Previous Day
Staying cool in two continents
As her new film shows, Mira Nair loves the 'quizzical things'
resulting from cultural misunderstanding. She talks to
Donald Clarke. p
Strokes of enigmatic elegance
The art of shodo, traditional Japanese calligraphy, is a graceful blend of poise and penmanship, rhythm and stillness, writes Arminta Wallace. p
Player on the streets of a half-perfect world
American-born Parisian Madeleine Peyroux has the perfect blend of influences for her languorous music, writes Tony Clayton-Lea. p
Arts
Our collective memory has blanked out slavery
CultureShock: We have forgotten that St Patrick was a slave, that slavery was practised here until recently and that the sex industry is its modern incarnation pIn tune for magical evenings
OnTheTown: There will be "magical evenings . . . gossamered with the ornate elegance of G-clefs and quavers" over 10 days in June. So extolled John O'Donoghue TD, the Minister for Arts, when he launched the programme for this year's IIB Bank Music in Great Irish Houses festival. pBritish Council looks North
ArtScape: The three members of staff at the Irish offices of the British Council were due to be served with redundancy notices yesterday, and will be gone by the end of April. p
Revival of a vital artery
If the campaign to reopen the Ulster Canal succeeds, it would represent a symbolic social investment that goes beyond pure politics and economics, writes Tarka Leslie-King pPine marten link to decline in grey squirrels
Another Life: Among the potential excitements of opening up one's holiday house in any conifered corner of Ireland this Easter may be a sense of other presences upstairs, together with a whiff of something musky or worse and a muffled miaowing that doesn't quite sound like cats. pEyeOnNature
Readers' observations on nature pHorizons
Cancel out your carbon: Do you see carbon-offsetting as the ultimate guilt-free solution to global warming? Or put simply, next time you take a flight, will you plant a tree or find someone who will do so on your behalf? According to an article in this month's New Scientist, the market in so-called environmental absolution is remarkably unregulated. p
Changing at the crossroads
The Europe of the last century, dominated by the Holocaust and the Iron Curtain, is transformed. pFlights of imagination in the mother tongue
Poetry: The word "sanas" is defined as "whisper, hint, suggestion" but it is also the root of the word "sanasaíocht", meaning "etymology". pThe sorry life of the forgotten Brontë
Fiction: Branwell, subtitled A Novel of the Brontë Brother , recreates the world of the brother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne. pGracious keeper of the flame
Interview: In spite of her own literary achievements, it is her life with her late husband, writer Raymond Carver, that defines Tess Gallagher in the public mind. On one of her regular visits to Ireland, she talks to Rosita Boland. pA great book about bad sex
Fiction: Ian McEwan loves the pivotal moment, the incident, the event which alters everything that follows and throws into relief everything which came before. pMedicine, machines and the mind
Health: Is social isolation just as hazardous to health as smoking or obesity? And is modern medicine mistaken to ignore personal details of a patient's life? pA childhood for young people
Autobiography: Girls who have grown up with sweetie-coloured Jacqueline Wilson books on their bedside tables will tell you there's a lot of unhappy marriages between the covers. pProsperity and prejudice
Biography: Love, it appears, is not the only international lingua franca; money also has the ability to make its meaning plain anywhere and everywhere. After Nathan Rothschild's death, in July 1836, a writer in the Observer noted that while the deceased "had never acquired a correct knowledge of the English language, and consequently expressed himself in a strange sort of diction, yet it was impossible to be with him for ten minutes and not to perceive that his understanding was sagacious, clear and sound". pThe unveiling of Veronica
Fiction: The Secret of My Face is all about secrets, their revealing and unveiling, in a well-wrought narrative set in 1930s Ireland. The debut novel of actress Karen Ardiff, it tells the poignant story of Veronica Broderick, whose face has been marked since birth by a cleft lip and palate. The novel focuses on events surrounding a planned reconstructive surgery operation on the young girl. pLandy lands seven-figure book deal
Loose Leaves: Dublin screenwriter Derek Landy's debut children's book Skulduggery Pleasant has become a runaway success before it's even published next Monday, with news that he's been signed up by publisher HarperCollins for a deal including two more books worth more than £1 million (€1.47 million). pPaperbacks
The latest paperback reviewed. pMorning Glory
A poem by Peter Fallon p
The end is nigh. No, really
PresentTense: We're doomed. You probably know this already, given that the headlines are far from coy on the matter. Only a few weeks ago one Sunday newspaper carried the front-page promise of "Apocalypse soon!", writes Shane Hegarty . pChick-lit on crack cocaine
TVReview: 'I ken you was always a wee bit kinky." Irvine Welsh, the bad boy of Scottish literature, who catapulted his rare and viciously lovely talent into our consciousness in the early 1990s with his book, Trainspotting, returned to his familiar terrain of Edinburgh's Leith this week with his first TV comedy drama, Wedding Belles. pWhat of the man in the Northern street?
RadioReview: Coverage of the Northern Ireland Assembly agreement filled the news and current affairs programmes at the start of the week - though calls about the whole thing to the many phone-in shows were noticeably absent, usually a safe enough barometer of man-in-the-street interest. p
