A personal blog of ideas, discoveries and perspectives.
The Pyramids of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and one of the most recognisable human structures on the planet, are located just outside Cairo. They rise impossibly from the sands of the Sahara, where there have stood for over 4500 years. These massive structures seem beyond the capabilities or requirements …
The wealthy and the privileged obsess on their legacy. Not content with winning the lottery of life, they want to win against history; a history that conspires with death, that ‘great leveller’, to render everyone equally forgotten. They do great deeds of charity and philanthropy that somehow always require acknowledgment by award, statue or a …
When I was a kid, one of my favourite school lessons was learning the nouns for various occupations. Sometimes the word was obvious: a person who works in a bank is called a banker. Sometimes the word made less sense to my 8-year old mind and my failure to memorise it would earn me a …
John Millington Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World famously caused riots when it was first performed in 1907. Since then it has become essential to the Irish theatrical canon and there have been countless impressive revivals. The 2019 Dublin Theatre Festival opened tonight with a new production that attempts to look afresh at …
This week sees the anniversary of the collective action by Irish tenants against injustice which gave the English language the expression 'to boycott'. Captain Charles Boycott Captain Charles Boycott, who was managing the County Mayo estates of Lord Erne in a manner that brought him into conflict with tenants, found himself ostracised by those tenants, …
