16
Jan
What’s in a metaphor?
It’s the kind of question that would have resonated with Laurence Sterne, the Anglo-Irish writer of The Life and Opinions of Tristram S...
Blog
08
Jan
On Entanglement
In my previous post, I consciously abused a lexical coincidence by invoking “entanglement” to support the introduction of the idea of a...
10
Dec
On Bosons. And Name-dropping
“Now, did I read that somewhere, my dear fellow, or did I think it?”*
There are two basic types of fundamental particles: fermions a...
20
Nov
On Duality
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I decided to study physics. I did so because it offered a concrete and dependable model of the world...
05
Nov
On Indeterminacy
You will often hear it stated, in certain circles, that nothing can be said about the outcome of some quantum interaction or other, whe...
05
Sep
An Irish Publisher – and a Strange Bird
When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of my time (probably too much) in secondhand bookshops – and a lot of my somewhat limited resource...
29
Aug
As kind as sunshine: Why I write
Years ago, I had a conversation with my mother about the Middle East. With mingled pleasure
and pain, she told me about her childhood ...
22
Aug
The Strange Case of the Missing Zero and the Over-mighty Neighbour
It sounds like the title of a Sherlock Holmes story. In fact, we're talking about something more prosaic: the relative strengths of pub...
15
Aug
On Love and Loss
Last summer, my mother succumbed to cancer after a fleeting battle. Beautiful and generous, she was beloved by all who knew her. After ...
07
Aug
Work in Progress: the Craft of Printing
It takes a village to raise a child; a book is the work of many hands.
In today's digital world, most of us pay far too little attenti...
01
Aug
Refuge by Fatema Alarabi
In the streets where you grew up, there you will live and there you will die.
The Greek poet Cavafy, often quoted by the late great Ir...
25
Jul
Bare
With beach-read season in full flow, we were heartened to read Kirsty Blake-Knox's cover story in the Irish Independent magazine, inves...
26
Jan
The Language of Illness
In his book The Language of Illness, internationally renowned gastroenterologist Fergus Shanahan talks about an exceptionally fascinati...
23
Dec
Listen to Your Microbes
Listen to Your Microbes is a graphic book created by gastroenterologist Fergus Shanahan and graphic designer Laura Gowers. This popular...
08
Oct
Launch of Daisy Daisy by Carmen Cullen at Mermaid Arts Centre
A great crowd braved the elements and attended the launch at the Mermaid Arts Centre for the much-anticipated release of DAISY DAISY, t...
12
Aug
The Making of Daisy Daisy
What is it about writing that makes you miss it when you can’t do it and chains you to it when you can? It’s a very hard taskmaster, bu...
16
Jul
On the assassinations of US presidents
In the midst of the shock and revulsion at the recent shooting of former president Donald J. Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks, it is impo...
24
Jun
Sorry for Your Trouble
Richard Ford is arguably our finest living short-story writer. His latest collection, Sorry for Your Trouble, released in 2022, contain...
15
Jun
Ashes Cricket on Bloomsday
The planets aligning – or a cosmic joke?
So, the eagerly anticipated first Ashes Test starts today – Bloomsday. For the uninitiated, th...
09
Jun
The staying power of the book
My first job on leaving university, in the early nineties, was as an archivist with a merchant bank in the City of London. I had two bo...
26
May
Ireland is a small country
Six degrees of separation are often shrunk to two or three. A chance remark can rapidly become national news. Those who took part in th...
14
Oct
THE RIVER HEALER by Paddy Reid
The first of two great new books coming from Liberties Press this autumn is THE RIVER HEALER by Paddy Reid.
Paddy is a fine writer, cur...
10
May
Last night’s TV: Ardal O’Hanlon, Tomb Raider
Last night, on BBC 1, Ardal O'Hanlon took a pleasant trawl through Irish archaeology – a subject which has received less attention than...
18
Feb
The First Heresy, Ulysses and the importance of KBO
This year marks the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses. This work is widely acknowledged to be one of the great work...
16
Feb
Last night’s TV: Viking Apocalypse
With Storms Dudley and Eunice menacing these islands – have a pair of storms ever had less threatening names – now might be a good time...
