Ireland

Wednesday

Andrew McQuillan

Northern Ireland has been the biggest loser from Brexit

In the decade since the vote to leave the European Union, arguably no issue has consumed more energy, column inches, political capital and careers than how to solve the problem of Northern Ireland. It was on that narrow, jagged border between North and South that the substantive skirmishes took place between the UK and EU on what their future relationship would look like. While Michel Barnier and Lord Frost arguing the toss over the finer points of agri-food regulation may lack the luster of the Battle of the Boyne or the romantic connotations of 1916, it was no less significant a moment in Northern Ireland’s history.

northern ireland

Friday

Melissa Kite

Once we Brexiteers get our Irish passports, we can go anywhere

“There’s a flat rat under the mat!” I shrieked, and wondered whether that was the sort of jaunty phrase that could be used for elocution lessons. I had lifted this mat by the main staircase to hoover the floor beneath it and there it was, a perfectly flat rat in the shape of a cartoon dead beast beneath this mat. I began laughing uncontrollably, because if you’ve ever seen a flat rat under a mat you will know that it is intrinsically funny, whatever your views on rats. You will laugh even if you don’t like rodents, or indeed if you like them way too much. Even if you are a member of the Rat Preservation Society, when you see one flattened paper-thin, stuck to your floorboards, I challenge you not to burst out laughing, while jumping up and down.

Thursday

Andrew McQuillan

Why is it mainly loyalists rioting in Belfast?

Monday’s alleged attempted beheading in North Belfast was not the first time an act of brutality has taken place in the area. During the Troubles, it was one of the most violent and dangerous parts of Northern Ireland. Robert Curtis, the first British soldier to be killed in the Troubles, was shot by the IRA in New Lodge. North Belfast was also the grim stage for many of the brutal sectarian killings carried out by the Shankill Butchers. In North Belfast, the loyalist ceding of ground to nationalists has been compounded by the impact of immigration It is a deeply deprived part of the city and the population shifts and turmoil of the late 1960s and early 70s turned it into an ethnic and confessional maze.

loyalist

Thursday

Michael Murphy

Ireland is desperate for its own George Floyd moment

Ireland is in the midst of its own "George Floyd moment." At least, that’s how a string of international headlines have portrayed the death of Yves Sakila, a Congolese shoplifter who was pronounced dead in hospital after being restrained by security guards, one of whom appeared to kneel on his head or neck. The circumstances of the 35-year-old’s death are being investigated, but, as yet, there is no evidence it resulted from racism or excessive force. Court records show Sakila had a history of theft, and a post-mortem reportedly found no signs of foul play or visible injuries on his body. That has not stopped activists and parts of the establishment from co-opting a personal tragedy to fuel a campaign of racial grievance.

Friday

Melissa Kite

Americans think they want the ‘real Ireland.’ They don’t

As the first Americans of the season got out of their car I scrunched up my face and groaned. “They’re all like that, remember?” said the builder boyfriend. “What if the bed gives way?” I demanded. “How will they even fit in the bed?” The BB shrugged. “Who cares?” he said, with his usual sunny attitude. I don’t mean to suggest these people were overweight. I mean they were giants. I’m sure their depth was right for their height. There was just an awful lot of them, and we are not the Premier Inn, with super-king beds that sleep two medium-sized horses. She was in sportif wear. He was tousle-haired and bearded, dressed in a flowing shirt and baggy trousers.

ireland

Wednesday

Gearóid Ó Riain

Zohran Mamdani and the death of Irish New York

When asked about a united Ireland earlier this week, Zohran Mamdani admitted that he “hadn’t thought enough on that question.” The Mayor of New York then recited a stiff set of platitudes about “solidarity” in language that he repeated word for word in his St. Patrick’s Day address.  There was an incongruity between his comments and his attendance at the James Connolly Irish-American Labor Coalition’s annual luncheon, where he schmoozed for selfies with Sinn Féin politicians. There was incongruity, too, with past mayors like Ed Koch and David Dinkins, the latter of whom lobbied for Irish republican prisoners. Context is everything, though, and both the city and the Irish national struggle have changed over the past 30 years.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Zohran struggles with the Irish question

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit! There’s an Irish lilt to proceedings in Washington today. Vice President J.D. Vance and Second Lady Usha hosted Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the Naval Observatory for breakfast this morning (Cockburn hopes both black and white pudding were served). The Taoiseach then jigged down to the White House for a bilateral meeting with President Trump – and will be hosted alongside the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland for the ceremonial “shamrock bowl” presentation this afternoon. The festivities have been much more delicately handled than up in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been walking a tightrope over Irish sovereignty issues.

