Caleb Crain is an American writer who keeps an elegant blog at www.steamthing.com. At the end of June, he wrote a review of a new book by the essayist Alain de Botton for the New York Times. The day after the review came out, a long comment was posted on Crain’s blog by a reader,… read more +

How would you describe the theatre to a child who had never been? Would you start with the building? “It’s big and dark, and everybody’s quiet.” Or perhaps with the performers? “The actors wear make up and costumes, and do funny things on stage.” You’d probably explain the rules (or the rituals): “Everybody’s quiet. We… read more +

I’ve just returned from Angola, where I was filming a documentary on recovery and reconstruction in the town of Kuito, since the end of the war. This is a short radio essay telling the story of one of the people I met there, Alegre. It was broadcast on World Report on RTE Radio One.

“There is a part of me,” says Alan Gilsenan, “that is slightly repelled by the theatre.” Gilsenan is a filmmaker. He made his name with an angry young man’s documentary about 1980s Ireland, ‘The Road to God Knows Where’; his more recent documentary series, such as ‘The Asylum’ and ‘The Hospice’, have been groundbreaking treatments… read more +

Earlier this summer I received an invite from the Israeli Embassy to spend a week in Israel viewing the best of its theatre. It didn’t suit; but in any case, I decided that I wouldn’t have gone, and wrote to explain why. I’ve never been to the Middle East and have no first-hand experience of… read more +

BOOK OF THE DAY in the Irish Times: Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia by David Vine Princeton University Press 259pp; £20.95 ‘YOUR ISLAND has been sold,” Rita was told. “You will never go there again.” As author and anthropologist David Vine records, “Rita felt like she’d… read more +

The theatre’s publicist didn’t know what was going on. “It’s kind of a secret,” she said, awkwardly. I turned up anyway. It was a night last July. The theatre was packed. The average age in the audience seemed about 25. A young woman stood up on the stage and took up a microphone. She told… read more +

In the run up to the local elections, I travelled around the country talking to immigrant candidates. This podcast, for FOMACS and Le Monde Diplomatique, is one of the results. New voices in Irish politics

Michael Frayn was a spectacularly unsuccessful playwright. The Cambridge Footlights has for years provided British comedy with a litany of its brightest stars, from the Monty Python team to Fry and Laurie. In his final year at Cambridge, Frayn got the opportunity to write most of the Footlights annual Spring Revue. Normally, the Revue is… read more +

“We were taught to be leaders,” says Anna Rooney. “You have Communion and Confirmation. We had the same – but with a political side to it.” Rooney, despite her Irish surname and touch of a Monaghan accent, grew up in the Soviet education system, in the province of Abkhazia in Georgia. Leadership wasn’t all that… read more +