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  • Taking the fight to the streets (Part 1)

    Daylight cleared a curtain of grey mist from Prague's cobblestone streets on Tuesday, showering bright sunshine on thousands of protesters who were silently converging on Namesti Miru park. p

  • Taking the fight to the streets (Part 2)

    The Benin government approved a World Bank structural adjustment package in the mid-1990s, which provided credits, fertiliser and transport to farmers who switched from food crops to producing cotton for export. Farmers duly abandoned traditional crops: then cotton prices fell, leaving farmers with degraded land, less food and even greater indebtedness. p

  • Lets change the world

    The IMF and the World Bank were established in 1944, when 700 delegates travelled to Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, USA, with the goal of establishing an institution to guarantee world financial stability in the aftermath of the second World War. p

  • Travel Log

    Jurys Doyle Group has just opened its fourth hotel in London. Located in Great Russell Street, it is ideal for the West End and Covent Garden. The building, formerly a YWCA, was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and has been carefully renovated to be faithful to his original plans. You can book on 01-6070000. p
WINGING IT

  • To bed, perchance to sleep

    There seem to be two schools of thought on the flu that's doing the rounds. You know, the one where you have a sore head, running eyes and a grouchy attitude to autumn. Sleep it off, they say, or fight it on your feet. As someone who needs little persuading to get a little shut-eye at the best of times, I chose the former. But my plans to cuddle in the arms of Morpheus came a cropper. As soon as my head hit the pillow, with timing straight out of a movie - the film version of Dad's Army perhaps - the burglar alarm on the house behind me went off with an ear-splitting whine. p
GIVE IT A RESTBack to Top

  • Why Music is making me sick

    First there's that modish whining noise, like Eeyore having swallowed a synthesiser. Then the lumpen beat which affectionately passes for "dance" in white circles comes in - clump, clump, clump, like someone goose-stepping across a huge biscuit tin. A few moments pause for the sheer, molten tension to build and then that timeless, wheedling, weaselly mid-western whinge kicks in: "Mewzick . . . mewzick . . . mewzick . . ." Make no mistake, we are now in the presence of a Titan, and one who is going to give us the absolute last word, the definitive statement on that lively art, the condition to which Walter Pater once so memorably claimed that all the arts aspire. p
QUIDNUNCBack to Top

  • Throwing light on Irish history

    The diplomatic corps went on an outing to the Glendalough Trail Walk and 6th-century monastic site in Co Wicklow last Saturday, organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and led by chief of protocol, Brian Nason. At the ESB power station at Turlough Hill, station manager, John Mulqueen, told them the ESB operated in more than 30 countries and it was appropriate that the visitors should see such a location in Ireland. On the trip, the Chinese ambassador, Zhang Xiaokang, said that in the 1980s, the Chinese people had thought of Ireland as the Chieftains, but since the visit to her country by the Tanaiste, Mary Harney, they associated Ireland with software. p

  • Back to the grindstone

    The Dail reconvenes on Tuesday for what is expected to be the stormiest session this administration has encountered. The summer brought a sudden drop in the Government's popularity and the Opposition scents blood. Both Fine Gael and Labour know they must make their mark over the next few months if they are to oust the Fianna Fail/PD coalition at the general election - likely any time from next spring. The Government parties will be trying to steady their supporters, recoup their losses and hang in there long enough to allow recent fiascos to fade in the public mind. p

  • Party animal

    The most popular and controversial person at the British Labour Party conference in Brighton this week turned up at the big, buzzy party thrown by Irish Ambassador, Ted Barrington, at the Grand Hotel on Tuesday night. It wasn't the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, but former Northern secretary, Mo Mowlam. Her replacement, Peter Mandelson, also went. Both had separately slipped away from a huge, cabinet-hosted, corporate fundraising dinner to join the Irish. Only hours earlier, Mo, referring to her "I'm just the tea lady" remark to President Bill Clinton, told a fringe meeting: "I used to do weird things. Yes, I used to make tea when working late at night on the Good Friday Agreement. I used to wander around with chips and get Chinese takeaways. Making tea for Clinton was just to take the piss out of him". p

  • Presidential freedom of speech

    The President, Mrs McAleese's critical opening address at the National Conference of Priests in Dublin on Monday caused concern in some circles that she was overstepping her role as non-political head of State. But was her script cleared by the Government? Junior minister, Tom Kitt, said on RTE's Questions and Answers that it had been seen by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Not so, says a Government spokesman. The President's scripts, he said, are not automatically checked by the Taoiseach's office and are only vetted if she is speaking on a matter of Government policy or she is abroad. p

  • Moving house stress

    To the amazement of those who have been watching the progress of the construction, the new Leinster House office block will be ready for the return of the Dail on Tuesday. Indeed, a special tour of the facilities has been arranged for tomorrow conducted by the OPW minister, Martin Cullen, who is just back from Sydney. Deputies move in on Monday and an official opening will take place in a couple of weeks when the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and the Ceann Comhairle, Seamus Pattison, will cut the ribbon and entertain party leaders and other dignitaries. p

