Dooley Dooby Doo - Frank McNally with more on the origins of a famous “Joycean” balladSheet music of the Jerome song sold a million copiesWed Apr 09 2025 - 19:00
Child of Prague Spring – Frank McNally on a sun-soaked country weddingThe Child of Prague is a statue of limitations, apparently: its responsibilities begin and end with blue skiesTue Apr 08 2025 - 18:59
A Game of Two Calves (and several cows): Frank McNally on Patrick Kavanagh’s imagination, mysterious street names, and a bovine legendOn the stem of memory . . .Fri Mar 28 2025 - 18:59
Detour de Force – Frank McNally on William Bulfin’s unwitting side-trip into literary historyWe now know that Bulfin was in the Martello Tower at Sandycove, and that his hosts would later be immortalised in Joyce’s UlyssesThu Mar 27 2025 - 18:59
Barroom Bard – Frank McNally on the fictional Mr Dooley, whose thoughts were once required reading in the White House Finley Peter Dunne first adopted the Hiberno-English patois in his newspaper columns as a defensive ruse, to confuse lawyersWed Mar 26 2025 - 18:58
Art Attack – Frank McNally on the dangers of passive exposure to art and culture“Europe’s largest digital art screen” now occupies the front lawn of the Irish Museum of Modern ArtFri Mar 21 2025 - 18:59
No-Ivy Day at the Committee Room - Frank McNally on an Oval Office mysterySomething is conspicuously missingThu Mar 20 2025 - 18:59
Old Mister Brenon - Frank McNally on a remarkable Dublin-born Hollywood director and his even more remarkable fatherOne judge was sufficiently impressed by Brenon snr to issue a backhanded complimentWed Mar 19 2025 - 18:59
Gnomes of Donegal - Frank McNally on William Allingham’s peculiar brand of IrishnessHis verse revealed the temperament and spirit of IrelandTue Mar 18 2025 - 18:59
Trinity College Dublin celebrates renaming former Berkeley library after poet Eavan BolandTrinity Chancellor Mary McAleese said move was part of dealing with ‘colonial legacies’Mon Mar 10 2025 - 21:53
`Alas! I am very sorry to say/That ninety lives have been taken away' Frank McNally on the `famously bad' poet William McGonagallA poet so bad, as the Book of Heroic Failures puts it, “he backed unwittingly into genius”.Fri Mar 07 2025 - 19:00
Moore the Merrier - Frank McNally on the commemoration of a famous Irish garden party from 1902Three hundred invited guests attended a party that seemed to capture the zeitgeist of a new IrelandThu Mar 06 2025 - 19:00
Ché sara, Sara – Frank McNally on a mysterious Irish beauty who turned Casanova’s headIt was a humble barmaid who made the deepest impression on the Italian adventurerWed Mar 05 2025 - 18:59
What’s with the name? – Frank McNally on O’Doul, O’Day, and other nominal oddities of Irish AmericaSome Irish American surnames can seem almost plausible while also making your ears hurtTue Mar 04 2025 - 18:58
Tributes paid to ‘Ireland’s greatest writer' Jennifer Johnston at public memorial she arrangedFamily, friends and literary luminaries read from Samuel Beckett and the Bible at eventSat Mar 01 2025 - 19:12
The BBC’s national question: Frank McNally on Edna O’Brien and ‘the North of Ireland’Author’s 1979 TV appearance included an implicit history and geography lesson for British viewersFri Feb 28 2025 - 19:00
Dictionary on the Double – Frank McNally on the enduring literary life of Patrick DinneenLexicographer was described by profiler as “in some ways, as mad as a March hare”Thu Feb 27 2025 - 19:00
‘This wonderful horse seems to have been as remarkable in death as in life’ – Frank McNally on an unbeatable stallionEclipse was sufficiently revered that his death created a market for relics not unlike that of saints in medieval timesThu Feb 27 2025 - 06:00
Setting the Bar High – Frank McNally on pubs called The Irish Times (and more songs about newspapers)An empire on which the sun never setsFri Feb 21 2025 - 18:58
The Times they are a-name-checking – Frank McNally on songs about newspapersSing all about itThu Feb 20 2025 - 18:59
Lexicographer at Large – Frank McNally on Dinneen’s Dictionary and the Dáil row about unparliamentary IrishMyles na gCopaleen blamed Dinneen’s Dictionary for his decision to stop writing columns in IrishWed Feb 19 2025 - 18:59
For Whom the Bells Toll – Frank McNally on the ups and downs of “sound baths”It’s another organised way to relax, like yoga but without the stretchingTue Feb 18 2025 - 18:58
The Real McCabe - Frank McNally on a great (and much-married) American newspaper columnistHe received the editorial equivalent of a 21-gun salute: “He was six columns ahead at his death”Fri Feb 14 2025 - 19:00
Comic Stripped - Frank McNally on the cancellation of P.G. WodehouseHis presumed crime was to make a series of broadcasts from Berlin in 1941Thu Feb 13 2025 - 19:00
Signifying Nothing - Frank McNally on a new linguistic plagueA little bell had started to ring in my head every time he said ‘very significant’ againWed Feb 12 2025 - 19:00
