Fitzmaurice’s parting comments show a dark side to the passions in Gaelic games

Gate breaks from its painful recent past with ‘The Snapper’ and an innovative ‘Hamlet’

Ocean liners were showcases of style, produced by some of the great artists of the age

In conversation: Tara Erraught and Fergus Sheil

Austin Letter: Climb Mount Bonnell and see a land of contradictions laid out below

Think you still have that novel in you? Take some writing tips from Leo Tolstoy, Muriel Spark, John Steinbeck and other famous authors

The self-proclaimed executioner of the last taboos of the Western world on his Irish blood, not drinking – and finding religion

This week in the theatre

Three years after he appeared set to retire, Donaghy still tormenting opposition defences

The DUP’s new prominence has turned the clock back on a strand of British cartooning

Kettle died to liberate France which has long been an inspiration for Irish republicans

HBO has been the actor’s main employer for years, which enables him to do smaller projects, such as a reading of Joyce’s story The Dead in Dublin this week

It’s not being a genius that makes you rich – it’s stopping your rivals

Nobel laureates Faulkner, O’Neill, Hemingway and Steinbeck were alcoholics, as were Brendan Behan, Dylan Thomas, Jean Rhys and many more. Anne O’Neill explores why

‘There is no harm in being sometimes wrong, especially if one is promptly found out’

Paul McGuinness has turned to TV, joining forces with John Banville and Neil Jordan to make a crime series based on the French Riviera

Brought to Book Q&A: Irish author and academic on how he writes and what he reads

With the Ballymaloe Literary Festival taking place this weekend, here are 20 literary quotations to whet the appetite