Philip Hensher: ‘Don’t aspire to be an author. Just aspire to write a particular book’‘I’ve read Proust four times and every time it felt like a major punctuation mark in my life’Fri Jan 16 2015 - 15:03
The Undertaking, by Audrey Magee: the new Irish Times Book Club reading choiceJoin with us over the next few weeks as we explore this acclaimed wartime love storyThu Jan 15 2015 - 17:41
Neil White: ‘Enid Blyton turned me towards mystery and horror’‘Whatever sick and twisted deed you read about, I’ve come across worse in real life’Thu Jan 15 2015 - 15:00
Kate Beaufoy: ‘There is no higher form of pleasure than that afforded by a good book and a room with a view’The most beautiful book I own is a leather-bound sketchbook that belonged to my artist grandfather – the model for Teddy Lloyd in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – and it is a key narrative device in my latest novel, Liberty Silk'Tue Jan 13 2015 - 07:39
Nadine Dorries: in praise of Enid Blyton, Hilary Mantel and audio books‘I write very early in the morning. I absolutely cannot write at night,’ says the MP whose Irish roots inspired her bestsellersMon Jan 12 2015 - 12:53
Liam Harte on Raymond Carver, Seamus Heaney and Edward SaidThe challenge of finding the words to match the thought is never-endingMon Dec 08 2014 - 12:08
The Closet of Savage Mementos, by Nuala Ní ChonchúirThis month’s Irish Times Book Club choice is a moving, beautifully written portrait of love, grief and motherhoodFri Dec 05 2014 - 12:55
Cormac James: how to choose between Bartleby and Brer Rabbit, Marlowe and Molloy?‘I think we read largely to have clarified and confirmed ideas we already sympathise with, rather than the reverse’Thu Dec 04 2014 - 12:00
Us by David Nicholls: Witty tale of a father’s journey of self-discoveryThe follow-up to One Day is a portrait of a family break-up on a modern-day Grand Tour of Europe. It's well worth the trip, but it’s not the holiday of a lifetimeSun Nov 30 2014 - 14:00
Colin Barrett wins Guardian first book awardYoung Skins author has already won Rooney Prize for Irish LiteratureWed Nov 26 2014 - 21:28
The Book Quiz: prize winners, evil masterminds and letters homeTest the range of your literary knowledge with this week's eclectic book quizWed Nov 26 2014 - 15:15
Breaking the silence on the Manchester MartyrsOn this day in 1867, the Manchester Martyrs were executed. Local historian Joseph O’Neill discusses his book about the men and their legacySun Nov 23 2014 - 11:11
From Dead Souls to Death Comes to Pemberley: it's the Book QuizNovember is traditionally the month of the Dead, so test your literary knowledge in our deadly book quizWed Nov 19 2014 - 12:00
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald: ‘Human beings need stories. It’s how we make sense of the world’‘Reading is an adventure – an utterly irreplaceable way of engaging with images, ideas and the human condition’Wed Nov 19 2014 - 01:15
Colm Tóibín, Mary Costello and Colette Bryce on Costa shortlistPrevious winner, first-time novelist and Derry poet in running for £30,000 prizeTue Nov 18 2014 - 19:30
Lia Mills: ‘Books are like children, leaving home. You want the world to treat them well’A book isn’t written in one sitting, it comes one word at a time, and a few words a day will get you there in the end'Tue Nov 18 2014 - 01:00
Maureen Duffy: ‘Imagination, compassion, passion are what matters’‘Don’t give up the day job, find your own voice, read, and ignore publishing fashions. Do your own thing’Mon Nov 17 2014 - 12:41
The Book Quiz: poetry, Poirot and Paul MurraySharpen your literary skills with this week's book quizWed Nov 12 2014 - 14:00
Six of the best: Davy Byrnes Stories 2014Review: After a summer of blockbusters, this compact collection is a reminder that there is often more satisfaction in a selection of starters than in a traditional three-course mealSat Nov 08 2014 - 01:00
Joe Joyce: a homage to Ernest HemingwayReading is very pleasurable but no substitute for doing; writing has taught me to treat words that come easily with suspicionWed Nov 05 2014 - 01:00
Julia Kelly on Skippy Dies, A Girl Named Skippy and other books she loves‘I came to reading late and wish I had appreciated books earlier in my life. There were so many in our house that I took them for granted’Tue Nov 04 2014 - 00:50
A sneak preview of tomorrow’s books pages in The Irish TimesFergal Keane on Brian O’Driscoll, Terry Wogan on Graham Norton, John Bruton on Ivan Yates, Diarmaid Ferriter on Des O’Malley, and Anna Carey on Nick HornbyFri Oct 31 2014 - 14:00
Book Club: four questions to set you thinking about A History of LonelinessChristina Hunt Mahony reviewed John Boyne’s novel for us when it came out. Here she suggests some aspects you might like to exploreFri Oct 31 2014 - 12:30