  • Losing excess baggage

    When the five times All-Ireland medal-winner, FG deputy for Kerry North, Jimmy Deenihan stepped out in Croke Park last Sunday with his former Kerry team mates of 25 years ago, some thought he looked almost a shadow of his former self. Not so, he says. He dropped a stone, that's all, in six weeks' summer running on Ballybunnion strand, swimming in the sea, training the young lads at Feale Rangers and most of all eating sensibly, which means nothing to eat after 6 p.m. and no alcohol. "I dread getting back to the unhealthy life in Kildare Street. I'll put it up again." p

  • Desperately seeking votes

    October 10th is D day for the campaign which has occupied the Department of Foreign Affairs, from the highest level to the lowest, for several years. A secret ballot of the UN General Assembly in New York will decide whether or not we will get a two-year seat on the Security Council. Our rivals are Norway, who is considered a certainty in view of its extensive aid-giving, and Italy, who was a late entrant but has run an intensive, effective and, some would say Machiavellian, campaign. p
HISTORYBack to Top

  • Undermining Catholic myths (Part 1)

    Lest anyone misunderstand, the "800 years of myths" list, right, was not supplied by Marianne Elliott. The information is woven seamlessly into her extraordinary, densely-packed, 600-page work, all the better to ambush anyone suckled on the standard, nationalist myth machine. She takes no joy from it. p

  • Undermining Catholic myths (Part 2)

    `Have you ever noticed that Northerners are much quicker to take offence?" she asks. "There's a sensitivity there that is not quite as strong in the rest of Ireland, a sense that you're always going to be put down, a kind of prickliness. It makes for great humour but nevertheless, it's there, a very strange identity that has real reasons behind it." p

  • 800 years of myths

    Myth: The Irish were oppressed for 800 years. p
THE INDEFINITE ARTICLEBack to Top

  • Train ride through the American soul

    Recorded in New York in 1929, From Galway to Dublin by Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band is a truly eccentric record made in the scratchy days long before DJ Shadow and the studied craft of cut-and-paste. That said, it's a work of some technical genius, featuring bells, whistles, yahoos, fiddles and a conductor who calls the stations as the train rolls merrily from Galway to Dublin. p
NOVELISTBack to Top

  • Making sense of life

    Dressed in black and awaiting the publication of her 12th novel, The Gingerbread Woman, Jennifer Johnston sits in a trendy Dublin hotel and is as brisk and as wry as ever. Friendly and direct, she makes it clear that she knows she is speaking to a journalist. Distance thus established, Johnston is too honest to put on a performance; her comments are blunt and decisive, shaped by her emphatic, no-nonsense intelligence. Her new book is, she says, "about the end of an affair" but it is also, as is true of all her fiction, about many things, particularly about making sense of life. "Never an easy thing." p
ALT.COUNTRYBack to Top

  • Country's frayed fringe

    As much a handy marketing term as a loose, bona fide music category, alt.country is (if you will) a country cousin to punk rock: a response to the lumbering behemoths that have presided over Nashville for the past 15 years. Populated by either aggrieved, ornery country musicians or people whose music is so outside the Nashville norm that there's no other category they can fit into, alt.country has burped up many great and strange acts, but none more so than Lambchop. p
WRITER/DIRECTORBack to Top

  • Learning to be happy

    When Conor McPherson was about 10 years old, he went to see his cousin, the actor Garrett Keogh, in a play in Dublin. Although his memory of the night is vague now, he remembers believing wholly in the imaginary world that he saw on stage. The actor playing a rich man must surely have been a millionaire; the actress who cried must have been really upset. When the show ended, Keogh took the young McPherson backstage to meet the cast. The millionaire was standing in his underpants drinking a can of coke. The distraught actress was joking happily with the crew. This was a world of cardboard and papiermache. The revelation lit up the boy's imagination, and he has remained fascinated with the theatre ever since. p
THEATRE FESTIVALBack to Top

  • First-day blues

    `It was great! It was funny! It was about this girl, Lep. I think she was Asian, she was shy, she was standing there like this. And her mother had died and she wanted to make a Mother's Day card at school, and the school bully said she was not allowed because her mother was dead, and I was so angry with him! And when Clint got to school and they were calling out the roll for the new kids, they called his name and he just screamed `Muuuu-um'. He and the other new kids were being shown around the school and they got to the toilet and he needed to go but the teacher said `don't interrupt when I'm talking', so he just had to hold it in but he couldn't! And it went all everywhere! All over the chair and on the floor. That was a good scene." p
REEL NEWSBack to Top

