Journalist, author, broadcaster
The nascent ‘occupy’ movement currently spreading around the Western world is often traduced for lacking a clear, identifiable goal or a soundbite-sized rallying point. Indeed at one point during the Occupy Edinburgh demo in St Andrew’s Square Saturday afternoon – while a Mohawked punk in leathers was excoriating the coalition government in London – I […]
A couple of months back I was short-listed for the Guardian’s International Development Competition for a feature I wrote on attempts to improve farming practices in Malawi. As a consequence of this, I’m heading to Zambia on Sunday for a week to research a piece on youth unemployment for the paper. I’m going with an […]
This review of D.M. Leeson’s fascinating The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, September 2. The Black and Tans ‘have gone down in history as the British equivalent of the Turkish bashi-bazouks or the German Freikorps.’ A 10,000-strong police force scrambled from […]
This comment piece on the closing of the MOX plant at Sellafield appeared on Guardian.co.uk in August. Sellafield Mox nuclear fuel plant to close. It’s a headline that generations of Irish environmental activists, and government ministers in Leinster House, never thought they would see. After just 10 years of operation – and at the cost […]
From the Scotsman, July 26. In 1950, Ireland’s then minister for health, Dr Noel Browne, announced his intention to radically reform the former Free State’s ailing health service. For the first time, maternity care for all mothers and healthcare for all children up to the age of 16 would be delivered free of charge. Dr […]
This feature on Irish comics and the recession appeared in Fest magazine ahead of this year’s Fringe. “Why have estate agents stopped looking out the window in the morning?” begins a gag that has been doing the rounds in Dublin for the last 18 months or so. “Otherwise they’d have nothing to do in the […]
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: […]