write To Before I really started writing, I mean writing in earnest, writing for a living (or a kind of living), using writing as a way to think, …
I’ve always appreciated the fact that while I can read a book in a couple of days, it might have taken the author years of hard work and dedication to …
We are all feeling the impact of the lockdown and restrictions, especially the young people in our lives. It is difficult to entertain small children during these stressful times. So, …
Ever since I was a child, I have enjoyed reading detective stories. This includes Enid Blyton’s adventure tales like the Famous Five and Secret Seven and, a little later, the …
My eye lit upon this book in the list of the few brave titles remaining in the publication schedule once the Coronavirus lockdown took hold. I’m so glad it stood …
Poetry is an integral part of a young person’s life. They incorporate it in a multitude of ways that enrich their everyday experiences. Poems exist for a child in the …
Agus muid go léir sa bhaile anois de bharr an ordú dianghlasála, ceapaim gur deis iontach é píosa Gaeilge a chleachtadh leis na páistí sa theach, nó duit fhéin, chun …
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