Sybil Connolly’s In an Irish House.

Architecture, design, history

By PATRICIA JENKINS Sybil Connolly was a world-renowned Irish fashion designer – the first to achieve international recognition for her couture collections. She took her inspiration from the traditional costume of Irish peasant women in fashioning a classically simple ensemble made up of a full circular skirt worn with a light-coloured frilly blouse and teamed with a woollen shawl, all …

Ó Rathaille, a new translation.

history, Poetry, translation

A new translation is presented here of Ar Choileach do Goideadh Ó Shagart Mhaith by the great Irish poet of the late 17th and early 18th century whose acerbic verse often bears witness to the closing down of the civilisation that nurtured him. By BRIAN O’CONNOR Rage and loss are more typical subjects of Aodhagán Ó Rathaille (c. 1670-1726) than …

Case Notes – notes on a father.

Family, Medical, Poetry

By BARBARA O’DONNELL In July 2016, getting off the plane in Cork, the mobile rang with the news that a doctor had been called out to my father in his nursing home. A few days later, I swapped my London hospital for my childhood hospital and the professional became personal. As both a writer and a healthcare professional, I make …

Permit all the colours. Remembering Lyra McKee.

LGBT+, Reading, Reflection, Troubles

By ANTON THOMPSON-MCCORMICK There was no point trying to be calm the night I first crossed paths with Lyra McKee. It was February 2019, and here we were in a former Pentecostal Church in central London to celebrate Anna Burns becoming Northern Ireland’s first winner of the Man Booker Prize, for Milkman. It was Burns’ first big post-Booker event and …