  • Cracking Cork fest

    The diverse international programme for the 45th Murphy's Cork Film Festival will include: Woody Allen's latest comedy, Small Time Crooks; Christopher Nolan's complex US thriller, Memento, starring Guy Pearce; the Swedish drama, Faithless, scripted by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Liv Ullmann; Nagisa Oshima's picture of gay Samurai in the Japanese Gohatto; Jamie Thraves's London-set The Low Down with Irish actor Aiden Gillen in the role which won him an award at Edinburgh last month; two critically acclaimed Australian movies, Jonathan Teplizky's Better Than Sex and Andrew Dominik's Chopper; Dominik Moll's clever, teasing French thriller, Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien; Hungarian director Bella Tarr's festival favourite, Werckmeister Harmonies; and Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong romantic period drama, In the Mood For Love. p
FILM FESTIVALBack to Top

  • The dark side of the screen

    High-profile film festivals are natural magnets for controversial movies, and few recent productions have been devised with such candour and determined provocation as the French picture, Baise-Moi (Rape Me). It was already notorious before it arrived at Toronto this year, having been withdrawn from Paris cinemas after three days on release during the summer and given an Xrating which restricted its exhibition to sexshops. p
TV REVIEWBack to TopCOMEBACKBack to Top

  • Detox on the box

    Let's say you're serving time for possession of heroin, cocaine and an unlicensed .357 Magnum. Perhaps you messed up your chances of getting away with it because, a mere three weeks after the event, you went out on a bender and were found unconscious in a neighbour's child's bedroom. Now, there aren't strong guidelines for these matters but there are generally right things and wrong things to say when your case comes up for parole. For example, "I'm sorry", is a start. "It won't happen again", is better. "I'm sorry, it won't happen again - I just happen to think drugs are totally brilliant", is perhaps more information than the judge should hear. p
RADIO REVIEWBack to TopESSAYSBack to Top

  • Making sense of the universe through poetic measure

    Every age has its signatures of change. The telephone, the turbine engine, the neural chip - these are visible and measurable. But this book is a timely reminder that there are other less visible, and yet deeply revealing examples of how societies shift and re-order themselves. p
POETRYBack to TopIRISH LANGUAGEBack to Top

  • Part-time poems from part-time poets

    Taking the word "fearann", meaning "land" or "territory", as his rule, Greagoir O Duill, has reclaimed and replanted 100 years of Irish poetry. He has produced a huge tome of over 400 pages which covers all of the last century. The editor writes that he opted to include "a wide range of poems so that the reader can make his own choice". p
AMERICAN POLITICSBack to Top

  • Warts within warts

    Anthony Summers has written a highly contentious biography - but given his works on previous subjects such as Marilyn Monroe and J. Edgar Hoover (cross-dressing homosexual), a revelatory warts and warts account of Richard Nixon was to be expected. The book has hit the headlines for three principal allegations: Nixon sabotaged Lyndon Johnson's Vietnamese peace talks in 1968 in order to ensure election to the Oval Office; He consulted a psychotherapist frequently, drank heavily and abused prescription drugs; and he walloped his wife Pat on at least two occasions, making her contemplate divorce. p
FICTIONBack to Top

  • About the bard

    While being held hostage in Beirut, Brian Keenan was imaginatively nourished by the songs of the last Irish bard, Turlough O'Carolan. This novel is, as he says himself, an attempt to repay that debt of gratitude. Happily, Keenan has achieved his aim. p
IRISH HISTORYBack to Top

  • A long way from Rome

    `Comfortable recollections of Catholics and Dissenters fighting side by side for liberty in 1798 have been severely corroded by scholars in recent Elliott has more vitriol to apply. Only an elite genuinely subscribed to the United Irish ideal of bringing together Catholic, Protestant and Disenter' p
SCIENCEBack to Top

  • Bb is king

    Arno Karlen's last book, Plague's Progress: A Social History of Man and Disease, found him grouped, in some eyes, with the darkest spirits among eco-doomsters: those who see infectious epidemics as the ultimate, perhaps even necessary, control on human population. His new offering is only moderately sinister, and that in a laid-back, often witty way. The Biography of a Germ sneaks up on its subject with great ease, charm and sense of timing. His story is ultimately highly dramatic, with especial resonance for the thousands of affluent suburbanites who live among the deer-haunted woodlands of the north-east United States. In Connecticut, in particular, the pretty colonial town of Lyme has given its name to a disease which is inflicting considerable regional harm, and is increasing and spreading in the Old World as well. p
CATHOLIC CHURCH SCANDALSBack to Top

  • Rotten apple in a barrel of scandals

    In the unsavoury company of Father Brendan Smyth, Father Sean Fortune is remembered as a rotten apple in modern Irish Catholicism's overbrimming barrel of scandals. Behind his shiny priest's collar and flashy cassock, his pulpit zeal and radio trendiness, his preoccupation with faith healing and his enthusiasm for State-financed community development, Fortune, as revealed by Alison O'Connor in this explosive book, was an ugly thug and conman. p
FICTION FILESBack to Top

