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  • Homer nods, film-makers follow

    Trojans celebrate as they bring the wooden horse into their city Movie-makers turn again and again to the savage warrior tales of Homer for inspiration. With the release of the epic 'Troy' imminent, classicist Mary Beard assesses the appeal of stories that are now nearly 3,000 years old p

  • Young lives in Sharp Focus

    Scenes from "The day we skipped the bus" by Shankill Women's Project A pioneering cross-Border project by the Calipo company has led to 40 young people making their film débuts, reports Karen Fricker p
Arts

  • Coming back for more

    Music: Twenty years ago, Macalla paved the way for women playing traditional music. Tonight, the band reunite on stage, reports Siobhán Long p

  • Head of Fringe set to cut loose

    Artscape: Australia giveth to Irish theatre - and it taketh away, writes Belinda McKeon. Two months ago, Dublin Theatre Festival director Fergus Linehan announced his acceptance of the post of artistic director and chief executive officer of the Sydney Arts Festival; now the Melbourne-born director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, Vallejo Gantner, has decided this year's Fringe will be his last. p

  • Beat the drum for Bandon

    On the Town: Gerry Adams was hidden behind a knot of cameras. Other authors, including Ulick O'Connor, Evelyn Conlon and Pádraig Meehan, stood nearby, chatting with friends, while the leader of Sinn Féin dealt with important questions regarding the IRA killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe. p

  • Rebirth and renewal

    On the Town: Dozens of actors and well-wishers filed downstairs into Damer Hall on Dublin's St Stephen's Green to hear news about theatrical goings-on. Today, Damer Hall is the rehearsal space and offices of Ouroboros, the company formerly known as Theatreworks. p

  • Spreading the word

    On the Town: All manner of wordsmiths came to the Chester Beatty Library this week to hear what the Dublin Writers Festival 2004 has to offer. There's Wordweaver, a new documentary by film-maker Roger Hudson, about the 85-year-old writer, Benedict Kiely, which will be screened at the festival. p

  • 'Price' watch

    On the Town: Some were leaving for Beijing the next day for the China Ireland Cultural Festival, which is in full swing. It was the night's best boast. p
About UsBack to Top

  • Polytunnel promises a paradise in plastic

    Another Life: Our little lean-to greenhouse, tucked half into the ground 20 years ago as a way of ducking the ocean wind, has now been quite upstaged by the big new polytunnel nested among the acre's young trees. p

  • Where coffee saves forests

    Coffee plantations using traditional farming methods help maintain forest biodiversity. Sarah Marriott reports p

  • From bud to cup

    Nine months after the bud first appears on a coffee plant, the cherry is ready for harvesting. Cherries ripen unevenly; each plant may be picked four or five times. p

  • Bean machine: the facts about coffee

    Coffee is the second most widely traded commodity in the world (after oil). p

  • Horizons

    Nature events and notices     p

  • EcoWeb

    Nature on the web            p

  • Eye on Nature

    Observations on Nature        p
Book ReviewsBack to Top

  • A spy in the house of love

    Memoir: How to account for the continued fascination that Graham Greene, the man as well as the writer, holds for the reading public? A clutch of biographies, some of them venomous, have appeared since his death, while the delayed third volume of Norman Sherry's elephantine official Life is expected later this year. p

  • A brush with the law

    The Constitution: 'Kelly on the Constitution" has long been a Bible for lawyers and politicians alike, and the publication of its fourth edition, edited for the second time by Gerard Hogan and Gerard Whyte, is an event that resonates outside the dusty corridors of the Four Courts. p

  • Cantankerous adventures

    Memoir: Simon Gray, the author of such well-made plays as Quartermain's Terms and The Common Pursuit, had the misfortune to emerge as a creative force at precisely the time - the early 1970s - when his variety of apolitical, middle-class introspection was at its least fashionable. p

  • Painful relics from the recent past

    Irish Fiction: One of the many resonant images of happiness in David Park's new novel is of a childhood visit to a closed museum on a Sunday. In this protective space the past, for once, is unthreatening. p

  • Reluctant rulers of the world?

    Empire:  During the second World War, as Churchill's point man on Eisenhower's team in Algiers, Harold Macmillan observed that Britain must inevitably come to play the role of latter-day Greeks to the US's Romans. p

  • Narcissism on the double

    Biography: John Fowles has never believed in the Christian God or in any other god, except himself. He enjoys what he calls "playing the godgame", creating men and women in novels and making them do what he desires. p

  • Two tales of a city

    Fiction/History: Perhaps it is time to give London a break from "savage satire", as the blurb of My Name Is Legion dubs A.N. Wilson's latest novel. p

  • Want to know what an 'Irishman's fart' is?

    Dictionary: It sounds like an Irish joke: the Welshman, who now lives in Greece, writing a dictionary of Irish phrases. Thornton B. Edwards has put together this intriguing book about language and the origin of phrases most of us take for granted. p

  • Bruen's double whammy

    Thriller: What have J.M. Synge and Charles Baudelaire got in common? Not a lot, you might think; and to all intents and purposes you'd be right. Yet here they are, both looming large in a pair - though not a matching pair - of thrillers by the Galway-born writer, Ken Bruen. p

  • Classics of northern soul

    Interview: The pleasure of writing for young people is that the boundaries of their world are unfixed and anything is possible, children's author David Almond tells Rosita Boland p

  • Simple sermonising on life and death and brotherly love

    Fiction: No greater love hath a man for a woman than the guy who set out to prove his undying devotion by eating a 747 aircraft down to its last bolt. The approach may be unusual but then romance is a funny thing and nothing sharpens the affections quite like falling for someone who may like you - but not that way. p

  • Paperbacks

    This weeks paperbacks reviewed by Irish Times  critics       p
Seen & HeardBack to Top

  • A hurl of a contest

    The Lasst Strw: I don't know much about Irish cricket, but I was thrilled to read the Daily Telegraph 's report of events in Dublin last week. A "Boy's Own story", the paper's cricket writer called it, describing how "over a couple of damp days, the Irish national team proved that Guinness is good for you, by hurling Surrey out of the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy". p

  • Dublin skyline exclusives

    TV Review: Sky News Ireland arrived on Monday with a smirk. Why, you wondered, has Gráinne Seoige got that sly smile? Why does she look as if she knows something really good is about to happen, but isn't going to tell us what? It certainly couldn't be the "Sky News Ireland Exclusive" that led its  first bulletin. p

  • Getting savaged by weekend business talk

    Radio Review: A couple of weeks ago a pompous- sounding investment analyst on Today FM described the fall in the share price of some stock or other as being a "real brown-trouser day", which was way too much information to take in on a Sunday morning and really an image too far. p
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