Jaq, a Top Boy story by Ronan Bennett: Gripping from the off, much like the show
Author brings fans back to Hackney’s Summerhouse estate for what’s more or less a novelisation of the show’s closing season
Ronan Bennett
Ronan Bennett: ‘I’m not the only Irish person to criticise an Irish man in the White House for a lack of solidarity’
The novelist’s new book, based on his Netflix hit Top Boy, draws on his experience of being Irish in London – and of being wrongly convicted of murder. But his status as a former convict cuts little ice in his home city
Top Boy: Barry Keoghan has made the most terrifying 10 seconds of TV you’ll see this year
Television: The Oscar-nominated Dublin actor steals every scene as he lands in Ronan Bennett’s guilty-pleasure Netflix show
The Age of Static: Can we really understand a country by its TV?
Book review: Phil Harrison’s zippy analysis needs to make a more robust argument about Britain
Iftas: Normal People arrives too late for ‘virtual’ awards
Jessie Buckley and Niamh Algar among nominees for Irish Film and TV Awards
Roddy Doyle’s Family stands up as a classic 25 years later
We hear about TV’s current Golden Age but Family was as great as anything today
‘Gunpowder’: It’s got Kit Harington but no plot
TV review: The Guy Fawkes story is simplified and stretched. Sparks do not fly
Neil Jordan: ‘Michael Collins was conventional – apart from the guerrilla warfare’
Ahead of the 20th-anniversary re-release of Neil Jordan’s hugely successful film Michael Collins, the director reflects on the ‘unique opportunity’ he got to make it
Patrick Magee: my Troubles with fiction
Brighton bomber Patrick Magee wrote his PhD thesis while in jail on the portrayal of republicans in fiction. As a novel about the bombing is published, he explains his views
Authors on Africa, from Heart of Darkness to The Heart of the Matter
For Africa Day, Eileen Battersby selects 13 classic novels set in Africa but written by outsiders, including several Irish authors
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