  • Medieval? Anything but (Part 1)

    Mystery man and miracle worker, Gutenberg the hero of the Book, or at least the inventor of printing and so the herald of a non-violent revolution which truly changed the world, is a fascinating character. About 1455, he produced what later became known as the Gutenberg Bible, the first book to be printed from movable type. It was he who first used a press. So a novel based on the little-known details of his life and drawing on the wealth of fact and fiction about his medieval world should be intriguing. p

  • Medieval? Anything but (Part 2)

    Jeanette Winterson is nothing if not self-indulgent, but bear with her as she pares her latest novel to the bare essentials - from the short, stacato-like sentences to the square-like shape of the book itself. She's writing for the e-generation, grappling as ever with the familiar themes of adultery and desire, of reaching for that which is slightly out of reach, yet not giving up on the essential evolutionary process which is art itself - at least, so she has told us a million times. p
LITERARY LANDMARKSBack to Top

  • Poet of petite proportions

    Unlike many buildings which often have rather tenuous associations with writers, the Emily Dickinson Homestead in Amherst is a place of vital pilgrimage for any Dickinson fan. It was here that the writer spent almost her whole life, existing as a virtual recluse, rarely even emerging from her bedroom. p
TRAVELBack to Top

  • Albert's memorial

    E=MC(to the power of 2) is the supreme creation of the man whose mathematical genius may bring about the obliteration of our species. Regarding himself as a pacifist, Albert Einstein was sorry about the atomic bomb, although he had urged President Roosevelt to get it made. What sort of brain was able to achieve such a brilliant calculation and a miscalculation potentially so horrendous? Was Einstein's brain physically different from any other? p
LOOSE LEAVESBack to Top

  • Women worth the wait

    Well, the critics certainly had a field day when the Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature appeared some years ago, and succeeded in marginalising women writers in all three volumes. Such was the justified outcry, it was announced there would be a fourth volume, to right the wrong and focus on women writers. Years passed, but no word was heard of the promised text. This week, Sadbh hears from Cork University Press that The Field Day Anthology: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions, Volumes IV and V, will be published in autumn 2001. The team of editors who have been working on the text are: Angela Bourke, Mairin Ni Dhonneadha, Siobhan Kilfeather, Maria Luddy, Margaret McCurtain, Geraldine Meaney, Mary O'Dowd, and Claire Wills. The extracts will be presented in the form of themes, such as "Women and Society", "Women's Writing in English 1700-1960", and "Women in Politics". CUP reckons that, between them, the two volumes will contain some million and a half words of text. Sadbh can see the literary headlines already: "Women's twin-set now available". The set will cost £150. p
SHORT STORIESBack to Top

  • An exploration of Eros

    In one of the numerous self-reflexive moments in Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's new volume of short stories, The Pale Gold of Alaska and Other Stories, an emotionally bruised heroine fantasises about the publicity shots of Richard Ford while also musing about his reinvention of the short story. By ignoring dictates about brevity and the need for epiphanies, she realizes that he writes "stories with flesh on their bones, stories that linger over the coffee". In her imaginings, the perfect story teller and the perfect lover fuse. p
ROMANTICISMBack to Top

  • Art for martyrdom's sake

    For "Romanticism" read "French Romanticism", since this book-with-a-thesis begins with the painter Baron Gros and ends, rather oddly, with the novelist Zola. Romanticism in France had inherited the shattering collapse of Napoleon and his imperial system, as well as a sometimes corrosive scepticism which had been set in train by Voltaire, and an over-excited sensibility launched by Rousseau and taken further by such writers as Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael. It was, therefore, in essence very different from the contemporary Romantic schools in England and Germany, and its development was to be equally so. p
PAPERBACKSBack to Top

  • Hope against History: The Ulster Conflict, by Jack Holland (Coronet/Lir, £6.99 in UK)

    Jack Holland is one of a handful of distinguished journalists who have been covering the Northern Ireland Troubles since the beginning. This concise history of the past 30 years is a worthy addition to the literature of the conflict. Nuggets of investigative reporting are presented against a background of authoritative analysis. Younger readers will find it a useful introduction to the North's sorry history; older hands will value the fresh detail provided on particular incidents and episodes. The book ends on a hopeful note, although the author warns that, "The peace process like the conflict fought before it will be a long and gruelling one, full of setbacks and frustrations and doubtless liable to be challenged by those who are unable to understand the nature of the transformation that has come over Ireland, north and south." p

  • James Joyce, by Edna O'Brien (Phoenix, £6.99 in UK)