Mary Costello shortlisted for top prize as first novel is publishedColm Tóibín, Joseph O’Connor and David Mitchell also in running for Eason Novel of the YearThu Oct 30 2014 - 12:00
Michael Longley shortlisted for £20,000 TS Eliot PrizeLast year’s prize was won by fellow Northern poet Sinéad Morrissey for her collection ParallaxMon Oct 27 2014 - 16:25
This month's Book Club choice: A History of Loneliness, by John BoyneThe first Irish Times Book Club choice is the bestselling Dublin author’s 13th novel, but the first to be set in Ireland. It tells the story of abuse in the Catholic Church seen through the eyes of a good priest. Now read onMon Oct 27 2014 - 12:00
Introducing the Irish Times Book ClubOn Monday, we will reveal the first novel we will be discussing and launch a weekly email newsletter to keep readers abreast of our expanding literary coverage on irishtimes.comSat Oct 25 2014 - 00:58
Roy Keane book sees Irish sales top 10,000 last weekBook also tops British chart with 21,000 salesWed Oct 15 2014 - 12:47
Author Hugo Hamilton honoured by GermanyAmbassador says ‘his writings bring the Germans closer to the Irish and the Irish closer to the Germans’Tue Oct 14 2014 - 18:13
Patrick Modiano wins Nobel Prize for LiteratureFrench author (69) perhaps best known for Lacombe Lucien screenplayThu Oct 09 2014 - 12:22
Sinead O’Connor to keep sex life beneath, not between, the coversSinger claims promise to ‘dish the sexual dirt’ in memoir ‘just a funny quote’ to promote bookThu Oct 09 2014 - 11:10
Sinead O’Connor: ‘I will dish the dirt on everyone I’ve slept with’Controversial singer signs deal with PenguinTue Oct 07 2014 - 16:51
Eoin Colfer hopes to Hook young readersLaureate na nÓg launches nationwide tour of storytelling in his native WexfordMon Oct 06 2014 - 16:32
Andrew Nugent: ‘Don’t write merely for publication. To thine own self be true’‘I am only conscious of the number of texts in various languages which were definitively ruined for us by being forced to study them too young’Sun Oct 05 2014 - 01:00
Paul Hill prison letters documentary to air on BBCGuildford Four man’s words give a real sense of an ordinary young man caught in a terrible miscarriage of justice, trying to reassure his mother, growing up at a distance from the world and his loved onesFri Oct 03 2014 - 10:59
See Richard Ford at Trinity next week, and other listingsCathy Kelly, Colin Barrett and Bram Stoker festivalFri Oct 03 2014 - 10:11
Conor Brady: ‘readers need never be lonely; writers need never be idle’‘Kate O’Brien was one of the great successes of the Censorship Board in that they succeeded in driving her out of the country into penury’Thu Oct 02 2014 - 01:28
Lionel Shriver tale of flirting with death wins BBC short story awardZadie Smith is runner-up for £15,000 prizeWed Oct 01 2014 - 15:45
Royal regrets and Voltaire’s homage to Scotland make Oxford Dictionary of QuotationsWebsite contains links to recordings of quotations spoken by authors including JFK and WB YeatsThu Sept 18 2014 - 10:10
Herman Koch on being caught by Holden Caulfield‘Joyce is under-rated because nobody really reads him. They think he is too difficult, which, apart from Finnegans Wake, he is not’Sun Sept 14 2014 - 01:00
Colin Bateman on Catch-22 and the perils of researchWhat book would you give to a friend’s child on their 18th birthday? ‘I probably wouldn’t’Fri Sept 12 2014 - 10:47
Michael Foley on killer quotations, flawed characters and the joy of Proust‘Being a writer taught me that to be good at anything you have to devote your entire life to it, and that even this is no guarantee of success. Fortunately there was also another lesson – that process is more important than product so that the pleasure of writing is its own reward’Fri Sept 12 2014 - 10:29
Peter Lantos on being more prolific than Barbara CartlandSixty years after leaving a sleepy provincial town in Hungary with his parents for Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the renowned neuroscientist retraced his steps before writing his childhod memoirFri Sept 12 2014 - 09:35
Alex Preston: ‘My first book was decent, the second not so much, the new one is beautiful’‘I like the thrill of the fact/fiction blur. It’s not new, but it seems more vital and vivid now than ever before’Wed Sept 10 2014 - 01:00
Evelyn O’Rourke: ‘Nothing is as absorbing as a good book. Time stands still’‘It is weird that even when your research topic is yourself, it’s amazing how many facts about yourself that you have to double-check’Tue Sept 09 2014 - 01:00
Patricia O’Reilly on the wonder of the world and the power of the word‘Not a wasted word’ – it’s a philosophy I try to follow in my writingSun Sept 07 2014 - 01:00
Mark Haysom: ‘A book in your hand is like holding magic’‘For Love, Love Me Do, I lived through the fifties and sixties. I think that’s a pretty impressive amount of research’Mon Sept 01 2014 - 13:00
