Finn McRedmond

The director understood people will remember how you left with grace just as much as they remember how you performed at your peak

Moving the needle on the status quo here is almost impossible. It takes a figure with a rare set of qualities

The prince is arguing with the Home Office and the royal family about the level of security they will provide him

The world looked at the Maratta painting of Jesus and the two mortals below it, and wondered if this was Francis’s final act

Trade deals with the whole world was the dream in 2016; oh, we didn’t really mean it, is the sense in 2025

I like to judge people by the company they keep - call me shallow, naive - and McGregor could not find much worse

Has no one noticed that art for as long as it has existed is entirely derivative? That humans are as mimetic as machines?

European capitals have arguably been better friends of Ireland for a much longer time

In fact, we have too many books altogether. Two hundred thousand books are published annually in the UK alone

The universe where Ireland can bask in our peacenik status is gone

The unholy mullet-moustache diptych is a sign that the emigrant experience works both ways

Apolitical Oscars indicative of sense that world is sinking into total fatalistic malaise

Chalamet’s speech is a tonic to the jaded insouciance, the fear of being seen as a ‘try hard’, that has taken over

It’s rightly treated with the same disdain - not because it's too provocative, but because it's too weird

The pendulum will probably find a position of equilibrium between the priggish extravagances of the 2010s and the nastiness of the current moment

The conflict between the right to individual speech versus the need to accommodate the sensibilities of so-called marginalised groups became a perennial theme of the 2010s

Criticism in the UK that should be limited to the President is spilling over as some go on the offensive, making sweeping generalisations about Ireland’s entire national character

A society that enjoyed the denigration of men was always going to face a reckoning

This new religiosity is a backlash to the the hyper-secularisation that Britain and the US went through. But don’t expect it to take off in Ireland just yet

Greatest task facing the new government is restoring Ireland’s standing in Europe and the world

Measures designed to change material realities matter more than sociocultural pieties

We must stop mistaking a lack of ambition in planning and building for caution and rule-following

Amid criticism of Ireland’s domestic politics making it hard for new ideas to break through, there’s something to be said for ‘same old, same old’

If Ireland wants to maintain the self-belief that it is a nation of wisecrackers and comedians then it will need to work a bit harder than this

All it took was for someone to finally decide that it was time to care

To think of all that time we spent embarrassed by Bono’s oppressive sincerity

Clarkson’s personal crusade against the British government feels very of-the-moment, symbolic of a mode of politics sweeping Europe

There are lessons for Ireland from the US election about the disconnect between establishment voices and the feelings of the electorate

Lesson from the US election is that liberals must realise young men have problems too

An actor’s entire job is to occupy the mind and body of someone else, not to be interesting themselves

We cannot normalise his candidacy, no matter what stunt he pulls

Discrediting his moments of rhetorical or aesthetic flair as the work of nasty impulses ensures the Democrats will never learn from them

Christianity has been around for some time and will weather this particular trend cycle, no matter Russell Brand’s risible public display. And these online Christian gurus will find a new cause celebre

What Aldous Huxley feared has come to pass: we are drowning in a sea of irrelevance

If Keir Starmer wants to be remembered as a prime minister for the United Kingdom, not just England, he needs to address the question of a Border poll

Without the energy and charisma of a storyteller - Boris Johnson, Bertie Ahern - a country has nothing to believe in

The downfall of a newsreader – once beamed into the homes of millions during era-defining events – is also a story about the BBC’s shortcomings

Circus of ritual public humiliation that gripped TV 20 years ago hasn’t gone away - it has moved on to other platforms

Oasis have never received the Taylor Swift treatment over this bungled ticket sale. No charges of money-grabbing or fan-exploitation for the brothers

The factors that pushed Ireland into being a nation of mass emigration have often been tragic but the result is a nation better off for it