Weekend

The magic of a winter World Cup can brighten the darkest days of the season in this part of the world

It’s horrible being duped. ‘Dishonest people need to eat too,’ a friend said. He had a point. A few days later, I still had an emotional hangover

Emotional former Tory minister for Northern Ireland Steve Baker 'embarrassed Ireland was treated the way it was by the United Kingdom’

The majority of those held in homes across the North came from a Protestant background, and their babies were adopted by Protestant families

Being flooded is a particular kind of hell but pouring more concrete isn’t the solution

Between Holy Show, Dublin Review of Books, Tolka and the Dublin Review, I had a high stack on my desk

Éanna Ní Lamhna on fungi, a marine worm and whooper swans

Garth Greenwell’s third novel looks at how slow recovery can become a rehabilitation to life and literature

Clonsilla girl had no idea she would be invited to US before she closed show with All I Want for Christmas is You

We should stop moving so fast. Resist where you can. Hold space to grow and digest

In their daily lives, Northerners seem more grown-up than Southerners

Artists’ studios where ‘new, beautiful things’ will be created are opening at the site of a blaze that claimed 48 lives

Niall ‘Bressie’ Breslin is co-founder of Lust for Life, a PhD student, musician and host of Classical Wind Down on BBC Radio 3

In Yiwu, more than 600 businesses produce an estimated 80 per cent of the world’s Christmas decorations

These Cork, Limerick and Wexford chocolatiers not only create their own chocolate recipes, but visitors also get a chance to see how it all happens

How the veteran Fianna Fáil leader dragged his party into the 21st century and won his place as taoiseach

Looking young and powerful at 83, Baez is still engaged in politics, but has recently revealed a dark secret

The tragic 19th-century Paris novel weaves a rich and morally diffuse cast of characters beyond Quasimodo. But the real hero is the symbolic cathedral itself

Do we want to eat weeks-old, additive-filled panini cooked in the plastic in which they came, like what has already happened in England and to some extent in Dublin?

Ella McSweeney: Without radical and urgent changes in how we use the land, the future of our most distinctive lakes is bleak

Éanna Ní Lamhna identifies a number of creatures and explains the odd colouring of a mallard drake

Some of the grandmothers I know are a surgeon, a judge and professors, while many others belong to the English literary canon

Over 34,000 students have joined the Picker Pals programme, becoming environmentalists and removing 22 tonnes of litter

Why do shop and restaurant owners seem to think adding to the world’s collection of plastic tat improves the ambience?

Acclaimed Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s new work explores how the climate crisis has its roots in European colonialism

Jews whose family members fled the Nazis in the 1930s have reclaimed their German citizenship

Rite & Reason: All Churches face huge challenges moving on from terrible abuses into an advancing secularism

A day spent in the Vincent de Paul southeast region office reveals the large number of requests from vulnerable seeking help with everything from food and utility bills to rent arrears and broken toilets

Prof Donal O’ Shea is the HSE lead on obesity and a regular commentator on the dangers of marketing ‘junk and fast food’ to children

Just to keep up with present demand for housing, we require to build a city the size of Waterford every year for decades

Leah O’Shaughnessy and Melanie Martin co-wrote the book in the wake of the Dublin riots

In advance of Trump’s inauguration, speculation grows over what territory he could press Ukraine to abandon for a peace agreement with Russia

Éanna Ní Lamhna on a finch nest, the great pond snail and water-skating insects

Clover is a viable alternative for farmers who want to stay in profit and deal with the environmental challenges they face

Hizbullah has dropped demand that a ceasefire in Lebanon is contingent on ending fighting in Gaza

In fact, a locally-made, organic doughnut might well be better than green beans grown with scarce water in Namibia and air-freighted in plastic wrap

A younger generation of Protestants ‘are flocking away from the church’ yet ‘becoming more spiritual’

The bus memorialised by Bagatelle, which runs from Phoenix Park to Dún Laoghaire, is a cross-section of the city, geographically and socially. It will soon be replaced by a 24-hour service

As many as one in 20 schoolchildren in Ireland may have autism or similar developmental issues, studies suggest

Our festive knits have become one of the worst examples of fast fashion