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  • The profane and the profound

    Jeffrey Eugenides: "It's the telling of the stories I'm interested in." Jeffrey Eugenides's second novel, 'Middlesex', is a bizarre story about a hermaphrodite, US prohibition and Greco-Turkish history. But it's only autobiographical to a point, he tells Eileen Battersby. p
Features

  • Tower of song

    When you're feeling introspective, whose songs do you reach for? Look no further than the poetic mastery of Leonard Cohen, says Tony Clayton-Lea p

  • Psychopaths are perfect for corporate life

    RADIO REVIEW: RTÉ got British broadcaster Richard Hannaford in last year to make documentaries that stated the bleedin' obvious about the Irish healthcare system. Now he is injecting more of the same gear in a new series, Drugs of Choice (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday), talking us through Ireland's six favourite substances. Shouldn't programmes like this abandon all pretence of currency and just go straight into the archives? Well, no, not in this case. p

  • Food is the new smoking

    Fast food: 'While the high cholesterol is a worry, I find the high chairs go a long way to compensate' p

  • Turning us into sofa bullies

    TV REVIEW: They set people up to fail, then encourage us to smirk or weep at their misfortune as they become 'losers'. p

  • On hearing of the plan to cut down the trees of O'Connell Street

    A poem by  Peter Sirr on hearing of the plan to cut down the trees of O'Connell Street. p

  • Colgan charm opens the gates to building

    The Colgan charm has worked again for Dublin's Gate Theatre. p

  • Piano force

    Pianos took centre-stage in the National Concert Hall this week. Scottish and Irish students on a whirlwind tour from Glasgow, to Dublin and back to Glasgow via Belfast, brought the house down at a gala concert. p

  • A night for ingenious WITS

    A sharp wind whipped around the "box in the docks" threatening to unbalance all those who crossed over its boardwalk. p

  • The TD, the shake-down and the Arts Bill

    ARTSCAPE: "People are complaining about political influence or political interference in the arts. I actually want to see more ministerial influence and positive interference because at present there is a great need for someone to take a grip of the entire arts sector and give it a fair shake down." p

  • Merry Merrion

    Neighbours popped in to the Merrion Hotel on Wednesday evening this week for a chat and a drop of . . . champagne. There was suckling pig, roast goose and smoked salmon on offer too. p

  • Get your skates on

    There was no sign of Samantha Mumba but Ivor Callely TD was on hand to open Dublin's newest ice rink. p
ArtsBack to Top

  • Ripping up a reputation

    Thriller writer Patricia Cornwell says she has solved the Jack the Ripper case. But her theory that artist Walter Sickert was the killer has more than a few holes in it, says Aidan Dunne . p

  • Championing Tchaikovsky

    Tchaikovsky's just a cheap sentimentalist? Not so, writes Arminta Wallace . He's the man who carried classical harmonies and a simplicity of melodic line into the dark heart of romantic sensibility. p
Book ReviewsBack to Top

  • Beautiful and appalling

    In 1930, in a Swiss clinic following her first breakdown, Zelda wrote to Scott: "I've never been able to decide whether the night was a bitter enemie or a 'grand patron' - or whether I love you most in the eternal classic half- ights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon. Anyway, I love you . . ." p

  • Life of a delinquent diarist

    The human charms of Samuel Pepys reach down the centuries, beguiling all who encounter them. p

  • Hark the National Herald speaks Politics

    For more than half a century, Garret FitzGerald's intellect and energy have infused Irish public life. p

  • Through the looking glass

    A clue to the breadth of reference and the probing enthusiasm of this engaging book is to be found in its subtitle: "How Glass Changed the World". p

  • The silence of the damned

    For Hanna X, there is no memory of life before the suffering and humiliation begin. As a child in an orphanage, as a servant, as a woman hoping for a new life, as a fugitive intent on revenge, only hardship greets her, that and tiny moments of hope. p

  • A Clare winner Local History

    A second updated edition of the original 1991 publication, this most comprehensive study of Clare's unique Burren region has been lauded for its scope, content and colour. p

  • Home thoughts on abroad

    In his foundational work on Irish foreign policy - A Place Among the Nations: Issues in Irish Foreign Policy (1978) - Patrick Keatinge identified the three major levels of international affairs likely to affect Irish policy in the following years: the global, the regional (Europe) and what he described asthe "British Isles sub-system", which he saw as characterised by dominance, dependence and inequality. p

  • Sole scribe, present and correct

    How Jonathan Franzen must relish these words: "I'd be delighted if the audience for serious fiction increased by an order of magnitude, so that I could spare $129 for a CD player. p

  • They tuck you up . . .

    Orwell was once asked why writers write, and he answered "to get revenge on their parents". p

  • Paperbacks

    This deceptively simple, if shrewd, pastoral chronicles a full year's turning in a small lakeside community. p

  • Loose Leaves

    The Books Desk at The Irish Times has been almost drowning in an unprecedented flood of books this autumn and we're not the only ones. p
About UsBack to Top

  • Putting waste to work

    A natural approach to waste management is the way forward - and farmers hold the key, environmentalist Marcus McCabe tells Eileen Battersby p

  • A proper British record of hot Irish plants

    ANOTHER LIFE/Michael Viney: Horseradish sauce, that white, creamy relish of ineffable, nose-tingling pungency, is a taste I acquired in an English childhood - years spiced also with pickled onions and a throat-scarring confection of mustard-soaked vegetables known as Piccallilli. p

  • Horizons

    Grey squirrels may be a delight to watch as they leap from tree to tree, but they are the biggest threat to re-establishing broadleaf woodlands, according to the current issue of Crann's monthly e-newsletter. p

  • Eye On Nature

    What are the dates of the last sightings of swallows, swifts and martins before they migrate? p
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