09
Feb
Belfast and beyond
Best of luck to all those nominated for this year's Academy Awards. Particular kudos to Kenneth Branagh, director of Belfast, who has a...
08
Feb
Last night’s TV: Coercive Control
Last night, RTÉ 1 broadcast Domestic Abuse: A Year in Crisis, a film made by Barry O'Kelly of the RTÉ Investigates unit. The programme ...
07
Jan
The Treaty, A Hundred Years On
#OnThisDay one hundred years ago, the Treaty creating Ireland as an independent public was ratified by the Dáil, the Irish Parliament. ...
19
Dec
The 12 Blogs of Christmas #3: On Making a Start in Publishing
There are plenty of people looking to get into book publishing; inevitably, they want to know a bit more about it before they begin. On...
06
Dec
The 12 Blogs of Christmas: #2 On Language and Illness
Those who signed up to fight in the first world war were told it would be over by Christmas. Years later, they were still slogging it o...
03
Dec
The 12 Blogs of Christmas #1: Festive Food & Drink
Nigel Slater* gave us his “twelve tastes of Christmas” recently, so we thought we’d pitch in with a few festive posts of our own. We’ll...
03
Nov
No prophet is accepted in their own land
The brand-leader – promoted at great expense – has a habit of sucking the oxygen out of the room for everyone else. This is no less the...
07
Oct
From genre bending to gender bending
Delighted to see the new review from Anne Cunningham, syndicated across a number of Irish newspapers, of Owen Dwyer's new novel The Gar...
24
Sep
The Friday Read: How Women Were Airbrushed Out of History
We all want to be kind. It is fundamental to our well-being. Yet we live in a world of profound inequality, where only 1 percent of tit...
02
Jul
England 2 Germany 0
Around a century ago, Ireland was plunged into a bloody civil war. The conflict pitted neighbour against neighbour, divided families, a...
16
Jun
A video review for Bloomsday
Happy Bloomsday all. I was going to post about our new fiction imprint, Ely's Arch, coming your way on 14 July, but that can wait. We o...
15
Jun
Last night’s TV
I don't know if "enjoyed" is the right word, but last night's RTÉ One programme on #partition, as part of the #DecadeofCentenaries, cer...
28
May
To Kindness and All Who Sail in Her
Great launch last night for #ThePursuitofKindness by Éamonn Toland. Many thanks to legendary (and sprightly!) editor Alan Rinzler for l...
25
May
New Perspectives at the National Gallery
At the weekend, I was lucky enough to get to the National Gallery to see the exhibition New Perspectives: the artworks the gallery has ...
21
May
It’s Still Not Too Late To Pursue Kindness
Many moons ago, I was a student in a tutorial on Late Anglo-Saxon England – a growth area in historical research at the time. (Hard to ...
27
Apr
The Pursuit of Kindness
“Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realise his wishes. Now that he can realise them, he must either ...
15
Apr
Last night’s TV
Last night, Channel 4’s 24 Hours in Police Custody centred on a case of coercive control which ended, tragically, with the death of the...
13
Apr
What’s another year
Here at Liberties Press, we were sorry to hear about the death of Shay Healy. Among his many contributions to the gaiety of this and ot...
06
Apr
Sign language
Philip Roth once said that people tended to glamourise the process of writing a book. He compared it to building a wall: you put one br...
10
Mar
What’s in a name?
All professions use jargon: terms which are familiar to insiders – and not to those outside the fold. It’s partly a kind of secret code...
08
Mar
Tina Forever
Last night we watched the documentary film Tina, about the remarkable life of rock ’n’ roll legend Tina Turner. When we talk about “leg...
26
Feb
Brevity Is the Soul: Out with the Old
Let’s call a spade a spade: 2020 will not go down in the annals as a vintage year. The birds continued to sing (more often than before,...
16
Feb
From the West down to the East
"So, Mr Larkin, you're a distinguished poet. What are you doing out here in Hull, so far from the centre?"
Philip Larkin, possibly afte...
03
Dec
Sometimes, it takes a lifetime to become an overnight success
I recently took part in a (virtual) session at the Science Foundation Ireland Summit on writing, and publishing, books on scientific su...
25
Sep
I Blame Jaws
I blame Jaws. Not the things in your mouth: they can be useful – for eating, for example. No, the film about the big shark. Before that...