Chef d’equipe Michael Blake: ‘When your children start beating you, you should stop. So I started helping them instead’
What Blake loves most about horses is ‘their intelligence. I especially love trying to understand the difficult ones’
Edna O’Brien
Articles about Irish author and playwright Edna O’Brien: 1930-2024
Seán Rocks: Ireland has lost one of its great cultural champions
Late broadcaster’s easy wit and big-hearted spirit belied a lifelong devotion to our rich culture
Bookish breaks: Get inspired with these literary destinations, from Castletownshend to the French Riviera
To celebrate Bloomsday on June 16th, we explore spots that inspired famous writers to create their classics
A breakthrough era for women’s writing, from Edna O’Brien’s risks to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter debut
In the penultimate instalment of her series on women’s writing, Paula McGrath focuses on the second half of the 1990s
Amid all of the toxic masculinity, no one mentions the toxic femininity that supports it
When the institutions of the land imply women are inferior, it’s hard not to doubt yourself
Blue Road - The Edna O’Brien Story review: Was Ireland this dire? It really was
Sinéad O’Shea’s documentary is remarkable, though, for its consideration of an extraordinary life
Edna O’Brien: ‘She could be so queenly and dominating, but then totally wounded by criticism’
With the release of her Edna O’Brien documentary imminent, documentary maker Sinéad O’Shea talks about the late writer’s remarkable and often difficult life
50 films to see in 2025, from Babygirl to You’re Cordially Invited
Nicole Kidman stars in a kinky office romance, Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell play wedding planners, and Éanna Hardwicke and Steve Coogan replay Saipan
Tony O’Reilly, Nell McCafferty, Ian Bailey and more: 50 people who died in 2024
The Irish Times’s obituary writers have marked the deaths of more than 110 people this year, from entrepreneurs to musicians to journalists. Here is a selection
Carlo Gébler: ‘I want Irish unification and Northern Ireland in Europe. We do not belong in a UK that is not in Europe’
The writer talks about his new book, the future of Northern Ireland and a treasured pen
Sally Rooney: ‘There is something Christian about my work, even if I would not describe myself as religious’
Intermezzo author reflects on Joyce, how Christianity has shaped her thinking, and her dislike of the limelight
Edna O’Brien talked about a book-burning of The Country Girls in rural Clare. But did it actually happen?
Plus: Dave Grohl’s Kerry drive in 1994; rhododendron set for ban; and some interesting local government ethics declarations
Sixty years ago, the clerics denounced Edna O’Brien. On Saturday she was welcomed home
A flotilla of lake boats carried mourners to Holy Island, where the ‘brilliant, wild, soaring and indomitable’ Irish writer was laid to rest
Edna O’Brien’s writing aimed to ‘give courage’ to those who struggled to speak out, funeral hears
President Michael D Higgins joins family and friends of novelist to pay tribute to her in Co Clare church
A man in the street shouted: ‘Cheer up love, it might never happen.’ I swore back
I felt even more angry than usual because we are in the midst of a backlash against women’s internal lives
My first encounter with Edna O’ Brien has never left me, but the last was the most difficult
In the end she never got to see the film we were working on together, her ‘opus’, she called it
‘The best place to see Edna O’Brien was at Mass’: the banned and burned author’s complex relationship with Ireland
‘You have to be dead in Ireland to be a hero. History has shown us that; there are no living martyrs’ - O’Brien’s nephew
The Irish Times view on Edna O’Brien: a writer without fear
For showing up the hypocrisies and smug pieties of her native country, she was vilified
‘I’m haunted by my mother’: The late Edna O’Brien, interviewed by the late Eileen Battersby
The Irish Times journalist, who died in 2018, interviewed O’Brien – who has died aged 93 – in her London home in 2006
Monday’s top stories: Housing overtakes immigration as top voters’ issue; Kellie Harrington ready to pursue second Olympic title
The latest news in Ireland and abroadThe stories you need to start your day, including: tributes paid to Edna O’Brien, whose fearless honesty changed Ireland; South Dublin GAA club buys playing field in prime Foxrock site
Writers pay tribute to Edna O’Brien, whose fearless honesty changed Ireland
President Michael D Higgins among those saluting a ‘superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society’ who has died in London at 93
Anne Enright on Edna O’Brien: She never left Ireland, yet couldn’t live here either
The author Edna O'Brien shone a light for the writers who followed her, who took courage from her courage
Writers pay tribute to Edna O’Brien: her voice ‘was loud as a bell; fluid and intelligent’
President Michael D Higgins, Eimear McBride, John Banville, Sinéad Gleeson, Nuala O’Connor and others pay tribute to late Irish writer
Irish author Edna O’Brien has died aged 93
President Michael D Higgins leads tributes to ‘fearless teller of truths’ who died peacefully on Saturday after long illness
Edna O’Brien obituary: flamboyant, fearless, and outspoken Irish writer
Novelist, short-story writer, playwright and screenwriter had well-publicised love-hate relationship with her native country
Carlo Gébler on his mother Edna O’Brien: Coming to the end
Edna O’Brien, one of Ireland’s most celebrated writers, has died at the age of 93
I wanted to write a book about Irish women’s writing. They told me to include men
If anything will embitter you, it is researching and writing a history of Irish women’s writing
Hilary Fannin: My pals and I didn’t understand the stern forces that extinguished our youth
I was 17, working in a restaurant, smoking Rothmans and reading Edna O’Brien
Lucy Caldwell: ‘In ways it was a normal childhood...and yet’
Author on how the Troubles affected her life, her writing and her Irish identity
Story of Portugal’s Three Marias a reminder of a darker recent past
Lisbon Letter: Exhibition highlights subjugation of women under Salazar’s dictatorship
Lake people of Lough Derg: ‘I love looking at the water. It makes me calm’
Ireland’s third-biggest lake casts a unique spell over the locals living on or close to it
Wild Atlantic women: Following in their footsteps along the west coast
Gráinne Lyons spent three months learning about women connected to the landscape
House in Joyce’s The Dead to be turned into hostel despite Tóibín appeal
Bord Pleanála approves plans following objections from authors, poets and An Taisce
An Irish playwright in New York: Lines remain unlearned, curtains unraised, seats unfilled
I’ll write to make the actors cry again – laugh, too. We’ll need a laugh after this
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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Weddings, Births, Deaths and other family notices