    In this colourful distillation of the life of the "volcanic" James Joyce, O'Brien excels in her own linguistic dexterity as well as in her understanding of the complex mind of the writer. Her insight makes one wonder why writers don't write biographies of each other more often. "Writers have to be monsters to create," she maintains, but the Joyce she shows us is irresistibly human in his fears of madness and of lightning, his courtship of betrayal, his drunken impersonations of Isadora Duncan dancing, his manipulation of the pretensions of the literary world and his tender but misguided relationship with his demented daughter, Lucia. O'Brien concludes that his great power lay in being able to encompass body and soul: "No other writer so effulgently and so ravenously recreated a city . . . for him as for Sophocles, great stories began in the family cauldron." p

  • The Wonders of the Invisible World, by David Gates (Gollancz, £9.99 in UK)

    Many claims have been made for David Gates and few of them are justified in this loud collection in which most of his self-destruct characters are not so much at the edge but have obviously already jumped off. In the best of the stories Vigil, an ageing father, describes his efforts to help in the aftermath of his married daughter's car crash. It is not easy, particularly as it appears she had been leaving the scene of a hotel assignation and her husband is far angrier with his injured spouse than upset by her injuries. The mild narrator also has to contend with the arrival of his alcoholic former wife, long happily married to another. Elsewhere a dope fiend husband and son has taken to his dead mother's wheelchair while his father, no longer needed as a nurse, may have gone crazy. The wife and daughter-in-law is having her own problems with an affair she doesn't want but needs. The hip prose is aggressive, the dialogue so snappy it is brittle, no one trusts anyone and the Waltons it ain't. Optimistically hailed on the blurb as "the best collection of short stories to come out of America since Richard Ford's Rock Springs". Mmm; the publishers must not have read Annie Proulx, John Updike, Tobias Wolff, Richard Bausch, William Maxwell, Russell Banks and Co. Gates, author of Jernigan and Preston Falls, also has his moments here, but is far closer to Jay McInerney than he looks like ever being to Ford or Cheever. p

  • J. G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer, by Lavinia Greacen (Bloomsbury, £15 in UK)

    IT is 21 years since the novelist J. G. Farrell drowned in Bantry Bay at the age of 44 while fishing near his new home. Winner of the 1973 Booker Prize for The Siege of Krishnapur, Farrell continued to document the demise of the British Empire in his Irish novel, Troubles, and in his account of the fall of Singapore, The Singapore Grip. Until this biography, little was known of Farrell's life besides the fact he had contracted polio as a student, that he only ever travelled for research after finishing a book, and that his hobby was cooking elaborate meals for his literary friends. Lavinia Greacen has spoken to most people who knew Farrell, including his many girlfriends. In an unusual but effective technique, she uses his own words, taken from his novels, to show how he drew on his day-to-day experiences in their construction. It is fascinating to see how Farrell built up such memorable characters as the Major in Troubles and Doctor McNab in The Seige of Krishnapur. This excellent biography makes it evident that a very fine writer was lost when Farrell died so prematurely. p

  • To the Scaffold: the Life of Marie Antoinette, by Carolly Erickson (Robson Books, £9.99 in UK)

    AS a queen Marie Antoinette was certainly more sinned against than sinning, and this life should go some way towards killing off the old view of her as selfish, frivolous and ultimately self-destructive. Her imperial and imperious mother, Maria Theresa, sent her from Vienna to the court in Paris at the age of 14, as a bride for the future Louis XVI, who could not consummate the marriage and was notably shy and gauche. Without friends or close guidance, she made many silly blunders and antagonised members of the French royal family; yet eventually Louis underwent the necessary operation and fathered children, while she gradually matured into a shrewd, capable wife and mother. She remained loyal to her husband during his troubled years of kingship and followed him to the scaffold, dying with dignity and courage. Not heavyweight history, but well told. p

  • King Of The World, by David Remnick (Picador, £6.99 in UK)

    Taken into the febrile years surrounding the civil rights movement in America and filtered through the eyes of the greatest boxer to have taken to the ring, Cassius Clay (later to become Muhammad Ali), King Of The World places the former heavyweight champion in a social context which explains the man as much as the athlete. The former Olympic gold medallist, who beat the monstrous and inexplicable part-time Mafia leg-breaker, Sonny Liston, in 1964 to become the most charismatic champion of the world then set about destroying his career by aligning himself with Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, two emerging black segregationists. A transcendent boxer and an entertainer whose humour often masked an extremism which unsettled not only white but pacifistic black America, Ali was finally nailed for his principled refusal to accept the draft and fight in the Vietnam war. Pulitzer prizewinner David Remnick floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Sharp, clever, nimble - just like Ali at the height of his power. p

  • The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orleany (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)

