Frank McNally

Frank McNally

Frank McNally is an Irish Times journalist and chief writer of An Irish Diary.

Autumn reflection: Frank McNally finds poetic cheer in the October gloom

Rereading Patrick Kavanagh’s poem has brought the sobering thought that it may be October in my life now too

Charge of the Fanlight Brigade: a positive sighting of a threatened Dublin species

The horses are not extinct – but whatever did they mean?

Postcards from the Edge – Frank McNally on Samuel Beckett’s newly published German Diaries

Travelling around Nazi Germany, he wrote presciently about war and found inspiration for Waiting for Godot

Shunning victory: Frank McNally on 146 years of the ‘boycott’

Coventry was the proverbial destination in a popular metaphor that meant the same thing

The Foggy Dew: Frank McNally on the Rising ballad’s confused origins and contested lyrics

Legend has it the song’s genesis can be traced to the first Dáil, but facts prove otherwise

Hecht off – Frank McNally on the testing testimony of a brilliant newspaper man

New York-born journalist and author set bar rather high for those who followed

Shafts of Light: Frank McNally on accidentally joining the golf correspondents’ club

Also: St Brendan’s voyage to the White House, and why AI talks like James Joyce and Flann O’Brien

Strong words: America’s ‘greatest diarist’ whose many dislikes included the Irish

Caustic New Yorker had little time for spiritualists, abolitionists, organ grinders, mosquitoes and snobs, either

Asterisked de Gaulle: Frank McNally on the lesser-known, and Irish-speaking, namesake of the general

Charles de Gaulle (1837–1880) anticipated Patrick Pearse by half a century

Bally-aric Island: Frank McNally on feeling surprisingly at home in Menorca

Irishman’s Diary: There is a piece of the Menorcan road network that is forever Irish

Frank McNally: Trump Tower? Doonbeg Castle’s turbulent history and mystery hoard of gold

Away from US president’s golf course, romantic ruin stands as reminder of dark days and dreams

As Shane Lowry watches on, Donald Trump reinvents himself as champion of all things Irish

The secret service needn’t have worried – the biggest danger at Doonbeg was an Irish golfer with a red-hot putter

Dance to the Music of Time – Frank McNally on a forgotten Irish-American revolutionary

The jig that welcomed General Humbert to Co Mayo can still be heard in Kilcummin and Amsterdam

The mystery of a once ubiquitous Dublin symbol

Fanlight statuettes were a nod to politics, insurance policies and personal tragedies

Stairway to Heaven – Frank McNally on how our favourite painting became a TikTok sensation

New generation is transfixed by The Meeting on the Turret Stairs

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