Darkness into light: Frank McNally on a history-themed quiz in Joyce’s Nighttown
The pub quiz was just around the corner from World’s End, and one of the more famous corners in world literature
Top o’ the mornin’ to ya: Frank McNally on a piece of Route 66 that is forever Irish
Details of how the town of Shamrock acquired its name are somewhat obscured
Another sighting of the lesser-spotted Dublin fanlight horse
A second surviving specimen stands in the window of a Hendrick Street house in Smithfield
Dead Ringer – Frank McNally on a tragic real-life counterpart of a fictional Joycean character
Eveleen Nicolls drowned while trying to save a girl on the Great Blasket in 1909
Autumn reflection: Frank McNally finds poetic cheer in the October gloom
Rereading Patrick Kavanagh’s poem has brought the sobering thought that it may be October in my life now too
Charge of the Fanlight Brigade: a positive sighting of a threatened Dublin species
The horses are not extinct – but whatever did they mean?
Postcards from the Edge – Frank McNally on Samuel Beckett’s newly published German Diaries
Travelling around Nazi Germany, he wrote presciently about war and found inspiration for Waiting for Godot
Shunning victory: Frank McNally on 146 years of the ‘boycott’
Coventry was the proverbial destination in a popular metaphor that meant the same thing
The Foggy Dew: Frank McNally on the Rising ballad’s confused origins and contested lyrics
Legend has it the song’s genesis can be traced to the first Dáil, but facts prove otherwise
Hecht off – Frank McNally on the testing testimony of a brilliant newspaper man
New York-born journalist and author set bar rather high for those who followed
Shafts of Light: Frank McNally on accidentally joining the golf correspondents’ club
Also: St Brendan’s voyage to the White House, and why AI talks like James Joyce and Flann O’Brien
Strong words: America’s ‘greatest diarist’ whose many dislikes included the Irish
Caustic New Yorker had little time for spiritualists, abolitionists, organ grinders, mosquitoes and snobs, either
Asterisked de Gaulle: Frank McNally on the lesser-known, and Irish-speaking, namesake of the general
Charles de Gaulle (1837–1880) anticipated Patrick Pearse by half a century
Bally-aric Island: Frank McNally on feeling surprisingly at home in Menorca
Irishman’s Diary: There is a piece of the Menorcan road network that is forever Irish
Frank McNally: Trump Tower? Doonbeg Castle’s turbulent history and mystery hoard of gold
Away from US president’s golf course, romantic ruin stands as reminder of dark days and dreams