Hats off to the admirable Máiria Cahill, with whom I became friends a decade ago. Her Rough Beast: My Story and the Reality of Sinn Féin is a best-seller. Published: 10 October 2023 The media in these two islands have been alive with her eloquent voice in print and...
I’ll be writing another time about my friend Maria Cahill’s brilliant and chilling best seller, Rough Beast: My Story and the Reality of Sinn Féin. Published: 3 October 2023 The title comes from W B Yeats’s “The Second Coming”, a poem written at a time of...
I admit to having been rather irritated by Queen’s professor Colin Harvey’s recent complaints about being under threat, since I think he has a tendency to take himself unduly seriously, to see criticism as abuse and to flinch from the hurly burly that goes with...
Having just read Malachi O’Doherty’s excellent “Can Ireland Be One?’’ I’ve now finished another unputdownable book Sinn Fein will hate. Published: 11 October 2022 The party didn’t make it easy for Shane Ross — a journalist and Independent TD who was a minister...
Excitedly greeting the census figures showing that people who were either Catholic or brought up as Catholic made up 45.7% of the population with their Protestant equivalents on 43.5%, Colum Eastwood demonstrated his tin ear with an old-fashioned, sectarian response....
Last week I was on Talkback disagreeing with the journalist Susan McKay about her charge that Kate Hoey was sectarian — one piece of evidence being that Hoey had attended “a barbecue for the extremist TUV party” (as she wrote in an Irish Times article on January 8)....
I had a strange, draining and unforgettable Sunday. Published; 9 November 2021 It caused among many other emotions sadness, despair and occasionally laughter, during a tour of killing sites and memorials in south Armagh and at the launch in Belfast of a documentary on...
I’ve been thinking and reading about Prince Philip since I heard the news of his death. Published: 13 April 2021 It surprised me how upset I was. As he had kept pointing out, he was old and it was his time to die. For Covid-related reasons, I was alone as I watched...
My column last week had the headline ‘Máiría Cahill is a woman who was a victim, Meghan Markle is not’. Published: 16 March 2021 Now Máiría, a victim of IRA child abuse and bullying who uses solid evidence and rational argument to challenge lies, has won a notable...
Published: 9 March 2021 The 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth went about her normal duties despite her 99-year-old husband’s serious illness and honoured “selfless dedication to duty” at the annual Commonwealth Day service; In a Californian mansion her grandson Harry and...