    John Laroche has an obsession with orchids. This bizarre attachment to flowers gets him into trouble with the law: he's accused of stealing rare orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand in Florida. That's when New Yorker reporter Susan Orleany takes an interest in him. This book is the story of her discovery of the wonderful world of orchids, and also her observations on a man who allowed what began as an interest to take over his life. The tone of the book reflects an unusual mix of the uneasiness Orleany feels when she is alone with Laroche - and a certain amount of humour. Through Laroche, Orleany is introduced not only to the criminal nature attached to the world of orchids, but to how they have become an obsession of the rich and famous. At one American Orchid Society Gala, Orleany meets Lord Mansfield, who tells her, "I have a son who is 39 and I'm sure he wants to get his hands on my orchids. I think he is quite eagerly waiting for me to die." A mix of suspense, historical information and observations on the life of a man obsessed makes this a great read. p
THE IRISH TIMES SELECTIVE GUIDE TO THE BEST ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE WEEKaheadBack to Top

  • Jazz

    The virtuoso mainstream soprano saxophonist and clarinettist, Bob Wilber, makes a return here after several years when he joins Louis Stewart (guitar), Michael Coady (bass) and Kieran Phillips (drums) for a Dublin Jazz Society concert at the Hilton Hotel next Wednesday. Wilber, who was once a pupil of the great New Orleans reedman, Sidney Bechet, has an impressive list of musical credits over a long career, including The World's Greatest Jazz Band, a traditional lineup with such names as Yank Lawson, Billy Butterfield and Ralph Sutton, and the Bechet Legacy, a sextet devoted to his mentor's music, as well as contributing the authentic 20s musical environment for Francis Ford Coppola's narratively challenged movie, The Cotton Club. But it's for Soprano Summit, the celebrated small group he co-led with clarinettist Kenny Davern, which included one of the most knowledgeable pianists in mainstream jazz in Dick Hyman, that he is perhaps best known. p

  • Theatre

    The undisputed hit of last year's Eircom Dublin Theatre Festival was an epic play called Cloudstreet, a four-hour saga of two contrasting families produced by Australia's Company B. Its reception was so tumultuous that a return visit was mandatory, and Company B is indeed back with a different kind of family show, of a mere two hours duration. This one, The Small Poppies, is about the first day at school, and six actors play some 20 archetypal roles; children and adults, teachers and bullies. p

  • Classical

    If the marketing gurus could get their hands on it they'd call it String Quartet Week. Over the next seven days there will be no less than a dozen opportunities to hear string quartets in concert. First off are the Vanbrughs (right), continuing their current tour of Beethoven, Piers Hellawell and Dvorak in Dublin (tomorrow afternoon), Lismore (Monday) and Cork (Thursday). p

  • Children's

    A countrywide touring production of children's theatre is still a new phenomenon, so when Barnstorm Theatre Company takes its award-winning production, Earwigs, on tour this week, young audiences should take note. Written by Maeve Ingoldsby in collaboration with TEAM Educational Theatre Company, Earwigs explores the often-complex communications between parents and their offspring. It tells the story of a chaotic summer in the lives of an ordinary family as seen through the eyes of 11-year-old Eddy (played by Eoin Slattery, right). Following its run in Kilkenny, Earwigs will travel to Mullingar, Sligo, Letterkenny and more. p

  • Comedy Theatre

    There's a sort of mini-comedy festival contained within the Dublin Fringe and if you only see one of the shows, make sure it's David O'Doherty's excellent The Story Of The Boy Who Saved Comedy which is at Bewley's Cafe Theatre from next Monday to Saturday. A well-told tale about a boy looking for new jokes, it deservedly got nominated for a Perrier newcomer award at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. Elsewhere, Brendan Burke's One Night In Baghdad is at the Castle Inn on Lord Edward Street from next Tuesday to Saturday, while the RTE Comedy Awards (a talent search competition) take place at Vicar Street next Tuesday with a guest spot from Ed Byrne. Bookings for all shows at the Fringe Office, tel: 1850 374643. p
FRINGEBack to Top

  • All the fun of the fringe

    The annals of Limerick, distilled by playwright Mike Finn, have been packing in audiences in that city over the summer. Depicting landmarks such as the Boer War, the Limerick Soviet and the Emergency through the prism of individual experience, Island Theatre's ensemble production, Pigtown, connects the local to the international. p
CINEMABack to Top

  • Rat Trap

    Writer Wesley Burrowes, creator of The Riordans, Bracken and Glenroe, reveals a surreal sense of humour in his witty screenplay for the feature film, Rat, which was warmly received on its world premiere at Galway Film Fleadh in July. Directed by Steve Barron, Rat follows the comic consequences when a Dublin delivery man played by Pete Postlethwaite is turned into a rat, to the consternation of his wife (Imelda Staunton) and family. The cast also includes Frank Kelly, David Wilmot and Peter Caffrey, and the music is by Bob Geldof. p
CD CHOICEBack to Top

