ChairBehind all its many forms and conventions, there are three things a piece of theatre can be: a story, a spectacle and a ritual…Fri Nov 09 2001 - 00:00
Security is best terror defenceEvery government has a right, indeed a duty, to defend its citizens from attackTue Nov 06 2001 - 00:00
No Place Like HomeWhy have the Troubles inspired relatively little lasting drama? One answer lies in the nature of the dominant form of theatre…Fri Nov 02 2001 - 00:00
Sheridan not the right type to get State honourIn the early 1830s, a 12-year-old black house slave in Baltimore, Maryland, secretly taught himself to readTue Oct 30 2001 - 00:00
Abandoning our grip on the airwavesOne of the mathematical laws of political life is that the more a government insists on its nationalistic credentials, the less…Tue Oct 23 2001 - 01:00
New ways of dealing with the mysteriesAn outsider looking at events in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin last weekend might have concluded that nothing much changes with…Tue Oct 16 2001 - 01:00
Getting back to the storyBy accident or by design, eircom Dublin Theatre Festival opened on successive nights two shows that stand at the extremes of …Fri Oct 12 2001 - 01:00
Taoiseach's finest hour is tarnishedAs every fan of Star Trek knows, when you're heading for an asteroid belt, you reverse engines at warp speedTue Oct 09 2001 - 01:00
Facing the audacity of despairOne form that a lingering Irish provincialism often takes is the inflation of local heroes into global starsFri Oct 05 2001 - 01:00
A grotesque denial of bloodshedOn Sunday week, unless there is a last-minute outbreak of sanity, we will be treated to an extraordinary spectacleTue Oct 02 2001 - 01:00
Between horror and transcendenceIf rooms reflect their inhabitants, Peter Brook's apartment in Paris seems an especially accurate mirror of its ownerMon Oct 01 2001 - 01:00
Bush's stark terms are unrealThis year, the Bush administration has given tens of millions of dollars to what is now its number one enemy, the Taliban regime…Tue Sept 25 2001 - 01:00
Shameful economy of outrageYou probably don't remember Mirsad Alispahic or Hajrudin Mesanovic or Hamed Omerovic or Azem Mujic or Ismet AhmetovicTue Sept 18 2001 - 01:00
Iveagh's fate a symptom of our timesAccording to Sam Smyth's book Thanks A Million, Big Fella, Charles Haughey and Ben Dunne snr had a row at the Irish Trade Fair…Tue Sept 11 2001 - 01:00
State's own version of Catch-22Sometimes a phrase becomes a cliche because it is trueTue Sept 04 2001 - 01:00
Public interest sacrificed to cute hoorismFor far too long in Ireland, it seemed to take a dreadful disaster before a problem was treated seriouslyTue Aug 28 2001 - 01:00
A history lesson for our timesSometimes, history can seem like current affairs. While huge changes go on around us, some events happen again and againTue Aug 21 2001 - 01:00
Measuring success by growth rates only is a jokeIf it really wanted to win a replay of the Nice Treaty referendum, the Government would have sent us all on European holidays…Tue Aug 14 2001 - 01:00
Wooing of the IRA is grotesqueIn the Westminster elections last June, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party got a similar share of the popular voteTue Aug 07 2001 - 01:00
Sudden improvements in memory suggest a miracle amnesia cureLike many men in love with power, Charles Haughey has long been a great admirer of NapoleonSat Aug 04 2001 - 01:00
`Reality TV' dumbs down democracyPerhaps the most viscerally emotional image that live television can deliver is the prisoner emerging into freedom from a long…Tue Jul 31 2001 - 01:00
Spin meets shame in the Sinnott caseThe Irish political system is sometimes accused of being slow to respond to serious developments. This is unfairTue Jul 17 2001 - 01:00
Part of a weaker RTE for sale soonWhen Margaret Thatcher broke up the public sector of the British economy in the 1980s and flogged off its assets, she did so …Tue Jul 10 2001 - 01:00
