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Kings of the road for 46 years
THEY'VE BEEN touring longer than Jagger and co, and the glamour
may have died, but The Chieftains can't get their heads around the
idea of retiring, says their 'gaffer', Paddy Moloney , in advance
of their performance in Carnegie Hall in New York on Monday, writes
Willie Dillon . p
Waging war against silence on Iraq
AS THE fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion looms, there seems to be no appetite for films that tell the truth about the war, and directors of so-called Bin Laden cinema are labelled traitors, writes Simon Hattenstone . p
Arts
McDonagh has left the theatre. Or has he?
CULTURE SHOCK: MARTIN MCDONAGH has always talked as if plays were poor man's films, but, ironically, his feature film debut In Bruges has strong roots in theatre, writes Fintan O'Toole . p
How to make cities work
WITH 60 per cent of the world's population predicted to live in cities by 2030, the OpenCities project aims to encourage cities to be safe, multicultural and well laid out, in the mould of Vancouver, Vienna, Bilbao - and Belfast, writes Angela Long . pGLOBAL CITIES: HOW CHAOS THEORY RULES CONFLICT
"Weaponisation" is the latest threat to the security and prosperity of cities all over the world, says urban expert and leading sociologist Prof Saskia Sassen, a professor at Columbia University in New York, who sits on Columbia's Committee for Global Thought. pNorth lagging behind despite cash boost
ARTSCAPE: IT'S BEEN A long, tense wait over a cold, cheerless winter, but at last the sun has broken through for the cash-strapped arts community in the North, writes Jane Coyle . pDispatches from the Burren
FOR 21 YEARS, Sarah Poyntz's stealthy observations and finely honed vignettes from the Co Clare landscape in the 'Guardian' have given the wider world access to a special place, writes Paul Clements . pFresh ideas for a recyclable planet
ANOTHER LIFE: THE PROSPECT of another great sweep of green fields - some of the best land on the island - being annexed as a new tip for Dublin's waste sent me to this newspaper's digital archive and a features page headed "The Waste Land" that I put together in 1974, writes Michael Viney .
pEYE ON NATURE
I HAVE had a flock of about 50 wagtails in my garden for more than three weeks. They are generally in one corner, where they roost at night in a griselinia hedge. We see them in the evening time. Is this size of flock unusual? pHORIZONS
The monolith of globalisation replicates artisan workshops from Tuscany to Provence and San Marino to San Gimignano, selling the notion of popular national folklore and fantasy medievalism, writes Sylvia Thompson. p
Inside the flip-side of life and love
SHORT STORIES: Taking Pictures By Anne Enright, Jonathan Cape, 227pp, £12.99 In her new collection, Anne Enright vividly depicts the petty whirlwinds and small, stupid mistakes of ordinary lives, and she records the quiet revelations, writes Claire Messud . pA comic turn at the turn of the century
FICTION: The Assistant By Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky, Penguin Modern Classics, 301pp. £9.99 It all begins one Monday morning with a young man standing in the rain at the front door of a private, almost isolated, house, writes Eileen Battersby . pSecond Reading
Le Grand Meaulnes By Alain-Fournier, First published 1912 Mystery, romance and unbearable sadness haunt this graceful, elegiac study of the passage from boyhood, that lost domain of dreams, to the adult world, writes Eileen Battersby . pA grim date with the Reaper
MEMOIR: Nothing to Be Frightened Of By Julian Barnes, Jonathan Cape, 250pp. £16.99
A depressing, tedious book about being 60, losing your parents, and realising that you are next in line, writes Gabriel Josipovici . pHard slog and sacrifice in Mary land
POLITICS: There's Something about Mary By Mary Banotti, Currach Press, 190pp . €14.99 There is something instantly appealing about the title of this book. Not only is it the name of a very silly, very funny 1998 comedy starring the gorgeous Cameron Diaz, but it also reflects a truism that has occurred to anyone with a passing interest in Irish politics, writes Ivana Bacik . pThe Buddha of suburbia
SHORT STORIES: Caravan Thieves By Gerard Woodward, Chatto & Windus, £15.99 Gerard Woodward, it seems, can turn his hand to anything. First he wrote poetry, then an acclaimed trilogy of novels, one of which, I'll Go To Bed At Noon, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, and now here he is in Caravan Thieves, applying himself with the same deadpan ease to short stories, writes Fiona McCann . pThe benefits of apprenticeship
SOCIOLOGY: The Craftsman By Richard Sennett, Penguin/Allen Lane, 326pp. £25 The never-ending process of understanding is infinitely more important than quantifying the time spent teaching and learning, writes Andreas Hess . pVoyage around a father
FICTION: The Rowing Lesson By Anne Landsman, Granta, 279pp. £12 There's a moment in Anne Landsman's second novel, The Rowing Lesson, when the narrator, Betsy, remembers an incident from her childhood, writes Catherine Heaney . pLOOSE LEAVES
TCD's Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, housed in the original Wilde family home at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, will celebrate its 10th anniversary next month with a symposium on the doyen of Irish fiction, William Trevor, readings by the centre's graduates and writer fellows, and the launch of sixteenafterten, an anthology of the work of the current crop of creative-writing students, writes Caroline Walsh . pThe life and death of a peacemaker
BIOGRAPHY: Chasing the Flame: Sérgio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World, By Samantha Power, Penguin, 600pp. £25 An admiring, balanced but overwhelmingly detailed biography of a long-serving UN humanitarian who was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq in 2003, writes Adam Lebor . pPaisley and the Provos: inextricably linked?
POLITICS: Paisley: From Demagogue to Democrat? By Ed Moloney, Poolbeg, 562pp. €22.99 'It is not Irish to trample on a fallen foe," declared the Catholic Canon Cohalan when condemning the sectarian murders of several Protestants near Dunmanway in 1922, writes Paul Bew . pPAPERBACKS
A selection of the latest paperbacks reviewed p
Tale with no happy ending
TV REVIEW: 'Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? I've been to London to visit the queen. Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there? I frightened a little Maoist under her chair.' Hilary Fanin reviews this week's television highlights.
pDay after day of real-life drama
RADIO REVIEW: Sometimes the real world, as it is represented on the radio, can be too divisive, too repetitive, too depressing, too much said with too little time, and too darn sad. And that's without the head-wrecking benefit of jingles and relentless advertisements urging us to buy more loot we really don't want or need, writes Quentin Fottrell .
p'I would join my comrades at Parnell Square each March 17th to wave placards calling for the secularisation of the state holiday'
SAVING ST Patrick's Day from the capitalist clutches of the lobotomised iGeneration is a fraught challenge, but in rising to it, I have surprisingly embraced those very traditions I once so proudly abjured, writes Ultan Quigley . p
