The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride: Author experiments to draw readers in, not to keep them out
McBride’s style is distinctive, a wholly original exploration of what is possible with language and fiction
Samuel Beckett
The Vanishing Point by Paul Theroux: If this is his last round–up, his final words are good and true ones
Closing story in this collection imagines an award acceptance speech which would ‘represent a summing up’
John Minihan: Many of my most iconic photographs have a religious connection – even Lady Diana Spencer
My introduction to art happened in my hometown of Athy, Co Kildare. It was an age of belief; religion dominated everyday thinking and behaviour
The Traitors makes no sense. Its logic is flimsy, its flaws obvious. So why do I happily yell through three episodes a week?
Claudia Winkleman’s smash reality show is an effective analogy for the Sisyphean pointlessness of existence. But the contestants can’t say that, obviously
Mike Leigh: ‘I did a film in Northern Ireland about Catholics and Protestants. I did a play about Jews. To me it’s about people’
Hard Truths is as moving and acute a film as the 82-year-old has ever made. The director talks about rejection, vindication and never changing his approach to movie-making
Alan Bennett’s Beckettian look at life in a care home; Irish links with Romanov Russia; bell hooks on girlhood
Killing Time by Alan Bennett; Anarchy and Authority: Irish Encounters with Romanov Russia by Angela Byrne; Bone Black by bell hooks
The best theatre of 2024: Blessed are the risk-takers
Gambling on longer runs of unfamiliar work paid off in a gratifying number of cases. But Irish theatre still isn’t as inclusive as it should be
Author Georgi Gospodinov: ‘The past is not a good place to live in. And the dealers of the past roam among us’
The Bulgarian author on the dangers of nostalgia, his 2023 Booker-winning novel Time Shelter, and Irish writers he admires
Book reviews: Placeholders; The Long Look Back; Leaning on Gates
New fiction and memoir by James Roseman, Tom MacDonagh and Seamus O’Rourke includes a book that deserves a place among the classics
Julianne Moore: ‘When a friend really needs to unburden themselves, what are they asking you to do?’
The Oscar winner stars in The Room Next Door, a euthanasia drama that is Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature in English. It’s an ideal film for her to appear in
Sam Thompson: ‘I really don’t think there is a distinction to be made between writing for adults and writing for children’
Thompson’s new book, The Forest Yet to Come, is part of the Wolfstongue saga, which began as a direct response to his son’s difficulty with speech
Shades Through a Shade: Experimental theatre that pulls itself apart even as it transports you
Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: Gare St Lazare Ireland’s virtuosic, mesmeric ensemble brings texts by Beckett, Dante, Melville and others to life
Walking in Samuel Beckett’s footsteps: In some mysterious way, the landscape captures the soul of the artist
Alan Gilsenan, who leads a walk, Samuel Beckett: Walking After My Father, explains why the Wicklow and Dublin mountains exerted such a pull on the author
Author Charlotte Mendelson: ‘There’s nothing more fascinating than other people’s marriages, particularly when they start to go wrong.’
The author on her ‘darkest, queerest novel yet’, what makes Iris Murdoch special and the words she would abolish
Endgame review: Druid’s exquisite production brings a lightness of step to Beckett’s indestructible tragicomedy
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Garry Hynes directs Rory Nolan, Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen and Bosco Hogan
Francis Bacon’s Nanny: A peek into the darkness of the artist’s childhood
Maylis Besserie’s novel lays bare the cruelty of Bacon’s father as seen through the eyes of the family’s domestic servant Jessie Lightfoot
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
Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan take on Beckett: ‘To understand Endgame is to understand that you can’t understand Endgame’
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: For Druid’s Endgame, Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan are immersed in Beckett. It’s surpringly enjoyable, they say
Adrian Dunbar on Beckett: ‘I seemed to be getting knocked around emotionally but didn’t know how he was doing it’
For Beckett: Unbound 2024, the actor has teamed up with the composer Nick Roth to stage a festival of the writer’s work in Paris and Liverpool
In a Word...Good Friday
Seamus Heaney was born on Thursday, April 13th, 1939. ‘Thursday’s child has far to go.’
A sense of foreboding descends on Liveline. Then Joe Duffy takes an unexpected turn
Radio: Talk of saints and babies has the RTÉ broadcaster in flighty mood. Over on Today FM, Matt Cooper has the better show
John Montague: An Ulster Catholic who was ‘a marooned northerner and an apprentice southerner’
The charismatic poet whose intimacy and boldness continues to inspire was born 95 years ago
Olwen Fouéré: ‘I didn’t feel Irish. There’s a great advantage to being an outsider’
The distinctive actor and performer, currently on television in The Tourist, resists convention in both her work and personal life
Krapp’s Last Tape review: Stephen Rea invites us to applaud the tape recorder – but the triumph is his
The actor had the forethought to record Krapp’s early tapes 12 years ago. What a pleasure to see, and hear, the result in the intimacy of Project Arts Centre
Krapp’s Last Tape: The acting greats who have taken on Samuel Beckett’s one-man play
Stephen Rea is about to join an illustrious line-up that includes John Hurt, Michael Gambon and Patrick Magee
2024 on stage: 20 plays, operas and dance works to see over the next 12 months
Stephen Rea brings Krapp back home, Hamilton comes to Dublin and Irish National Opera stages Salome
Picture post - Frank McNally on Cork nuances, the late Colm Ó Briain, and a photo exhibition in Rathmines
Himself and yer man, from Cork to Dublin
Waiting for God-oh: Advent reminds us why we must exercise patience
Thinking Anew: Christian waiting and looking forward is never just a passive thing
Atelier Samuel Beckett residency to welcome first artists as Irish theatre couple repay generosity
Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett hope to nurture creativity in the same way their acclaimed interpretations of the playwright’s work were supported
Nobel prize-winning author Jon Fosse on giving up alcohol and converting to Catholicism
The Nobel laureate is a master of the short novel – but none of them rivals Septology, an 800-page, single-sentence masterpiece
Dance First: Finely acted Samuel Beckett biopic undermined by lit-flick cliches
Film review: Gabriel Byrne and Fionn O’Shea play the writer to great effect but the pedestrian writing bogs proceedings
Fionn O’Shea on being cast as Samuel Beckett: ‘There was a moment of elation followed by crippling anxiety’
In the film Dance First, the young Irish actor joins Gabriel Byrne as the older Beckett and Aidan Gillen as James Joyce
Famous images by Irish photographer John Minihan to feature in Kinsale festival
Big Picture Festival of Press Photography this month is being organised by the Press Photographers Association of Ireland
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