Journalist, author, broadcaster
Review of Philip Pullman’s controversial – and impressively engaging – The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ from latest edition of The Sunday Business Post ‘This is a story.” The back of Philip Pullman’s latest book features no blurbs from writers or flowery descriptions – just these four words in gold capitals. Despite the […]
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 review of Peter Baldwin’s insight new book The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe are Alike appeared in The Sunday Business Post a few weeks back: Last summer, US president Barack Obama announced plans to extend medical cover to more than 31 million uninsured Americans. To judge by the reaction of certain […]
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 […]
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 […]
Interview with the prize-winning novelist from Sunday Business Post 20/09. Cusk’s new book, Bradshaw Variations is out now and well worth a read. Carl Jung never defined an archetype of the domestic goddess, but then again the Swiss psychoanalyst never spent an afternoon in the company of Rachel Cusk. Still stunningly attractive at 42, the […]
Review of the Brian Friel trilogy from Sunday Business Post 07/09: Brian Friel turned 80 this year and, as part of its tribute to the playwright, the Gate Theatre has reprised three works from his back catalogue: Faith Healer, Afterplay and The Yalta Game. After opening at the Sydney Festival, the trilogy transferred to Edinburgh’s […]
Top comics make a packet from the Fringe but for lesser lights it’s a real struggle. In this feature from last week’s Sunday Business Post I talked to artists in the black and the red after a month in Edinburgh. Breaking Edinburgh Can Break the Bank It is barely midday but already Edinburgh’s iconic Royal […]
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. […]