One week to go

As I write this, planes from everywhere are disgorging bands of women into airports across the Republic who have flown home to Ireland to vote YES to the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. It is a vital vote in Ireland today and by the time you read this, the result will be in. I am…

Last month I wrote a little about the events surrounding the Charlie Hebdo massacres in Paris along with my reflections, observations while travelling in Algeria seven years ago. I am continuing along a similar theme today: Algeria and a broad brushstroke of the events that led to the Algerian War of Independence. The French colonial…

Recently, when I was in Paris, I visited the Bon Marché store, which is a regular haunt of mine. I usually head directly to the top floor where they have a very excellent librarie/bookshop. I love to browse there and to see what is being published in French and also who has been translated into…

When I was a child, one of the treats of the week was our family outing to the cinema. The programme back in the mid-fifties, early sixties usually included two films. A ‘B’ movie followed by the main attraction. Today, before the main attraction, spectators are shown endless expensively-shot commercials followed by a series of…