Forget the Brontë sisters, they could never match Jilly Cooper for glamorous escapism, and sex
Rosita Boland: At the heart of Cooper’s books lay an ineffable warmth and kindness, written with such joy, I could not stop laughing as I read
In pictures: Portraits of Irish writers as you have never seen them before
Former New Yorker photographer Steve Pyke has compiled a striking book of portraits beginning with Neil Jordan in 1985 and including Marian Keyes, Edna O’Brien, Sebastian Barry
My week in Afghanistan: A little girl tells me she wants to be a dentist. But she won’t be going to school next year
Rosita Boland travelled in Afghanistan under the Taliban with Unicef, visiting schools and reception centres
Glenapp Castle: My double-height room has nine windows and a four poster bed
Glenapp offers a staggering 70 activities within its 110 acres
Ireland’s Greenest Places winners: The five locations our judges loved
Communities large and small around the country are making all sorts of admirable efforts to live more sustainably, but the Dingle Peninsula claims top prize in the Irish Times competition
Ireland’s second-smallest county: ‘There are not many of us who live on the street now’
Ireland’s county towns: Residents share how sport is replacing pub culture and historic buildings are taking on new lives
This county town is the home of Fab Vinnie, tortilla chips and novelist Laurence Sterne
A visit to Clonmel reveals several vacant premises but plenty of charm
Ireland’s county towns: ‘There were 300 people living on this street. Now it’s 17’
In the second in her series on county towns, Rosita Boland discovers there is a lot more to Sligo than its Yeats connection
The ancient Irish town battling against decline: ‘It used to be the centre of things, but those days are gone now’
Downpatrick is the reputed burial place of three Irish saints
How Substack is upending media: ‘It is seriously challenging the old-guard message that people won’t pay for writing’
Big-name writers Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Paul Krugman and Tina Brown have flocked to the platform
A Cork woman in the circus: ‘In transition year, I wrote to a circus dance company asking if I could do an internship’
Gracie Marshall quit school to train to be a performer. Now Sabotage, in which she stars, is on its way to Galway International Arts Festival
Was it just me who found the slogans on two men’s T-shirts so inappropriate?
I am fairly confident if I had asked them why, they would have said it was a joke
A day in the Bere Island school where teachers commute by ferry and classes take place on the beach
Children at Bere Island's two-room school go nature-spotting on the beach and mixed-age groups play in the yard at break
Eileen Walsh: Women actors ‘are like avocados. You’re nearly ready, nearly ready - then you’re ripe, then you’ve gone off’
The Cork actor, who has returned to live in Ireland after 30 years, on ageing, working with Cillian Murphy, and her upcoming role in a 24-hour play with 100 unknown men
What high-end tourists get up to in Ireland: ‘You always have to make things happen. We do a lot of helicopters’
From Taylor Swift to millionaire CEOs, luxury travel agency founder Siobhan Byrne caters to the desires of the rich and famous who want bespoke Irish holidays