  • Rock/Dance

    David Bowie: Bowie At The Beeb (BBC/EMI) p

  • Jazz

    Dave Douglas: A Thousand Evenings (RCA Victor) p

  • Traditional

    Sharon Shannon & Friends: The Diamond Mountain Sessions (Grapevine Records) p
GETTING OUTBack to Top

  • It's the same, but different

    We've got a thing about Wongs in Ranelagh. We go there all the time and order the same thing. We don't look at the menus any more. We even see the same people. Some nights it's hopping. It can be noisy and crowded but it's got buzz. Not that it's cheap. p
CAKE HEAVENBack to Top

  • To the aid of the parfait

    Goodbye cream-filled sponge cakes, rhubarb crumble and chocolate gateaux. Hello delice of passion fruit and mango, banana parfait, and an Opera cake of dark chocolate and praline layers, swathed in bitter chocolate icing. While Dubliners will never give up traditional Irish desserts, they are gravitating toward small, elegantly crafted confections with a distinctively French accent. p
WINEBack to Top

  • Some like it hot

    Wine doesn't really go with spicy food, does it? Aha! That's the sort of remark you might have got away with five years ago, but not now. Too many of us are too fond of our wine to swallow the notion that a Kingfisher beer is the only thing to drink with curry. If matching food and wine is currently a favourite pursuit among the drinking classes (and believe me, it is), finding the right bottle to flatter searing spice is absolutely the hottest topic - and no apologies for the pun. p

  • Hot Contenders

    Indian: mild dishes - fruity whites such as Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc; creamy dishes - buttery whites such as Chardonnay, SemillonChardonnay; hot dishes - rich, fruity reds such as Chilean Merlot, Syrah/Shiraz, Zinfandel, Grenache/Garnacha, southern Italians, southern French reds. p

  • The Spice Route

    Wines to try, whether you're eating out or in. . . p

  • French Lessens

    Are you one of (many) people who prefer French subtlety to the big fruit flavours of the New World? Superquinn's annual Foire aux Vins, featuring bottles sourced at keen prices in conjunction with the monster French supermarket chain Casino, kicks off on Monday. There are more than 40 wines on the main sale list; selected stores also feature a number of high-profile classics. Although Bordeaux is well-covered, as usual, the south of France stars with the ripe, concentrated flavours of the 1998 vintage - the best of the decade - at unbeatable prices. Besides Chateau La Tour des Gardies (see above), bottles well worth trying include dark, velvety Chateau de Villespassans Saint-Chinian 1998 (£6.99) and meaty Domaine Saint-Germain Minervois 1998 (£7.99). p

  • Six Weeks In Sligo

    Rather than hold the usual sort of between-season sale to dispose of slow-moving stock, Octavius Fine Wines in Sligo is heading into wine's high season with a very different sort of event. Starting today, Michael Gramsch's autumn sale will have a different theme every week for six weeks - France, Italy, Australia, Spain and Portugal and so on - with at least half of the shop's entire stock in the relevant sections offered at discounts of at least 20 per cent. Grattan Street, Sligo, tel 071-71730, e-mail octaviusfinewines @oceanfree.net p

  • Bottles Of The Week

    Whether you're eating out, ordering a takeaway or thinking of setting to work with your wok this weekend, you'll want heat-resistant wines that are easy to track down and easy to drink. This white and red duo is pretty hard to beat: zesty Villa Maria Private Bin Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough 1999 (quite widely available, £8.99£9.49; also in many restaurants), with a generous helping of tropical fruit flavours offset by zippy acidity, and supple Santa Rita Merlot Reserva, Maipo 1998 (widely available, usually £8.99; also in many restaurants), which glides down beautifully, leaving its own trail of warm spice. p
EATING INBack to Top

  • Catching the magic of a golden egg

    The days suddenly shorten, and good eggs suddenly become scarcer. Not the bog-standard battery egg, of course, but the good, fresh egg laid by a hen that roams and pecks around outside, and which gives us an egg with a mustard-yellow yolk and a firm, glacial white. Their sudden shortage is a valuable reminder of just how precious eggs are, and how their ubiquity means we too often take them for granted. In addition to the hens turning shy, the publication of Country Egg, City Egg, by American chefs Gayle Pirie and John Clark, gives a lovely incentive to show proper respect to eggs. This little book, with just 60 recipes spread throughout 100 pages, is a charming, valuable, and useful textbook on the art of the egg. p
FOOD COMBININGBack to Top

  • No place for the cheese sandwich

    We are what we eat, which accounts for the booming success of a multi-million-pound industry based on selling tickets for short visits to nirvana. Dieting, however, is officially naff. Holistic is where it's at and that doesn't just mean giving up the passions of a lifetime and replacing them the rigors of the future. The holistic approach means balance. Not just trundling through life on autopilot but having a clear mind, acquiring muscle power, learning to breathe properly, having the chassis in top-ship shape ready for the off . . . and that's your body and not the car - though, think about it, would you put leaded petrol into a lead-free-only engine? p
DESTINATION: AUSTRALIABack to Top