Hardebeck Edition – Frank McNally on an Anglo-German musician who became the “blind bard of Belfast”He travelled widely in the Gaeltacht areas of Ulster on a mission to save traditional airs from oblivionFri Feb 07 2025 - 18:50
Anti-social climber – Frank McNally on the pioneering cat burglar Robert Augustus DelaneyHandsome, charming, and well-dressed, Delaney was a popular figure in the West End of LondonThu Feb 06 2025 - 18:58
Digging Up History – Frank McNally on the McMahon, and other once-famous spadesYou didn’t call a spade a spade – you called it a “McMahon”Wed Feb 05 2025 - 18:59
In the name of the father – Frank McNally on the waning tradition of family nicknamesThere was a ‘Boss’, a ‘Yankee’, ‘Pipes’, ‘Mick Miley’, ‘Wee Mick’, and ‘Slasher’, among othersTue Feb 04 2025 - 18:59
Power ballad – Frank McNally on the case for an Irish ‘Wichita Lineman’Has anyone ever composed a musical eulogy, country or otherwise, to Ireland’s electrical repair crews?Fri Jan 31 2025 - 18:59
Austrians battle with Irish terrain and ‘local dialect’ in Storm Éowyn relief effortsAustrian crew set out for Ireland on Monday at 5am in their own cars, travelled through the night, sharing driving duties, and arrived 1,900km and 27 hours laterThu Jan 30 2025 - 19:13
Last Poll and Chorus – Frank McNally on the end of 400 years of Trinity College electionsDublin University can claim to have elected Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy, or a bit of himWed Jan 29 2025 - 18:59
Hit (and miss) parade – Frank McNally on the mixed fortunes of a who’s who list from 40 years ago These lists always give hostages to fortuneTue Jan 28 2025 - 18:59
Cardinal Red – Frank McNally on a cultural history of wind colour The concept of a Dulux-style wind-colour catalogue was well established here and elsewhereFri Jan 24 2025 - 18:58
Poison Pen – Frank McNally on the late-blooming Violet Needham, children’s novelist extraordinaire She had spent a long apprenticeship as a storyteller to nieces and nephewsThu Jan 23 2025 - 18:58
Arsenic and Old Books – Frank McNally on a reader’s literary cry for helpAn unusual problemTue Jan 21 2025 - 18:59
Pointed reference – Frank McNally on the importance of being salientPeace explains why the term “Monaghan Salient” has fallen out of useFri Jan 17 2025 - 18:59
Sleeveen and Jackeen: A History of Ireland in 100 diminutivesNumber 70: Drisheen (stuffed small intestines of sheep, considered food in Cork)Fri Jan 17 2025 - 11:27
(Southern) Cross Country – Frank McNally on Argentina’s 150-year-old Irish newspaperThe world’s longest-running Irish newspaper produced outside Ireland, and among the oldest of any kind in ArgentinaWed Jan 15 2025 - 18:59
Funny Peculiar – Frank McNally on the unhilarious St Hilary and the legal term named after himThe ancient Romans used to host Hilaria: public holidays marked by ceremonial rejoicingTue Jan 14 2025 - 18:59
House Private – Frank McNally on the apparent occupation of 15 Usher’s IslandThe short manifesto in the window has more than twice as many full stops – five – as Molly Bloom’s entire soliloquyFri Jan 10 2025 - 18:59
Mapped Out – Frank McNally on a wealthy namesake’s mansion, destroyed in the Los Angeles firesThe house was built in 1887 for the Armagh-born multimillionaire Andrew McNallyThu Jan 09 2025 - 18:58
Sculptor Exculpated – Frank McNally on the forgotten Irish creator of one of England’s most infamous statuesJohn Cassidy’s gravestone, in the Catholic section of Manchester’s Southern Cemetery, makes no mention of his Irish originsWed Jan 08 2025 - 18:58
Just a tweak, mid-winter – Frank McNally on the ups and downs of ChristmasThey say mishaps come in threes so now I’m waiting for the next one, which is the worst partTue Jan 07 2025 - 18:48
Name Shame – Frank McNally on the continuing tragedy of the forename “Kevin” and a bad night for “Shamrock” in LondonA dramatic decline in a name’s prestigeFri Dec 20 2024 - 18:58
Kiss of Death? – Frank McNally on the rise and fall of mistletoeThe plant and its associated kissing custom continue to be rare hereThu Dec 19 2024 - 18:59
O Holy Fright – Frank McNally on an ‘uplifting’ carol serviceThe world premiere of David Stifter’s hymn, set to music by Ryan Molloy, was a triumphWed Dec 18 2024 - 18:58
Keeping it lit – Frank McNally on attending the global premiere of GloomsdayThe chronological aphelion of BloomsdayTue Dec 17 2024 - 18:58
Decayed Centenary - Frank McNally on the history of Irish brain rotA rather uninspired choice as Oxford University Press word of the year? Maybe notFri Dec 13 2024 - 19:00
The Eyes Have It - Frank McNally on the feast day of St LucyThe name Lucy shares its origins with the word lux, Latin for light, so it’s no coincidence her feast day coincides with the darkest time of the yearThu Dec 12 2024 - 19:00