Loss of an honest and searing voiceHow grimly appropriate that at this time of crisis for liberal unionism, one of the most essential voices to have emerged from…Tue Jul 03 2001 - 01:00
Failures of beef tribunal haunt us yetIn his Irish Press column Brendan Behan once wrote of passing a large hole in the ground around which a gang of workmen were …Tue Jun 26 2001 - 01:00
De Valera's heirs fail us in EuropeThe line from Eamon de Valera's political heirs has been fairly consistent for a while nowTue Jun 19 2001 - 01:00
Nice victors now have the floorHere is the way it worked in magical, mystical IrelandTue Jun 12 2001 - 01:00
Despite our misgivings, a Yes vote makes senseLast week, a nice middle-aged lady from the Christian Solidarity Party called to my door to canvass for a No vote in the Nice…Tue Jun 05 2001 - 01:00
Untenable arguments against NiceChaos theory made its way into modern popular culture with the title of Edward Lorenz's paper delivered to the American Association…Tue May 29 2001 - 01:00
O'Malley blessed in his enemiesAlthough he disagreed with him on most issues, W.B. Yeats had a soft spot for Henrik IbsenTue May 22 2001 - 01:00
Civic pride for at-home tax exileLast Friday Limerick City Council awarded its highest honour, the Freedom of the City, to the well-known and much-loved racehorse…Tue May 08 2001 - 01:00
Reform of police must not stop at the BorderThe past in Ireland is still unpredictableTue May 01 2001 - 01:00
Church must bear pain of restitutionThis time last year, Father Chris Rush ton, provincial superior of the Oblate order in Canada, gave his usual Sunday sermon from…Tue Apr 24 2001 - 01:00
Fianna Fail moves the goal postsAccording to the Sunday Tribune, Beverley Cooper-Flynn got a lot of sympathy at the Fianna Fail parliamentary party meeting last…Tue Apr 17 2001 - 01:00
Citizens don't have rights in this StateLast Friday night it emerged almost casually that the State is to give £60 million to the Gaelic Athletic Association in return…Tue Apr 10 2001 - 01:00
Unnecessary demise of the local butcherIn her recent book, She Moves Through the Boom, Ann Marie Hourihane describes the fate of butchers' shops in the Dublin urban…Tue Apr 03 2001 - 01:00
Sinnott case shows State at its worstUnless there are last-minute delays, the Supreme Court will today begin hearing a case that ought to be unimaginableTue Mar 27 2001 - 01:00
ASTI action highlights inequalitiesBallymun in Dublin is being redeveloped but it is still one of the State's poorest areasTue Mar 20 2001 - 00:00
Esat deals cost CIE and Garda too dearlyNearly four years ago The Irish Times, in common with every other Irish newspaper, wrote glowingly of a new deal between CIE …Tue Mar 13 2001 - 00:00
A message to citizens on rights and meansJust when it seems that the last depths have been plumbed, they find a way to go even lowerTue Mar 06 2001 - 00:00
The don't ask, don't tell principles of moralityDavid is a drug dealer in a prosperous country townTue Feb 27 2001 - 00:00
No cover for politicians in a sports shirtFor the first half of the 20th century the language of Irish politics was dominated by the vocabulary of nationhood: freedom, …Tue Feb 20 2001 - 00:00
Getting a grip on your selfThe central paradox of our times is that the triumph of individualism has been accompanied by a deep insecurity about what it…Sat Feb 17 2001 - 00:00
Noonan's `regret' is not enoughFirst, an apology. Writing last Saturday about Michael Noonan's involvement with the Brigid McCole case, I stated that he had…Tue Feb 13 2001 - 00:00
Immigrants at home and abroadOn its website, the Irish Immigration Centre says it is "concerned with the current anti-immigrant sentiment and the impact of…Tue Jan 30 2001 - 00:00
Writing the boomEarly on in Ann Marie Hourihane's splendid She Moves Through the Boom, her eye is caught by a sign at the Eason's bookshop in…Thu Jan 25 2001 - 00:00
Stadium costs don't add upWith a TD behind bars and charred documents blowing in the winds of west Dublin, the issue of political truthfulness is in the…Tue Jan 23 2001 - 00:00