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is embarrassed by St. Patrick’s Day

Some readers may remember a particularly infamous episode of The Simpsons which saw the town of Springfield descend into anarchy during their annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. As the crowds thronged Main Street, a drunken brawl erupted, prompting a shocked TV newsreader to declare: "What you are seeing is a total disregard for the things St. Patrick stood for. All this drinking, violence and destruction of property. Are these the things we think of when we think of the Irish?" Inevitably, this year’s St. Patrick’s festivals around the country are no longer a celebration of Saint Patrick and Irish traditions At the time, that episode was far more controversial with Irish Americans than people who actually lived in Ireland, who thought it was hilarious.

Tuesday

Jonathan Keeperman

Is there such a thing as right-wing art?

This has been adapted from a speech titled “The Myth-Maker as Nation-Builder,” which was delivered by Jonathan Keeperman, who runs publishing house Passage Press, at the National Conservatism Conference 2025. As W.B. Yeats once said: “There is no great literature without nationality. There is no great nationality without literature.” People often ask me whether it is possible to produce right-wing art, or otherwise to use art to engineer a more nationalist politics. But this strikes me as backward thinking. Culture is the field in which a people encounters the shared symbols and language that make political life possible. Art, done well, discloses the deeper truths a people already carry within themselves. Art therefore does not produce the nation; it reveals the nation.

Truth

Tuesday

Aidan Harte

Why does Irish art avoid the Troubles?

Almost three decades after the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, it is possible, if not always easy, to see the funny side of the Troubles. Derry Girls, Lisa McGee’s coming-of-age television series, and Milkman, Anna Burns’s surreal novel, wring laughs as well as tears out of mayhem. There are few laughs in Steve McQueen’s Hunger, which did “for modern film” according to one critic, “what Caravaggio did for Renaissance painting.” For those who prefer horror unmediated by fiction, Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing is the best example of longform journalism since Capote’s In Cold Blood. But along with their setting, these dazzling creations have something else in common: to get made, they all needed the backing of a producer or publisher from the UK or US.

Irish

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Who actually gets hurt by sanctioning Russia?

The US crackdown on trade finance for Russia from international banks — designed to impede imports needed for the continuing assault on Ukraine — is biting hard, reports the FT, quoting an investor who thinks “the logical endpoint of this is turning Russia into Iran.” Quite right too: sanctions like these are a vital non-military way to hobble Vladimir Putin’s campaign. But war and finance intersect in many different ways. Consider also the fate of 400 western-owned commercial aircraft that were leased to Russian airlines before the invasion in February 2022. Now stuck in Russia or its satellites, unmaintained to western standards and unfit to fly back into our airspace, they’re a potential multibillion loss for their owners and insurers.

Russia

Thursday

Hannah Moore

How to do St. Patrick’s Day like an Irish American

For a country like Ireland, as devoted to its faith as to a good party, the fact that St. Patrick’s Day falls during Lent poses a problem. The saint himself is said to have broken his fast during Lent, eating meat instead of fish, for which he was so apologetic that an angel came to give him comfort. Put your meat into a dish of water, the angel said, and it will turn to fish. This Patrick did and was very pleased to see that the angel was right. The meat had turned to fish, and he could partake of it without guilt. The Irish call this miracle “St. Patrick’s Fish,” and feel no qualms about eating a pork roast to celebrate the day. You can also keep a holy day and drink to excess, if you’re drinking for the right reasons. St.

St. Patrick's

Sunday

Christopher Sandford

John F. Kennedy’s trip worth remembering

Sloppy Joe Biden may face strong political headwinds with just seven months to go before the first presidential primary, but at least he’s in good company. Assessing the Washington landscape in mid-June 1963, when John F. Kennedy set off on a European tour designed to bolster not only the NATO alliance but his own poll numbers, the British ambassador David Ormsby-Gore cabled back to London: He will be leaving behind a disquieting domestic situation, [with] economic troubles to the fore... The Negro leaders are beginning to talk about large scale civil disobedience on a nation-wide basis... Moreover, the racial crisis is causing new difficulties for [Kennedy’s] legislative program...