  • Touristic gold mine

    In Bendigo, in bed, I lay researching my journey to Ballarat the next day. I was spending a few days in Victoria, and wanted to bone up on the sights. Outside, the Sunday night streets were a graveyard. I heard a dog bark from the bushes in the park across the road. I turned a page of the brochure "My Ballarat", which invited me to discover it "through the eyes and hearts of the people who know it best". They queued up to eulogise. "Dramatic, a living history," they said. "Exceptional statuary, loads of fun, a perfect getaway." On they droned. By page 25 I was asleep. p
ANOTHER LIFEBack to Top

  • A true champion of the wild

    When we read, in the life of some outstanding naturalist, that "his interest in nature developed in boyhood", we fit the lad into his landscape of birds and animals as if such enthusiasm were, indeed, the most natural thing in the world. But a closer look is likely to find a less general class of youngster: one from a comfortable, middle-class home, sure of his place in university, and with a naturalist grandad or someone else to encourage him. p

  • Eye On Nature

    A movement on the River Nore, near Kilkenny, caught my eye. Head high above the water, a miniature Lough Ness monster, a stoat, was swimming strongly across the current. Was this a rare and fortunate sighting? p
TIME OUTBack to Top

  • Greetings to the gringos

    Peru 2000, that's where I'm at. And in case I had any doubts, the slogan Peru 2000 is emblazoned on every city wall, carved into mountain sides in gargantuan letters, and adorns baseball caps and T-shirts everywhere, like some global sporting event. p
GARDEN ENTHUSIASTBack to Top

  • A fragile island paradise

    The minutes-long boat trip from Glengarriff to Ilnacullin (also known as Garinish Island) in west Cork must be one of the most costly trips in Ireland. £5 a head - adult heads, that is; children's are somewhat cheaper. The boatmen obligingly string out the outward crossing by nudging around among the seaweed-coiffured rocks so that passengers can view and photograph the seals basking on their surfaces. p

  • Garden Work

    Although many gardeners sow sweet pea in spring, it may also be sown during the next month or so, leaving time for other urgent tasks next year. Plants started now may bloom earlier, and will be sturdier, having made harder, slower growth. You can soften the outer coating of the seeds by grazing them with sandpaper and soaking overnight in lukewarm water. p
THE LAST STRAWBack to Top

  • Apeing around on the Metro

    Just back from a short family holiday in Paris, and I'm happy to report we survived the trip without mishap, despite the fact that the city is under siege from attack monkeys. p
ON THE TOWNBack to Top

  • A funny thing happens

    US, nervous? Not at all, they say. Ha, ha, ha. They are ashen faced, clutching the arms of their chairs and hyper-ventilating but no, they're not nervous. Hah. p

  • Anything you bamboo...

    He brought presents for everyone. What did he give you? All talk is of the gifts brought by Albert Men Chi Lai, manager of Ever Need, a professional scaffolding company in Hong Kong, which came to Dublin this week to erect bamboo scaffolding around the old Carlton Cinema on O'Connell Street. p

  • The right note

    Few are as ready as Desmond Fogarty from Dalkey. With a pair of opera glasses around his neck, he won't miss a move at tonight's performance in the National Concert Hall. He has come with his wife, Yvonne Fogarty, to hear a performance by up to nine pianists playing on up to four pianos. The special concert, Hands Across the Keys, is organised by the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition in order to raise funds for the Mark Governey Fund appeal. The National Concert Hall is packed to capacity with friends of the Governeys. The young man himself, who was seriously injured in a rugby match last year, is here but prefers to stay in the background, according to his father, Michael, general manager of the Conrad Hotel across the road, and his mother Elizabeth Governey, who are out front greeting friends. p

  • Dogged endeavour

    One of the best-groomed and sweetest guests at the opening in the Origin Gallery is Dixie, a white-haired 14-year-old bitch, who hangs by Martin Bedford with love and devotion, decked out in a sporty cravat. Together they greet their guests to Bedford's show, I dtreo na hAimsire. p

  • There's someone for everyone

    Romance is in the air at the launch of a fashion magazine, VIP Style, at the Fitzwilliam Hotel. Shane Hegarty, a writer from Skerries, tells of proposing to Maeve Mullins, a nurse, on the Cliffs of Moher earlier this summer. Yes, he got down on his knee, he says. And yes, she says, she said yes. p

  • Opening up nicely

    The Northern Ireland Friendship Band was everywhere at the weekend's Oyster Festival in Galway, where it's an annual feature. The weather didn't live up to the outside tables at Nimmo's pier for the Guinness World Oyster Opening Championship, but the knives were out inside the marquee for the oyster-opening competition. The drink was in free-flow, even if the oysters were rationed. p
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