TMO is, in part, an Irish magazine, so it’s no surprise we’re interested in Irish culture. We term culture broadly, so you’ll find articles/essays/posts grouped here on Irish history (including our popular essays on the Irish war of indpendence), Irish writers (interviews with contemporary writers alongside profile and criticism for authors like James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Sean O’Casey and many more), Irish music (reviews and interviews with the likes of Glen Hansard, Luka Bloom, Bell X-1, the Dubliners to name but a few). And we’ll throw in some shamrocks, and St Patrick’s day stories to keep up with passing stereotypes!
“The struggle of man against power,” Milan Kundera wrote, “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’’ As I walked out of the museum of Free Derry I tried to remember Kundera’s words, but instead I got them messed up in my head. I couldn’t remember them. I’d just interviewed John Kelly, one of the guardians […]
A wonderful statue of Flann O’Brien has been unveiled in Strabane, County Tyrone as part of the collaborative Urban and Renewal Programme between Strabane and Donegal councils. O’Brien, one of Ireland’s foremost literary talents spent most of his life in Dublin, but was born in Strabane and the town has been keen to stress the […]
It’s been widely reported over the last couple of years that Irish actor Brendan Gleeson is working on turning Flann O’Brien’s 1939 comic novel At-Swim-Two-Birds into a film. Gleeson took an option on the book in 2004, and has spent years working on the project. In 2011 it was reported that financing had been secured for […]
Mary Costello is the author of The China Factory, a collection of short stories which was published by The Stinging Fly Press. It has received much acclaim and renown for its intensity and sensitivity. Costello has an amazing capacity to reveal characters’ lives through understated encounters, be it the restraint of two strangers in The […]
Anyone who knows anything about Flann O’Brien knows he was a man of many names. Flann O’Brien was the pen name for Brian O’Nolan, who wrote journalism under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. He used different spellings of his names and most of the discussion and arguments on his Wikipedia page are about how his […]
The romantic view of terrorists as misfits and lost souls, presented by Dostoevsky and Conrad in their work, is very much at odds with the practical and structured guerilla warfare that was seen during Ireland’s War of Independence
Yesterday, despite a popular outcry and serious objections raised, Ireland’s Minister of State for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock signed into law the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2012, a statutory instrument which has been described as Ireland’s version of SOPA. The background to the statute is outlined here and here. When news […]
There’s a quote, from an article that Germaine Greer wrote back in the 70s,which springs back in to my mind continuously when listening to certain albums: “When Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho the walls came tumbling down. That’s revelation. The holy Ghost talking. So it can be done. The way to crack a mirror or shiver […]
Co. Limerick has a fairly distinct advantage over the Republic of Ireland’s capital, Dublin, in terms of its scenic setting. Limerick city itself curves around the full rush of the river Shannon- the largest river in Ireland and is the main touchstone location of the mid-west or Shannon region. Now, despite what you may have […]
Dublin is always a great place to visit; it doesn’t matter what time of the year – particularly as, weather-wise at least, it makes precious little difference whether it’s Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter. It’s always going to be a little bit sunny, a little bit rainy, a bit chilly, and certainly very rarely roasting. […]
