Journalist, author, broadcaster
News feature on the imminent closure of Belfast’s big Wheel from the latest edition of The Sunday Business Post It may not be as old as Samson and Goliath, Harland and Wolff’s famous yellow cranes, yet in just two and a half years, the Belfast Wheel has become an iconic feature of the city’s skyline. […]
This comment piece on Monday’s dissident bombing in Newry appeared in The Scotsman on 24 February. In November, the International Monitoring Commission, charged with keeping tabs on Northern Ireland’s paramilitary groups, suggested dissident republican ranks were being swelled by ex-Provisional IRA members. The Newry car bomb has now confirmed the worst fears of the security […]
This piece on budget cuts in Northern Ireland appeared in today’s Sunday Business Post The protracted talks between Sinn Féin and the DUP to rescue the North’s power sharing government may have hinged on the devolution of policing and justice powers to Stormont. However, a way from Hillsborough Castle, the big issue for many in […]
This brief analysis piece on the Hillsborough agreement appeared in today’s The Scotsman. “This might just be the day when the political processes in Northern Ireland came of age,” Martin McGuinness said during yesterday’s press conference at Hillsborough Castle. Only time will tell if the deputy first minister’s optimism was well-founded, but there are grounds […]
This comment piece appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday 4 February. It was intended as an attempt to start a discussion about what needs to be done to move Northern Ireland forward. In it, I advocate a possible temporary return to direct rule as it existed during Stormont suspensions over the last decade. But […]
Ian Sansom is a true gent, and if you’ve never picked up one of his hilarious novels you should. This feature on Sansom and his latest novel, The Bad Book Affair, appeared in The Sunday Herald on Sunday 24 January. A prominent Northern Irish politician involved in a sensational sex scandal. Accusations of dodgy dealings […]
I wrote a comment piece on the political fall-out from the Robinson affair for The Scotsman last week: (Published 13/01/10) A leading unionist politician in Northern Ireland laid low by a lurid sex scandal splashed across the red tops. Accusations of backhanders from property developers. Political unrest in Ulster’s bible-belt. The plot of The Bad […]
Feature on how small retailers in the North have been affected by shoppers (and their cash) coming over the border. First appeared in Sunday Business Post 03/01/2010. On Chichester Street, in the centre of Belfast, the lines of southern registered coaches have become a familiar sight. Every day they arrive, at weekends as many as […]
Think Skins crossed with a particularly risqué episode of Hollyoaks. Think a campus novel penned by Alan Warner with a cast of characters that owe more to Trainspotting than Trading Places. Throw in a cúpla focail Gaeilge (for the non-Gaeligoirs out there, that’s a few words of Irish) and you’ve pretty much got Seacht, BBC […]
Last week I spoke with Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford mathematician and author of numerous popular science books, for CultureNorthernIreland. As well as proselytizing about science as the new Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science (taking over from Richard Dawkins), he’s a keen footballer, musician and actor…but maths remains his one true love: It […]