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Small town, big screen
Like his accomplished television dramas, director Declan Recks's first feature film tells a story set in a small Irish town, writes Peter Crawley p
Is art fit for society?
In a new series, beginning today and running on Mondays,
Sara Keating will investigate how the arts are
being used to contribute to the development of Irish society. Oscar
Wilde flippantly commented that 'the arts are useless'. This series
suggests the infamous wit's proclamation need not be true p
Case study: 'the public and the arts'
In a policy document published late in 2006, the Arts Council presented the findings of a comprehensive survey that recorded the attitudes of a varied demographic to "the role of the arts in society". p
Arts
Bigger than the real thing
On The Town: It was the best of nights and the worst of nights as fans, film-goers, cameramen, photographers, reporters and some gardaí waited to greet U2 at Dublin's Cineworld this week. The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival celebrated a coup with the European premiere of the first 3D digital film about the band, called U2 3D . pPatrons play their part at music fest
ArtScape Last weekend the music of Arvo Pärt brought the RTÉ Living Music Festival to a new level of popular success, writes Michael Dervan . pThe poet who came in from the cold
Culture Shock: Harry Clifton's first full book since 1994 is a dazzlingly accomplished collection of poetry p
Truth behind the blarney
A rigorous new study of Blarney Castle has caused controversy this week, writes Barry Roche , Southern Correspondent pHow to think globally by acting locally
Another Life There's fun to be had from some of the more bizarre omens of climate change - red admiral butterflies supping at snowdrops, for example (this from England). But with so many tree-rings to my bones, I warm to more usual signs of spring. Thus, while it's been nice to hear the song thrush all these weeks, I applauded the magpie that waited another month to fly across the hillside bearing a twig longer than itself. The frogs marked my birthday, as usual, with the first clump of spawn in the pond. And it was common daisies, not daffodils, that lifted their heads, so suddenly, radiantly white, to track the rebirth of the sun. pHorizons
Best foot forward My carbon footprint is the theme of this year's Life Through A Lens photographic competition for secondary school students. pEye on nature
Readers' observations on nature p
Let's get back to mourning
Psychology: The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression By Darian Leader Hamish Hamilton, 223pp. £17.99 As Darian Leader points out in his rigorous and engaging study of the nature of depression, the overworked word itself has been subject to some semantic slippage. pA breezy tale of Belfast and Johannesburg
Memoir: Stealing Water By Tim Ecott Sceptre, 235pp, £16.99 The North wasn't a very pleasant place in the 1970s. So when Tim Ecott, a student at Queen's University in Belfast, used to say that he lived in Johannesburg - and that he was flying home for Christmas - his friends must have felt an occasional pang of envy. "They imagined," he notes wryly, " a south African idyll where white people sat beside swimming pools and were attended by black servants." pLibrarians on the lam
Fiction: The Delegates' Choice By Ian Sansom Harper Perennial, 286pp. £7.99 An odd couple of curmudgeonly mobile librarians driving around "the windswept north coast of the north of the north of Northern Ireland", bickering about their van, their boss, the quality of the coffee - there's got to be a novel in there somewhere, or three novels if you're Ian Sansom, gleeful chronicler of municipal mundanity, puncturer of cultural pretension and navigator of the heart's B-roads. pSex for sale in old Ireland
History: Prostitution and Irish Society 1800-1914 By Maria Luddy Cambridge University Press, 352pp. £15.99 Between 1800 and 1940, thousands of women worked as prostitutes throughout Ireland. For some, prostitution was a way of life, while for others it was a temporary solution to a desperate situation. pA sinking feeling
Fiction: Submarine By Joe Dunthorne Hamish Hamilton, 289pp. £16.99 It's an unsettling feeling to be about 30 pages into a new novel and realise with a sort of dispirited certainty that you're both the wrong age and sex to be reading the book in the first place. pHave the press become PR patsies?
Media: Flat Earth News By Nick Davies Chatto & Windus, 408pp. £17.99 Nick Davies is a long-time journalist with the Guardian , and has now turned his investigative talents on his own profession. In Flat Earth News he breaks one of the "rules" of journalism, that "dog does not eat dog". The tale he tells is a depressing one of journalists working in "news factories" that turn out an increasing amount of falsehood, distortion and propaganda. pA parent to poetry
Essay: For more than 26 years, Jessie Lendennie has been nurturing and publishing poets via Salmon Poetry, from her home in Co Clare. One of them, Eva Bourke , salutes her contribution pA colourful canvass
Politics: How Ireland Voted 2007: The Full Story of Ireland's General Election Edited by Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh Palgrave Macmillan, 308pp. £60 Irish general elections are astonishing events. They may well be the most intriguing of any in western democracies. pAn unlikely hero in the coldest war
Fiction: The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles By Roy Jacobsen, translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw John Murray, 200pp. £12.99 War always war. No matter how often poets and songwriters appear to attempt otherwise, few love stories ever succeed in rewriting life as definitively as war has done, and continues to do with murky insistence. pDistinguished Desai comes to Dublin
Loose Leaves: Indian writer Anita Desai, who in 2006 became briefly better known as the mother of that year's Man Booker prize winner Kiran Desai, is coming to Ireland this spring to lecture at Trinity College Dublin. pPaperbacks
A selection of the latest paperbacks reviewed p
The pursuit of happiness
TV Review Shhh, please, I'm trying to radiate a bit of joy into the universe. I'm planting my two feet on the floor and thanking the benevolent universe for my, em, for my . . . two feet, planted on the floor (which I've neglected to Hoover). I am a little ball of joy, a spectrum of ecstasy, attracting happiness to myself like a nectar-heavy bud ensnares a bee, and any moment now this generous cosmos is going to provide me with an abundance of riches and everything else I want. pToo many boys add to the noise
Radio Review Of those stations top-of-the-crops in the JNLRs - RTÉ Radio 1, RTÉ 2FM, Today FM and upstart Newstalk 106-108 - there are only three midweek daytime female presenters outside of news: Orla Barry and Brenda Power on Newstalk, and Nikki Hayes on 2FM. pI can't remember my exact words but it was something along the lines of, aaaggghhh! Sorcha's going, 'What's wrong? What's wrong?'
Cillian's in London, which means a chance to swing by Sorcha's, take her for a spin in the dweeb's new cor and try to, like, reseal the deal And save the planet, writes Ross O'Carroll-Kelly p
