‘The sun rises’: Damian Lewis pays tribute to Helen McCrory with Derek Mahon poem

Actor uses tribute event to talk publicly for first time about wife, who died of cancer

Calling all nations – Paul Clements on 100 years of the BBC

An Irishman’s Diary

Neck trouble, philosophy and defiance: A literary guide to middle age

Our middle years have had a makeover thanks to some excellent recent literature

Wildlife wonders for little people

Children’s books: from wood mice and red squirrels to beetles and termites, there’s plenty of nature in these new releases

100 books by women you have to read

Iris Murdoch, Edna O’Brien, Marian Keyes and Eimear McBride all appear on the list

Looking for an answer to the national question

This month sees Ireland’s national theatre playing in London, and its British equivalent coming to Dublin

Dan Mulhall: the ambassador who defied categorisation

London Letter: Praise as Mulhall moves from Brexit Britain to Trump’s America

Paul Durcan: the most playful poet in Ireland

His latest book contains 67 poems on such disparate topics as the weather forecast, the Syrian war, a visit to the GP, retail therapy, clampers and Seamus Heaney. There is sadness, illness, anger and trademark humour

Paula Meehan: the poet at 60

The Hennessy Hall of Fame poet looks back on her childhood and the path that led her to ‘stand up for the word’

The winning ways of literary awards

Word for Word

Word for Word: Trains and poems go far together

Jeremy Paxman’s Great War: the unrevised edition

Jeremy Paxman is best known as the pugilistic presenter of ‘Newsnight’, but he pulls no punches in his new book on Britain during the first World War

Poets pay tribute to Seamus Heaney in Clifden

Memorial service part of annual arts festival

Funeral Mass celebrates ‘the beauty of Seamus Heaney...in his being’

He had many of the qualities of an ‘identikit portrait of the ideal Christian’