English identity sits at the centre of the debate on British membership of the EU, but that identity, moulded by television and the tabloid media has become a surrogate Englishness dominated by pint supping, cricket watching, and endless mugs of tea; an identity shorn of its uncomfortable, radical roots. What, though might the English tradition […]
Crossing Europe by train last summer, it was only on arrival in Romania that I realised we had unwittingly followed the very route (Paris-Munich-Budapest) taken by Jonathan Harker, the young solicitor at the start of Dracula (1897). Returning home to Bridport – in excellent health, I should probably add – I mentioned this to a […]
Ebola has been a talking point in Italy as far back as April of this year, in particular for the various political parties that are campaigning for tougher immigration laws. “We shouldn’t give time to these idiots that think Ebola will arrive in Italy by small boats loaded with desperate immigrants looking to cross the […]
If a Woman Should Be Messiah If a woman should be Messiah It might not be an impressive drama, It would be but a slight event and unsignaled It could not but be beautiful. And that is about as much as I dare quote from one of the remarkable early poems of Laura Riding (1901-1991) […]
It’s a surreal moment, standing in Bologna’s famous Piazza Maggiore at the closing public event for a new Left coalition that hopes to be the big suprise of these European elections. A number of speakers have already been on the stage, talking about the need to restore both dignity and a certain amount of sovereignty […]
“The struggle of man against power,” Milan Kundera wrote, “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’’ As I walked out of the museum of Free Derry I tried to remember Kundera’s words, but instead I got them messed up in my head. I couldn’t remember them. I’d just interviewed John Kelly, one of the guardians […]
This month will see the twelfth IRC (Immigration Return Centre) in Britain open on Portland, Dorset. The two most recent additions to this flourishing archipelago have both been converted prisons in relatively remote areas, well away from the largest migrant communities with their specialist lawyers. The expectation may have been that re-opening the Verne as […]
“The flesh is the surface of the unknown.” – Victor Hugo On January 15th, The Food Safety Authority of Ireland announced the discovery of horse meat tainted beef being produced, packed, and shipped from slaughterhouses in the UK and Ireland. ABP Food Group, the company deemed responsible, suspended production in its Co. Monaghan plant. As […]
It’s an extremely cold (but not, we insist rainy) day in Dublin and I am sitting down in Hodges Figgis Bookshop on Dawson St. I am not alone. There are a couple of other likely and some unlikely audience candidates dotting the seats which have been set up for tonight’s main event- a talk by […]
The controversy over Galway City Council’s proposal to erect a statue to Che Guevara to commemorate his family links to the city (his mother Anna Elizabeth was a Lynch and born in the city), is indicative of a wider discourse in Irish society. There is already a controversial – and popular – Che Guevara Festival in […]
