Art Attack – Frank McNally on the dangers of passive exposure to art and culture
“Europe’s largest digital art screen” now occupies the front lawn of the Irish Museum of Modern Art
No-Ivy Day at the Committee Room - Frank McNally on an Oval Office mystery
Something is conspicuously missing
Old Mister Brenon - Frank McNally on a remarkable Dublin-born Hollywood director and his even more remarkable father
One judge was sufficiently impressed by Brenon snr to issue a backhanded compliment
Gnomes of Donegal - Frank McNally on William Allingham’s peculiar brand of Irishness
His verse revealed the temperament and spirit of Ireland
Trinity College Dublin celebrates renaming former Berkeley library after poet Eavan Boland
Trinity Chancellor Mary McAleese said move was part of dealing with ‘colonial legacies’
`Alas! I am very sorry to say/That ninety lives have been taken away' Frank McNally on the `famously bad' poet William McGonagall
A poet so bad, as the Book of Heroic Failures puts it, “he backed unwittingly into genius”.
Moore the Merrier - Frank McNally on the commemoration of a famous Irish garden party from 1902
Three hundred invited guests attended a party that seemed to capture the zeitgeist of a new Ireland
Ché sara, Sara – Frank McNally on a mysterious Irish beauty who turned Casanova’s head
It was a humble barmaid who made the deepest impression on the Italian adventurer
What’s with the name? – Frank McNally on O’Doul, O’Day, and other nominal oddities of Irish America
Some Irish American surnames can seem almost plausible while also making your ears hurt
Tributes paid to ‘Ireland’s greatest writer' Jennifer Johnston at public memorial she arranged
Family, friends and literary luminaries read from Samuel Beckett and the Bible at event
The BBC’s national question: Frank McNally on Edna O’Brien and ‘the North of Ireland’
Author’s 1979 TV appearance included an implicit history and geography lesson for British viewers
Dictionary on the Double – Frank McNally on the enduring literary life of Patrick Dinneen
Lexicographer was described by profiler as “in some ways, as mad as a March hare”
‘This wonderful horse seems to have been as remarkable in death as in life’ – Frank McNally on an unbeatable stallion
Eclipse was sufficiently revered that his death created a market for relics not unlike that of saints in medieval times
Setting the Bar High – Frank McNally on pubs called The Irish Times (and more songs about newspapers)
An empire on which the sun never sets
