‘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…
Browsing: identity
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.…
‘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…
The Irish government recently published the ‘Global Irish – Ireland’s Diaspora Policy’ . This is an important and innovative document. It poses a question and perplexes.…
They’re conversations people have every day, totally ubiquitous and banal. Then an appointed one pronounces upon the matter the public discuss every day, the media reacts…
Jamie Bryson adores the Union but advocates everything against which the modern Union stands. The man from Donaghadee can call for Union Flags on every lampost,…
We read to know we’re not alone. The moment when words mirror life and lived experience is stirring and emotive, even numinous. Being a middle-class suburban…
“In the beginning was the Irish Rain” wrote Louis MacNeice. Following the historic handshake between the head of the republican movement and the Commander-in-Chief of the…