Journalist, author, broadcaster
At the moment I’m over in Edinburgh covering the fringe. Biggest doesn’t always mean best – I’ve seen plenty of dross already – but it’s still a great festival. Here’s a couple of reviews I’ve done for the popular Scottish arts guide The List Hannah Gadsby Does Mother Really Know Best? Hannah Gadsby’s domineering, Catholic […]
Feature from latest Sunday Business Post August 15, 1969. Even those with the most cursory of interests in Northern Irish history will recognise the date of the British Army’s first deployment in Belfast. But for almost 40 years no photographic record of the soldiers’ arrival on the city’s streets existed, until an octogenarian with a […]
Review of Fiachra Sheridan‘s debut novel The Runners from yesterday’s Sunday Business Post: Dublin’s north inner city has never had it easy, but the 1980s were particularly deleterious.Unchecked urban decay, vertiginous unemployment figures and a deadly influx of cheap heroin made it a decade to forget for many of the capital’s poorest and most vulnerable. […]
Interview with the multi-talented Wire writer from this month’s issue of the Scottish mag The Skinny. America does not have, and never has had, a fair system – or so says David Simon, daylight illuminating his swanky hotel room: “So much of what ails the US is systemic. It has been engrained from the very […]
Review of Trevor Bryne’s debut from The Sunday Business Post: Ghosts and Lightning, the debut novel by Dublin-born writer Trevor Byrne, is set in a Clondalkin housing estate, to which Denny Cullen – an out of work 20-something with a passion for wrestling and Liverpool FC – reluctantly returns following the unexpected death of his […]
Feature on the Orange Order’s attempts to turn 12th of July weekend into an Orangefest appeared in The Sunday Business Post. More than 100,000 people will gather in downtown Belfast tomorrow to watch the annual Twelfth of July celebrations. The customary flute bands, Lambeg drums and Orange standards will all be there, but so will […]
Review of Patrick Hennessey’s exellent book The Junior Officers’ Reading club. Appeared in the Sunday Business Post a few weeks back. ‘When all else fails, a blind refusal to look f acts in the face will see us through.” Blackadder’s feckless General Melchett was a hilarious send up of Lord Kitchener, but his fatuous words […]
An analysis piece on the racist attacks in Belfast i wrote for the opinion pages of The Scotsman: On Monday night the windows of City Church in Belfast were smashed by vandals. Attacks on religious buildings are common in Northern Ireland, but this was different: the small City Church, near Queen’s University, was where 22 […]
ANALYSIS: Can recent violence towards immigrants in Belfast be linked to the BNP’s success in European elections, writes PETER GEOGHEGAN. (The Irish Times 18/06/09) WITH ITS new, purpose-built Chinese centre, popular Asian supermarket and plethora of speciality shops, the Ormeau Road is Belfast’s most visibly diverse and multi-ethnic neighbourhood. On sunny days, nearby Ormeau Park […]
A piece on an exhilarating weekend in the Mournes, first published in The Irish Times: ‘I’VE BEEN CLIMBING since I was six,” says Ian, our amiable instructor at Tollymore Mountain Centre, as my girlfriend takes her first, tentative steps on the climbing wall. “My dad rented a climbing frame for my birthday, I loved it […]