Kennedy in Berlin

Friday

Oliver Wiseman

Why the Feinstein row will worry the White House

Why Feinstein’s intransigence will worry the White House I’m not quitting! Dianne Feinstein was channeling her inner Jordan Belfort this week when she refused to cave to calls from fellow Democrats to retire. The eighty-nine-year-old senator has been a headache for her party for some time now, with colleagues seemingly convinced that she is no longer mentally capable of executing her duties as senator and hoping for a speedy, low-key and dignified departure. The Democrats’ Feinstein problem looked like it was solved when, in February, she announced her retirement at the end of her term in 2024. But in early March Feinstein announced she had contracted shingles. Her staff said she’d only be away from the Senate for a few weeks.

Thursday

Matt McDonald

Does Joe Biden have CTE from rugby?

President Biden is being an American tourist in Ireland this week. In comments to the Irish Parliament in Dublin today, the president touted the merits of rugby, a sport in which Ireland is currently the top-ranked side in the world, over the American brand of football. "I'd rather have my children playing rugby now for health reasons than I would have them playing football," the president said. "Fewer people get hurt playing rugby." Biden is a rugby enthusiast, having played while at college at Syracuse. He made a point of video-calling the Ireland men's team after their historic defeat of New Zealand in Chicago in 2021. (In the video, Biden's brother James is sporting an Ireland hat and coat.

joe biden rugby concussion

Wednesday

Oliver Wiseman

Joe Biden’s Ireland trip is all about Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s Ireland trip is all about Joe Biden Half a century since he was sworn in as a US senator, the Biden brand is a well-established series of safe bets: a fondness for aviator sunglasses, a hankering for chocolate chip ice cream. Also high on the list: conspicuous displays of Irishness. The second Irish-American president is fond of quoting Heaney and Yeats. He may be the only teetotaler who enjoys St. Patrick’s Day, which he says is his favorite holiday.  And so much about Biden’s trip to Ireland this week is unsurprising. After landing in Belfast last night, the president this morning had a quick cuppa with British prime minister Rishi Sunak and gave a speech to mark twenty-five years since the Good Friday Agreement.

joe biden ireland

Monday

Amy Rose Everett

A literary pilgrimage to Dublin

From the lilting normcore of Sally Rooney’s Normal People to the frenetic genius of poetic, post-(post?) punk band Fontaines D.C., I’m drawn to talented Irish voices of late. Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-nominated tragicomedy, The Banshees of Inisherin, won three Golden Globes, and my heart, to boot. And quite rightly. It’s news to no one that the Irish have always been exceptional storytellers; some stereotypes stick because they are true. Plenty of the finest words ever written hail from the town of the hurdled ford, Baile Átha Cliath, Dublin. This fact was recognized by UNESCO in 2010, when they named it a City of Literature.

dublin

Monday

Dylan O’Sullivan

The Oirish Question

Sweeping down and around the Aran Islands, The Banshees of Inisherin begins as any Irish film would. The official trailer had given little away, besides a couple of strong-sounding accents and weak-looking Guinness. Very Irish; too Irish, perhaps. Despite my respect for Martin McDonagh and reverence for In Bruges, even I felt trepidatious. My father, too, had an air of skepticism about him. The line between Irish and Oirish is so fine — so easily and often overstepped — that when the film opened on gray cliffs and green fields, you could be forgiven for fearing the worst. For despite the accelerated evolution of contemporary Irish cinema, Hollywood still speaks fluent Oirish.

inisherin

Wednesday

Christopher Sandford

The spy novelist who became an Irish nationalist

The period of the First World War was a golden age for the spy novel. There’s nothing like a really cataclysmic global conflict to stir any halfway attentive author. And perhaps the pick of the literary crop was 1903’s The Riddle of the Sands, by the Anglo-Irish writer, soldier, and politician Erskine Childers. The novel mixes some gentle satire about the graded snobberies of the Edwardian class system with a seafaring adventure involving a couple of topping British chaps going after German spies in the Baltic. It’s not only a riveting tale in itself, but so cogent in its account of the state of Britain’s maritime defenses that it prompted the Admiralty to hurriedly install a series of new coastal gun batteries.

Friday

Alexander Larman

Warning: this book may make you like Bono

There is a famous (and, I fear, apocryphal) story about Bono at his most messianic at a U2 gig in the early part of this century. Pausing between songs, he clicked his fingers meaningfully. After doing this a few times, he said, with utmost gravity, “Every time I do this, a child in Africa dies of starvation.” Most of the audience nodded in sympathy, but one man in the front row had a better response. “Well stop fucking doing it then!” Bono’s response was not recorded, but the finger-clicking soon disappeared from his repertoire of stadium show gimmicks. It is reasonably easy to see why Bono — and, by extension, U2 — are so reviled.

bono