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From New York to New Mexico
Georgia O'Keeffe held her own in the male-dominated world of American art, producing paintings of startling originality drawn from motifs in nature. Now an exhibition of her work can be seen at Imma, writes Aidan Dunne p

Moving hearts and minds
Dónal Lunny, who is celebrating his 60th birthday, looks back at Planxty and Moving Hearts, and forward to new Celtic jazz sounds. He talks to Arminta Wallace p

Pulling the strings
How Lunny took the music from black-and-white to colour. p

Arts

Glasnevin Cemetery, one of Ireland's liveliest spaces
Culture Shock Fintan O'Toole The plan to refurbish Glasnevin Cemetery in time for the Easter Rising centenary is a belated official recognition of its cultural consequence p
A young man came Cúirtin'
On The Town: A zealous young literary festival curator in Galway phones Seamus Heaney for a favour. Would the poet have a number for a fellow Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott? Heaney obliges with a contact in Trinidad, and the sigh of relief can be heard east of the Shannon. p
'Making History' at historic sites
ArtScape: It's a staggeringly ambitious plan, and an exciting prospect. Ouroboros theatre production company and artistic director Denis Conway are bringing their terrific production of Brian Friel's Making History on tour, in this, the 400th anniversary of the Flight of the Earls. p

About Us

Clues to Darcy's character
One-time Irish chief justice Tom Lefroy may have been the inspiration for Jane Austen's Mr Darcy. Edmund Honohan , the Master of the High Court, considers the evidence p
The perfect holiday at Spiddal's peaceful hill
Another Life Michael Viney p
Horizons
Leggett heads to Cultivate Scientist, oil industry consultant and businessman Jeremy Leggett will give a public lecture, Connecting Climate Change to Peak Oil, on Tuesday at 7.30pm in Cultivate, 15-19 Essex Street West, Dublin 8. p
EcoWeb
www.biology.ie On this phenology site, you can submit sightings of wildlife, which are then mapped and can be viewed by all users. p

Book Reviews

Lists of the elite
Literary Criticism A professor at the University of Paris has recently had an unusual popular success with the publication of a book in which he admits to the world the shocking gaps in his own literary education and proffers advice to readers on how they too can pass themselves off in the fashionable world with the minimum of dull page-turning labour. p
An apocalypse without conviction
Fiction Post-apocalypse America is the new theme. Writers have taken the events of 9/11 as a rallying cry of sorts. While there is no doubt that the second World War remains the single big story, and continues to inspire fiction writers, a near biblical fear of the coming retribution is also preoccupying many people, including writers. It all makes sense; after all, we have destroyed the planet, it is dying. p
Unconscious actions
Teenage Fiction It can hardly be more than a coincidence - albeit an interesting one - that three of the most impressive of the first teenage novels of 2007 should open with a hero or heroine lying in an anaesthetised state in a hospital bed. Whatever the explanation for this thematic focus, it is good to be able to report that their concern with the comatose has not resulted in sleepy narrative or lethargic style; rather, they are all strong, powerfully written, emotion-driven stories, remarkably free from the more usual obsessions of the genre. p
Neutral but not neutralised
Interview Clair Wills has written a book about how the Emergency and neutrality affected Irish culture, in which she challenges the perception of an island stagnating under censorship. She talks to Shane Hegarty p
Lock up your heiresses, the Irish are about
History 'There is one thing you can tell Mr Townsend when you see him again," says rich Dr Sloper to his daughter in Henry James's Washington Square. p
New words to an ancient song
Poetry What could they ever be again, those three words, but a loud knock on the door of a fabled poem, with interested readers all ears to learn how a new translator might venture to answer? Arma virumque cano. p
Busy, busy times for the Dublin Murder Squad
Crime One would have expected a mystery novel from the Prior of Glenstal, Fr Andrew Nugent, to be conservative, a little staid, somewhat old-fashioned, but no, Second Burial is as up to date as an SSIA. It deals with racism, child sexual abuse and the problems facing immigrants in this country, and the profusion of the F-word leaves one gaping. p
Where to find the dead poets society
LooseLeaves Caroline Walsh While Monday's announcement of a €25 million redevelopment plan for Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery drew attention mainly to the famous historic dead who lie there - including Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and Eamon de Valera - like any big cemetery it has its famous dead poets, playwrights and novelists as well. p
A regal rural collection
Short Stories Occasionally a description is overdone, from time to time a wisecrack is superfluous, but this is perhaps the inevitable result of generosity; you will be hard pressed to find a dull paragraph in Kevin Barry's very stylish and witty first collection of short stories. p
A tale of clerical terrors
Folklore Peter Marshall's story - one of his stories - begins in 1634, with the death and burial in the coastal town of Minehead, Somerset, of an old woman named Susan Leakey. Nothing that had happened to Mother Leakey during her lifetime had the impact of her posthumous activities. p
Paperbacks
A selection of paperbacks reviewed p

Seen & Heard

More gristle in our eyes
TV Review: And tonight, Matthew, I'm gonna be . . .Matthew Kelly, having escaped from the purgatory of 18,000 years as presenter of Stars in Their Eyes to be a serious thespian again, reprised his role as wet-lipped serial killer Brian Wicklow this week in Cold Blood II , another shivering offering on the blood-soaked table of the ITV drama premiere, writes Hilary Fannin p
Spam or ham? It's just a matter of taste
Radio Review: One man's Spam is another man's ham explained the techie guy, and as reasonable as his tone was (Click On, BBC Radio 4, Wednesday), you just knew he didn't mean it. Working for McAfee, a company that produces anti-spam software, Guy Roberts's days are filled with devising strategies for blocking unsolicited e-mails offering dodgy Viagra, cut-price breast implants and instant wealth. Among the many millions of spam e-mails dumped into computer in-boxes daily, there were very few he considered to be on the truly tasty side. p
This is not about the North. Honest
Present Tense: A few years ago someone in RTÉ was telling me how delighted the station was with Prime Time's ratings. The current affairs flagship was pulling in big ratings every week, and those jumped even higher for the special investigations. There was just one problem: the North. Any time the story was about Northern Ireland, ratings slumped. From deep within Montrose, you could almost make out the collective click of remote controls as viewers switched over to something else. p

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From New York to New Mexico

Moving hearts and minds

Pulling the strings

Glasnevin Cemetery, one of Ireland's liveliest spaces

A young man came Cúirtin'

'Making History' at historic sites

Clues to Darcy's character

The perfect holiday at Spiddal's peaceful hill

Horizons

EcoWeb

Lists of the elite

An apocalypse without conviction

Unconscious actions

Neutral but not neutralised

Lock up your heiresses, the Irish are about

New words to an ancient song

Busy, busy times for the Dublin Murder Squad

Where to find the dead poets society

A regal rural collection

A tale of clerical terrors

Paperbacks

More gristle in our eyes

Spam or ham? It's just a matter of taste

This is not about the North. Honest

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