An Irish Diary

Strong Language – Frank McNally on ‘moithered’, ‘míle murder’, and the lesser-spotted ‘hecatomb’

Expanding vocabulary

Fast Forward — Frank McNally on the forgotten mass hunger strike of 1923

Free State authorities kept publicity for the Anti-Treaty protest to a minimum

Getting possessive about apostrophes – Alison Healy on the rise of the punctuation warriors

One activist customised a stepladder and invented an “apostrophiser”

Fighting fit — Brian Maye on bare-knuckle heavyweight boxer Tom Sharkey

One of the toughest competitors ever seen in professional boxing

Hold on to your Hat – Alison Healy on an artist who was not all that he seemed

Bruno Hat’s artistic exploits became the talk of London

Mná na hÉireann – John Mulqueen on a fiery debate over women’s role and the Constitution

The view that the constitutional status of women should be updated echoes the arguments made by feminists in 1937

A ‘spectacularly productive’ historian – Brian Maye on Trinity provost FSL Lyons

Lyons’s influence on perceptions of Irish history remains immense

A different tune – Colm Keena on Joan Armatrading

Artistic expression lightens our load

The best medicine – Brian Maye on actor and comedian Harry O’Donovan

O’Donovan’s partnership with Jimmy O’Dea delighted Irish audiences for decades

Dylan Thomas in Donegal – how the poet sought refuge from London’s “capital punishment” in moorland and hills

Thomas eventually tired of his rural retreat, disliking the solitude and fearing the dark

Martin Market – Frank McNally on the joys and pains of Martinmas

The continued association of the date with eating and drinking

Treasured son of Timor Leste – David Shanks on the heroic life of Max Stahl

He risked his life filming the Santo Cruz cemetery massacre of perhaps 100 young Timorese mourners by Indonesian troops

A poet’s last stand – Frank McNally on the death of Dylan Thomas, 70 years ago

Even if the 18 whiskeys never happened, Thomas must certainly have set a few drinking records in his short life

Multiple Joyce – Frank McNally on how the author is general, all over Ireland

A phantom engagement of sorts

It was 60 years ago today – Éanna Brophy on the night The Beatles rocked Dublin

The screams became a relentless chant of “We Want The Beatles”

An Irish Diary: Ieper, a 100-year-old medieval city

Belgian city, also known as Ypres, was almost completely flattened during first World War

Ogs and Ends - Frank McNally on Michael Collins’s other nickname, the Liffey on film and a Dublin dialect dysfunction

It appears the Big Fellow had a funny accent – even by Cork standards

“Want flowers, love?” - Frank McNally on the distinctive sounds of Dublin

The ould triangle going jingle jangle/All along the banks of Temple Bar

The Greatest Escape? Frank McNally on one man’s mission to make a movie about the Catalpa Rescue

Rollicking true story has been made into a screenplay ahead of its 150th anniversary in 2026

All That Glit – Frank McNally on the ancient origins of a slippery word

Patrick Kavanagh may not have used the word in his poetry, but Seamus Heaney did

‘A snoring is heard every night... at the hour at which he passed away’

Ghost stories from 1913 make for a fascinating psychogram of Irish middle-class anxieties

Shining a light into the often-overlooked work of obituarists

There’s always a risk that you might prematurely report the death of a famous person

Cliffhanger from Cooneen - Frank McNally on the only Irish ghost that ever emigrated

Ireland and Scotland should have patented Halloween before it went corporate

Balladeer Diary - Frank McNally on the Dubliners, ‘Tonehenge’ and sculptor Edward Delaney

And a lesser controversy, still also lingering, about the lyrics in the third verse of Raglan Road

Time waits for Naumann – Frank McNally on a buried tragedy in Joyce’s Ulysses

Investigating a possible allusion to a man not yet deceased

Fighting Talk – Frank McNally on the perilous pubs and less-than-mean streets of Dublin

Enjoying an oasis of calm in the early hours of Saturday

Fionnuala Ward: So long autographs, selfies are taking over

Getting a photo with a celebrity is the done thing these days, but a few scribbled words can also tell a tale

‘Europe’s welcome to the Free State’: The story of WB Yeats’s Nobel victory

Yeats did not know that 1923, the year of his Nobel prize, did not mark his first nomination but his seventh

The harps, the harps – Frank McNally on the continued revival of two once-doomed instruments

The mystic chords of memory

Gray Area – Frank McNally on a notorious 19th-century loyalist, ‘Sam Gray of Ballybay’

More than once he got away with murder – literally – because he could pack juries

New Word Order – Frank McNally on why some neologisms take off while others don’t

Big Brother, Newspeak, Double Think, and Thought Police all soon became standard English

Cultural memory – Frank McNally on remembering and forgetting the murder of Noel Lemass

A reference in Samuel Beckett’s novel Mercier and Camier

Beyond the fringe – John Mulqueen on a long tradition of student housing protests

Hume Street still stands today, thanks to brave students and their many supporters who prevented office developers from having their way

Prophet of the independence movement – Brian Maye on journalist and poet William Rooney

Michael Collins said Rooney “prepared the way and foresaw the victory”

Garden Home – Frank McNally on the Irish origins of a quintessential American suburb

Lisburn-born Alexander Turney Stewart and a retail empire that paid for a cathedral

Lost and found – Frank McNally on literary and alcoholic New York

One for the road

Manhattan transfer – Frank McNally on a family weekend in New York

Our B&B was not so much in the middle of nowhere as in its outer suburbs

Arctic bound – Brian Maye on Wexford-born explorer Robert John Le Mesurier McClure

“Thus we launch into this formidable frozen sea”

March of time – Norman Freeman on the centenary of the No 1 Army Band

The band took part in the first broadcast of the national radio station, then called 2RN, in 1926

Why people laugh, gossip and sleep around. It’s a question of evolution

Gossip and bonding may have been driving forces for the evolution of language

Most Read

1

Farm claimed by billionaire John Magnier sold to US-based property developer for more than €20m

2

Children’s hospital ‘swamped’ by record surge in respiratory cases

3

Ryanair passengers queue for boarding passes after rule change

4

Shane MacGowan funeral cortege to pass through Dublin streets today on final farewell

5

‘Sexual predator’ found guilty of raping woman after breaking into her Cork home at night