ireland.com - The Irish Times

Wave power in harness
Geo-engineer Stephen Salter's work was once derided, but with global warming on the rise it might be coming back into fashion, writes Brian O'Connell p

Wearing the trousers
Bill Nighy has given up Shakespeare and funny trousers - but it took him years to earn the right, he tells Belinda McKeon in New York p

The murky depths of desire
Blackbird, a play about a sexual relationship between a man and a 12-year-old girl, never takes sides or imposes moral boundaries. Playwright David Harrower talks to Christine Madden p

Arts

Making sense of Imelda - without the shoes
David Byrne tells Andrew Purcell why he teamed up with Fatboy Slim to write an opera about the disco-loving side of dictator's wife Imelda Marcos p
Our ancestors weren't Celts, they were copycats
Culture Shock Fintan O'Toole The first of a weekly column looks at a great Irish cultural secret: we aren't really Celtic and there never was a Celtic invasion p
Mutter to plough fee back into NCH
Art Scape Deirdre Falvey Anne-Sophie Mutter is clearly a fan of the National Concert Hall, where she has performed regularly over the past 20 years. In an unusual development, the virtuoso violinist is to donate her concert fee from her March 8th performance to the NCH's education fund. While Mutter has done other benefit concerts, mainly for her own foundation, this is her first in Dublin, and the first concert of its kind for the NCH. p
Players that make the Diff
On The Town Catherine Foley This year the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival (Diff) will show 109 feature films, including the German masterpiece, Metropolis, the Irish-made Sundance World Cinema Audience Award winner, Once, and the festival's first Irish-language feature film, Cré na Cille. The organisers hope to attract 35,000 viewers to screenings during the 10-day event. p

About Us

Salt seeding Whiter clouds for a cooler earth
Every day, marine stratocumulus clouds cover about one-third of the world's oceans, mostly around the tropics. p
Heavy rains taking lumps out of mountains
Another Life Michael Viney The frosty sunshine found Connacht full of puddles, some the size of lakes: they glittered all the more brightly with a morning glaze of ice at the edges. The land was full to overflowing after endless weeks of rain (a record 45.5mm in my rain gauge one day in December). p
Horizons
The northwest goes for glory Greenbox, the eco-tourism project in the northwest of Ireland is one of three finalists in the destination category of the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards. The cross-Border eco-tourism destination, which includes all of counties Leitrim and Fermanagh and parts of Donegal, Sligo, Cavan and Monaghan (see www.greenbox.ie) has been short-listed alongside the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the state of Vermont in the United States. p

Book Reviews

An oeuvre seen in full coherence
Louis MacNeice 1907-1963 'Have you seen Louis MacNeice's poems?' Elizabeth Bishop wrote to Marianne Moore in 1938. "That's the kind of spotted, helter-skelter thing it seems so easy to fall into." p
Getting a feel for Friel
Theatre From Skibbereen to Seattle or Surrey to Saskatoon you are almost certain to encounter somewhere the writings of Brian Friel. p
Squirts, Clefts and gender platitudes
Fiction Early New Year, and already a new novel from the great Doris Lessing, writer of The Golden Notebook and other splendid novels, such as Martha Quest, The Four-Gated City, her outspoken autobiography, Under My Skin, and many, many more. p
A survival manual for the kidnapped
Memoir In the "hole" - the tiny outdoor cellar where he spent most of his kidnapping - Peter Shaw was chained by his neck to a wall, kept in pitch dark except for eked-out candles, dripped on, bitten by flies, worried by slugs and rats, and starved of human contact except for the twice-daily delivery of food. p
A poet permeated by the Beat
Poetry Being Irish-American has never really been particularly "cool". Bob Dylan admits to learning a few things from Liam Clancy about protest songs, and there's nothing particularly uncool about catching a Flogging Molly or Dropkick Murphys show. But between Bill O'Reilly and Pat Buchanan, the rebirth of cool does not seem to be around the corner. p
Big names up for MacNeice celebration
LooseLeaves Caroline Walsh The poetry world is limbering up this month for the centenary celebrations of WH Auden's birth in York. p
Telling it like it really was
Memoir First things first. Dinah O'Dowd is the mother of George O'Dowd, who most of us will know better as Boy George, colourful pop star, well-publicised drug addict and lifelong devotee of the dressing-up box. p
Salmon sacrificed to the political angle
Fiction A man has a wish, he wants to see salmon leaping - and being caught. Admittedly, his wish is slightly complicated in that he wants to see this activity taking place in the Yemen, a place not usually associated with salmon-fishing. p
Paperbacks
A selection of paperbacks reviewed p

Seen & Heard

Mired in the midlands
TV Review Hilary Fannin Anyone for a "panini and lap dance lunchtime special"? Twenty quid all in, and even more appetising if the barman keeps his greasy locks out of your cup-a-soup. p
Fleshing out the bones of a great story
Radio Review Bernice Harrison There were many layers in Ciaran Cassidy's excellent Documentary on One: The Ballad of Patrick Foley (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), each one as thought-provoking as the next. p
Dark days for Irish satire
Present Tense Shane Hegarty RTÉ radio has been running a series of comedy sketches on Marty Whelan's 2FM breakfast show, and again on Derek Mooney's Radio 1 show. The sketches go by the title Nob Nation. The subtlety of that pun should give you a good hint as to their effectiveness. p

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Wave power in harness

Wearing the trousers

The murky depths of desire

Making sense of Imelda - without the shoes

Our ancestors weren't Celts, they were copycats

Mutter to plough fee back into NCH

Players that make the Diff

Salt seeding Whiter clouds for a cooler earth

Heavy rains taking lumps out of mountains

Horizons

An oeuvre seen in full coherence

Getting a feel for Friel

Squirts, Clefts and gender platitudes

A survival manual for the kidnapped

A poet permeated by the Beat

Big names up for MacNeice celebration

Telling it like it really was

Salmon sacrificed to the political angle

Paperbacks

Mired in the midlands

Fleshing out the bones of a great story

Dark days for Irish satire

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