Category: Culture & Arts
On St. Patrick and the Irish: Hilaire Belloc
The following is an extract from Hilaire Belloc's 1911 work "First and Last" on the conversion of the Irish and legacy of St. Patrick. If there is one thing that people who are not Catholic have gone wrong upon more...
The Banshees Of Inisherin – An Exercise In Cultural Self Deprecation
The following piece first appeared on the website Excuse the Blood and is syndicated with the permission of the author. At the time of writing, The Banshees Of Inisherin has earned nine Oscar nominations and ten BAFTA nominations. It has...
‘A Community of Communities’: Orania and the Future of South Africa
Encompassing an area of 1,221,037 km², South Africa is a large land-mass encompassing a variety of different linguistic, ethnic, and cultural groups. Situated geographically in the most sparsely populated region of the country, along the Orange River, lies the Afrikaner...
‘Calvary’ As A Critique Of Irish Society
Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) is a likable, down to earth ‘good priest’. The film opens with a scene at a confession booth, where an anonymous parishioner details disturbingly the sexual abuse inflicted on him by a priest as a child. The...
‘More Blacks, More Dogs, More Irish’ – RTÉ’s Progressive Musical Atrocity
Last week on the Tommy Tiernan show, a song “More Blacks More Dogs, More Irish” was played by an act “Steo Wall & Toshín”. The song’s theme is the usual talking point that readers will be familiar with. Irish people...
Up the Ra, Anglophobia and the Star Spangled Fenian
The following article first featured in the Gaelic American and is syndicated with permission of the author. After the Irish women’s soccer team was taped singing “Celtic Symphony” a couple of months ago, and more recently the Leinster Rugby stadium...
Has War with Russia Failed to Energise Europe?
When the poet Lamartine noted in 1839 that ‘La France s’ennuie’ (France is bored), he had hit on something quintessential to the zeitgeist of modern Europe. Whilst the previous revolution of 1789 had been precipitated by the political hunger of...
Review: The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World
Andrew Doyle’s The New Puritans: How The Religion of Social Justice Captured The Western World begins and ends with America’s Salem Witch Trials. In between, he has twelve chapters, each of whose titles has a religious connotation and all of...
Rose Dugdale: The Life of an Irish 68er
Seán O'Driscoll's riveting account of British aristocrat Rose Dugdale's topsy turvy life resembles a Monty Python thriller. Here is a niece of Oswald Mosley, a member of Britain's ruling elite, who had once prostrated herself in front of their Queen,...
The Banshees of Inisherin Review/Rant
After recently watching An Cailín Ciúin, Arracht and Black ’47, I had high hopes for the Banshees of Inisherin (although mistakenly I did not watch the trailer) but after the first “feckin’”, or I should say multiple “feckins”, within the...