The sound of death in the throat of Thomas Macswiney is the end of your adventure in Ireland’. This was the opinion of a guild of New York Irish as…
Home
A ray of hope
In 1963 when Jack Kennedy (or ‘yer man’) as he came to be called landed in Ireland as part of his re-election campaign a journo helpfully described his job back…
Hurling’s perennial loser model
The ref had barely blown the whistle last Sunday when some of the more excitable scribes were saying that this Limerick teams achievement put them among the greats. Indeed, wrote…
Fascism dressed in the native garb
The US media is all over the place trying to label the perpetrators of yesterday’s events in Washington. In the same report they’ve been called ‘a mob’ ‘terrorists’ and ‘rioters’…
Comeback for the ages at Croke Park
Admittedly, I saw little enough of last weekends hurling matches. Even so it was impossible not to see the massive black banner about ‘bloody Sunday’. To be honest, it distracted…
El Diego
El Diego slipped the surly bonds of earth today. In truth he never belonged in the first place, his gifts more suited to a stage where the gods play the…
Soldiers
The trouble with Europe,’ said Churchill, is that ‘it produces more history than it can consume’. The question this insight begs is what have we learned from this history. One…
The Republic
They buried ‘Big Jack’ today. Back when he was a player in my schooldays he was never referred to as either Jack or Big Jack. Though I needed no reminding…
No route back for the evangelicals
‘The arc of history is long - but it bends towards justice’. Some of the words of the great Martin Luther king in his classic ‘letter from Birmingham jail’. One…
Big Jack
The grim reaper came for another of England’s famous 1966 World Cup winning side On Friday as Jack Charlton bowed out at the age of 85. In Ireland the focus…