I’VE HAD my most enjoyable weekend in a long time — my Great Gatsby weekend, I’m calling it — and it acquired an extra measure of enhancement from the way it pounced on me, like something out of the bushes. The euphoria is wearing off now but under its influence I again caught a glimpse [...]
MILLTOWN is to stage an August Bank Holiday festival to honour one of its most famous sons, the legendary melodeon and accordion player Peter J Conlon, who became a famous recording artist in the USA where he lived most of his adult life before dying in New York in 1967. His reputation as a musician [...]
THE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE By Paul Theroux Hamish Hamilton €16 ONE OF MY all-time heroes is Wilfred Thesiger: a traveller, explorer, writer and 20th century anachronism who lived his life in the raw, with what we sophisticates term primitive communities, from the Marsh Arabs of Iraq to the Bushmen of the Kalahari. I [...]
IN THE WEEKS leading up to its premiere on RTÉ1 I had read so much hype and flimflam about The Fall, the new 5-part crime-drama series from the BBC and set in Belfast, that my defences were breached and I found myself thinking during these cold and unseasonable May days that I was in for [...]
IT’S MAY so it must be End of Year Exhibition time at Galway Technical Institute — this year presenting the work of nearly 150 students. Once again the building is bursting at the seams and cannot contain the energy and enthusiasm for everything visual. Art is at the Dominican Sports Hall and Furniture Design is [...]
By AOIFE BURKE MELTING THE SNOW ON HESTER STREET By Daisy Waugh HARPER COLLINS IT IS SAID that downturns in the economy tend not only to bring out the nostalgia in people but to significantly lower their hemlines. This book is set around 100 years before Downton Abbey became an overnight success in 2010, inspiring [...]
SET in the stunningly scenic and historic backdrop of Inishbofin, the Inishbofin Arts Festival this weekend (May 10-12) is a colourful and eclectic mix of music, visual art, craft, heritage, dance and fun family activities. On Friday night Inishbofin welcomes Mick Flavin and his band for the first time. Silver and Gold Discs are some [...]
CHANGED times. Last Friday evening was the first occasion this season I tuned to the Late Late, in contrast to long ago when I rarely missed a show. What’s more, I didn’t miss it and as I listened to the opening bars of a signature tune that sounded like a strangled version on catgut of [...]
OVER 1,000 singers will take part in the second Mayo International Choral Festival later this month May. Expect to hear singing from many genres, including jazz, pop, folk, barbershop, sacred, and some yet to be defined. Over 40 male and female international, national and Mayo choirs will participate on a competitive and non-competitive basis. The [...]
A Man Without Breath By Philip Kerr Quercus €18 HE’S STILL alive; no mean achievement in Nazi Germany, but Bernie Gunther is not having a good war. He’s been interrogated, beaten, tortured and shot over the course of eight previous novels: it’s not a gemutlich life. But in A Man Without Breath, Philip Kerr’s latest [...]
