Turbulent priest: Frank McNally on fascism, real and fictional, in 1930s America

“But then, like a Gaeilgeoir reverting to his native Irish, O’Leary lapsed into a way of speaking that, while familiar to us, must have been completely alien to the Tesla and SpaceX owner, not to mention his friend in the White House.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Soft day out there

Who fears to speak of ’76? Frank McNally on US Independence, the Catalpa rescue, and the Battle of Little Bighorn

Life Imitating Art: Frank McNally on the Art O’Neill challenge, recreating an actual 1592 jailbreak

And they’re off. The annual mass escape from Dublin Castle, commemorating the real jailbreak of 1592 by Red Hugh O’Donnell & the O’Neill Brothers. Competitors will cover 62km through the night, across the mountains to Glenmalure Valley. That’s if they make it, unlike Art O’Neill, who died en route.

Frank McNally in fine form: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Todays column - on leprosy, Leesiders, and a cure for love www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Fool’s paradise: Frank McNally on a cliche beloved of obituarists

A Tale of Two Hospitals – Frank McNally on the architectural dramas of Kilmainham

This is a really lovely piece by Frank McNally in the Irish Times on the lost short stories of Connolly - www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

The National Children's Choir recently performed a version of The Boys Are Back In Town... but with some truly baffling lyrical adjustments. @frankie49.bsky.social tells all: share.google/eM9hmXjHZRUR...

Rewrites and Wrongs: Frank McNally on reinterpreting Thin Lizzy for a new generation

Sinners’ redemption: Frank McNally on vampires, Irish music and the Ku Klux Klan

Good (and Bad) Vibrations – Frank McNally on Vibe for Philo, immersive James Joyce and 4DX Avatar

Hibernian Rhapsody: Frank McNally on the rise of a great football anthem, Sunshine on Leith

Why do I have to read an Irish paper for a feature about this?

Irish etymology for the end of the year. "Leopardstown" has nothing to do with leopards, but is a noah spelling for *Leperstown "place for the people with leprosy". But there's more to it. As @frankie49.bsky.social writes, the Irish name of the place is Baile na Lobhar. However, Ir. lobhar.../1

In the Valley of the Leppers – Frank McNally on Christmas at Leopardstown Racecourse

Christmas Day nightfall, Glendalough.

…under musical director Dr John O’Keeffe. Frank McNally @frankie49.bsky.social reported on the première (www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...). With these 24 examples of the cultural relevance of Medieval Irish Studies, the staff of Early Irish at Maynooth wish everyone a joyful Christmas. 🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

Frank McNally on a grand stretch in the evenings, a new Dublin restaurant and ‘Gloomsday’

Craicing the Case – Frank McNally on the origins of a cultural and linguistic phenomenon

Somewhere out there is the earliest sunset of 2025. There’ll be a stretch in the evenings tomorrow.

The woman who enchanted Proust – Frank McNally on the rise and fall of Gladys Marlborough

‘He never said that’: Frank McNally is tired of hearing a phantom WB Yeats quote

Fighting Farney – Frank McNally on the battle for his hometown’s ‘western front’

At the Dublin-Monaghan Mafia* Christmas lunch with the great Tommy Bowe. (*officially “Business Network”)

At the annual commemoration (a little early this year) in Mount Jerome for Professor Ludwig Hopf, a friend and colleague of Einstein, who fled the Nazis for a job in Trinity College Dublin but died suddenly, within months of arrival, on the winter solstice of 1939.

“After ordering Joyce to take the transparent white trousers off, Nora complained to her sister: “He’s a weakling, Kathleen. I always have to be after his tail ... Being married to a writer is a very hard life.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Bitter Harvest – Frank McNally on the darker side of farming in Flanders and the Somme

“We might ask the same about the Cornfields of Carrickmacross, who have long since disappeared from local life and whose colourful surname is now merging back into the landscape on which they once walked.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Really enjoyed Not Making Hay by The Irish Times’ @frankie49.bsky.social part memoir, part rumination on writing four columns a week for the last couple of decades. Lovely stuff.

If that’s a seven-foot Christmas tree, I should be a line-out jumper for Ireland.

Willie Redmond’s grave, Flanders.

All quiet on the western front.

Ring of untruth – Frank McNally on how the Irish language gave ‘phoney’ to English

Rock of Ages – Frank McNally on the shock of punk turning 50

November embers, Dublin

Favorite line so far: "The mother herself was half Irish, on her father’s side, so the teenager was in high-risk group for developing symptoms." (Second-most-favorite: "I might also add in passing that 'Polly Amory' would be an excellent name for an agony aunt.") THANK YOU FRANK McNALLY. 😀

“We are well used to visitors outdoing us in the performative aspects of Irishness. The Normans started it, becoming famously ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’ and so launching the Eight Hundred Years of Impressionism.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

This is a godforsaken place’: A despairing letter from a garda stationed in Tipperary in 1940 www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

How Nancy Spain became the unlikely heroine of an Irish folk classic

Frank McNally: My life as a civil servant in 1980s Dublin

“Driving up north recently, I passed a mural of Bobby Sands with his famous quotation: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” And reflecting on what kids find funny now, I wondered what he would have made of Kneecap.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Laughing for Ireland? Frank McNally on Bobby Sands and Kneecap

Faithful departure: Frank McNally on a belated first visit to Knock Airport, 40 years on