Journalist, author, broadcaster
In 2005, Northern Ireland’s joint Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister at Stormont published ‘A Shared Future’. The policy, an unashamedly irenic blueprint for a post-conflict society, included plans for addressing contentious issues such as flags and emblems and parading. Every government department would have to create action plans to ensure A […]
The weeks leading up to Christmas are normally a bumper time for the Mourne Seafood Bar in Belfast. One of the most popular restaurants in the city, empty tables at the Mourne are usually a collector’s item at weekends during the festive period. But not last Saturday. As protestors with Union Jack scarves across their […]
The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London by James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello. These are straitened times for BP. The oil giant faces a slew of civil and criminal suits arising from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. In October, Azerbaijan’s autocratic president Ilham Aliyev chastised the company for its failure to meet production targets […]
Mother Teresa Boulevard is a street pregnant with symbolism. At one end of the wide, pedestrianized thoroughfare that runs through the centre of Pristina, an imposing statue of Albanian hero Skanderbeg stands in the shadow of Kosovo’s parliament building. A couple of hundred metres south sits the Communist-era Grand Hotel. When war broke out in […]
Interview with American-Dominican novelist, appeared in the Sunday Business Post, September 2. Growing up in 1970s New Jersey, Junot Diaz was a self-confessed ‘book slut’. The young Dominican immigrant — his family arrived in the United States when he was just six — read everything from Richard Adams and Enid Blyton to graphic novels. At […]
Dissident republicans ‘intent to disrupt the peace process outstrips their capacity,’ a leading expert on paramilitaries in Northern Ireland has told the Sunday Business Post. Speaking in the wake of last week’s announcement that the Real IRA, Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) and a loose collection of independent republican groups intend to form a coalition under […]
Below is a long-form piece on heroin in my home town of Longford, and the paucity of treatment facilities for addicts, which originally appeared in July 1 edition of the Sunday Business Post. He smiles when he recalls the first time he used. It was 1995 and he was 17, just out of secondary school […]
‘Keep looking, even when there’s nothing much to see,’ Scottish writer Kathleen Jamie cautions, midway through this delicate, thoughtful collection of essays. ‘That way your eye learns what’s common, so when the uncommon appears, your eye will tell you.’ Jamie, an acclaimed poet and essayist, has made attentiveness her mantra. Having trained herself to observe […]
Last January 25, over 50,000 people occupied in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, in protest at the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Less than a week later, the number of protestors in the square and surrounding streets had swelled to more than one million. On February 11, Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt. On May 15, […]
The Titanic Quarter in Belfast was meant to signal the rebirth of the city, but a downturn in the property market has raised fears about its viability, writes Peter Geoghegan. The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, a century ago today, but in Belfast the ship’s memory is more alive now than it has ever […]