As often is the case there is an interesting parallel between Irish unionism and the GOP (the Republican Party) in America. Like an American Jim Allister,…
Author Brian Spencer
The Irish fans went to Cardiff not knowing what to expect. France is the team that could beat New Zealand one week and lose to Italy…
Once again Unionism is found wanting. Papers printed column upon column of solemn praise and affection for the modest man and monumental writer from Omagh, Co. Tyrone…
Ireland undervalued Italian rugby. In pre-game trash talk Stephen Ferris said Ireland was a train hurtling towards the French fifteen and the quarter finals; the Italy…
From bonfire builder to British and Irish Lion. From Buckfast day drinker to BMW M3 driver on £100,000K a year. From an unstoppable force to a…
Ireland lined up against Romania in front of a Rugby World Cup record crowd at Wembley Stadium - 89,267 spectators. Jamie Heaslip led a reworked Ireland…
In a weekend of contested narratives, in the North it was the talks and in the South it was the State funeral for Thomas Kent,…
‘There is no getting away from the Irish State’s endorsement of historical violence, murder and mayhem.’ What’s a northern Protestant and in-Utero unionist doing asking about…
It was a terrifying sight. Like the North Korean lockstep, or something you see in grainy footage of a bygone and militarised Europe. It was bewildering.…
In, ‘Get real and love Northern Ireland for what it is warts and all’ published in the Belfast Telegraph (July 17 2015), Fionola Meredith was…
Growing up, if I wasn’t in Belfast I was in Bushmills. My father’s hometown where his maternal forbears, the Blairs owned a freehold and farmed livestock.…
I have no connection to the Loyal Orders. I’m not the Green of the Gael, rather very, very pale Orange. I have a Protestant inheritance, Church…
A fever and cloud of infection had been hanging over North Belfast - dark and ominous but we hoped it would dissipate. We wanted peace, forbearance…
‘We had a break in August, theirs was in July But when one drop of rain would fall we’d all look at the sky’ - Colum…
There’s a backward Belfast, and there’s a bourgeois Belfast. Two Belfasts. Two Northern Irelands. Rory McIlroy versus Bryson Belfast; unbridled optimism versus plangent wallow, nostomania and…