Journalist, author, broadcaster
Next Monday, Edinburgh plays host to the second UK conference of TED (that’s Technology, Entertainment and Design to you and me). When I mentioned this to a friend in town recently, she was delighted. ‘I’ll definitely be there. Where do I book my ticket?,’ she asked excitedly. Like millions of others around the world, my […]
From the Irish Examiner, June 24. Sectarian Legacy of Belfast Riots On Tuesday evening, the newly crowned US Champion Rory McIlroy touched down at George Best airport in East Belfast. It should have been a homecoming to unite Northern Ireland, a proud moment for the country, a positive face to show the world. Instead a […]
Review of Alms on the Highway, New Creative Writing from the Oscar Wilde Centre Trinity College Dublin. Appeared in the Sunday Business Post, 12 June 2011. Can creative writing be taught? Wilbur Schramm certainly believed it could. In 1936, the so-called ‘father of communication studies’ founded the Program in Creative Writing at the University of […]
Determined to conquer his fear of heights, Peter Geoghegan signed up for a rooftop tour of Stockholm. But could sweeping views of the beautiful Swedish capital cure him? (From Ryan Air magazine, May 2011). A couple of days before I left for Stockholm, Veerle, my rooftop tour guide, had sent me a pithy, one-line email: […]
On the 30th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands, the hunger striker is still regarded as a hero of republicanism, says Peter Geoghegan. (From the Irish Examiner, May 5, 2011). THIS tendentious analysis of the death, and life, of Bobby Sands appeared in the Guardian on May 6, 1981. The previous day the Belfast […]
Interview with Barack Obama’s sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, from the Irish Examiner back in April. LIKE many American presidents before him, Barack Obama never knowingly plays down his Irish roots. On his whistle-stop Irish tour next month, Obama will pay a long overdue visit to Moneygall, the picturesque Offaly village that his great-great-great grandfather, shoemaker Fulmuth […]
Iceland after the kreppa. My long-form piece from Sunday Business Post, May 22, 2011. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t feel like there’s been a crash here at all.” Heather Millard, an English documentary filmmaker living in Reykjavik, is chatting tome over coffee in a trendy bar in the Icelandic capital’s achingly hip 101neighbourhood. ‘‘Yes, incomes are lower […]
Like Z-list celebrities, volcanoes are often more infamous than famous. Vesuvius, Krakatoa, Etna: all owe their household name status to the destructive force of their periodic eruptions. Last year, another, more difficult to pronounce name entered the pantheon of volcanic infamy – Eyjafjallajökull. The Eyjafjallajökull glacier, in south-west Iceland, had been dormant for some 200 […]
Which way now? The neoliberals who created the bubble are resurgent, but many Icelanders want to move away from finance. My analysis from the Guardian’s Comment is Free. Even before the final result was in, the tenor of national and international reaction to the Icelandic public’s latest rejection of a deal for Icesave was crystal […]
In MANY respects, a lengthy legal battle over the Icelandic public’s latest rejection of a deal for Icesave is the least of the country’s worries. Finance minister Steingrímur Sigfússon was at pains to stress yesterday that the “no” vote will not affect Iceland’s application to join the EU. But the result has placed a huge […]