Zan Cammack’s article on Flann O’Brien’s comic engagements with the acoustic environment of early twentieth-century Ireland is OUT NOW! in the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies. On air twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, do not adjust your dials! 📻

‘A cyclist is merged with their bike and goes into the office next week as if that’s completely normal.‘ Someone’s been reading Flann O’Brien.

"De Selby (Part 1)" by Hozier, 2023 Long ago, a high school English teacher recommended a book, "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien. I devoured it and met this character de Selby in footnotes. (But I've still got a forgotten bookmark in "At Swim-Two-Birds"...) 🎧 #musicsky #indierock #folk

✨Mark your calendars✨ If you are in Dublin 24 September be sure attend the launch of long-time Flaneur and Irish Times columnist Frank McNally's 'Not Making Hay: The Life and Deadlines of a 'Diary' Farmer'. Top shelf pun, @frankie49.bsky.social!

It’s always a good time to have your books professionally handled. Beware amateurs or biblioquacks who can leave your books stressed and their plots in array.

The Third Policeman is one of Mark Watson's funniest books: it “resembles a mad stand-up at work, and it was a real factor in setting me on my path to doing what I now do. [...] Straight into a surreal horror with a sensational opening line, it then takes them on a bicycle journey into the absurd.

'if there’s one book you might encourage people to read what would that be?' Desmond Clifford, Books Editor for Nation.Cymrum picked Flann O'Brien. "I'm a little reluctant to evangelise [...] but one of my favourites is Flann O’Brien’s “The Dalkey Archive”. I find it hilarious."

“There are five [rules of wisdom] in all. Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take left turns as much as possible. Never apply your front brake first.” ― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

A hugely underrated contribution to the Irish literary canon. The nondescript empty landscape Peppa and her family is an oblique reference to nothing less than the works of Brian Ó Nualláin/Flann O'Brien, an absurdist comment on the post-independence lethargy of the so-called Free State. #booksky

Today, academics, ask yourself: Am I bringing enough of a Flann O'Brien energy to my R&R work?

Some excellent people wandering around Strabane!

I just listened to Flann O’Brien’s astounding novel “The Third Policeman,” which I read years ago after it caught my attention in a bookstore in Edinburgh. The wonderful audiobook (read by Jim Norton) is available via Chicago Public Library.

I’ve got to go for my own country men 🇮🇪 Flann O'Brien - "At Swim two birds” An amazing read. Oscar Wilde - "Importance of Being Earnest" One of the wittiest men that ever walked the earth.

You could give The Third Policeman a try, if you don’t mind devoting the rest of your life to it. Flann O’Brien (1911-1966).

New walking tours of Flann O'Brien's Strabane! If you're in the area, check one out - they're excellent. Now we just need them to add cycling tours...

Most of my current reading is genre fiction. But 2 or 3 years I feel the need to read something by Flann O'Brien (or Myles na gCopaleen) just for the glorious rhythm of the language. It's a terrible thing, language that rhythmic, because it makes me want to write that way, and that I cannot do.

[20] Kernoff advocated modernism at a time when much Irish art was conservative & provincial. He was unique in being based in Ireland & innovative. Up the Workers Republic Ireland (nd), Flann O’Brien (nd) & Emergency Hat, Self Portrait (1941)

i don't think i've talked here about what a great poster flann o'brien would have made

Clearly not everyone knows how he killed old Philip Mathers. @craigclunas.bsky.social

The International Flann O’Brien Society is sad to hear of the death of Breandán Ó Conaire. In addition to research on Flann O’Brien, Breandán conducted important work on Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Douglas Hyde. We mourn him and the loss to his family and community.

💥New publication alert!💥 "‘Our own good Editor’: Brian O’Nolan, Niall Montgomery and the Drafts of the Cruiskeen Lawn" by @maebhlong.bsky.social, @jessiepb.bsky.social & Marie Theunisz out now! Check their article out for new insights into the co-authorship of Cruiskeen Lawn.

Every Flann conference from now on needs an enormous statue of a pig

Fantastic to see Mikelyn Rochford @mikelyn.bsky.social win the British Association for Irish Studies @bairishstudies.bsky.social essay prize for her challenge to the ways 'narrative theory has conceived of afterlife stories as unnatural, oppositional, or dependent on a privileged realist norm'

Frank McNally on the closure of Baker’s pub in Kill of the Grange - a pub that Flann O'Brien drank in - and the possible presence of the man himself in photo from Dun Laoghaire Cycling Week. Standing in the door of the pub, though, not exchanging molecules with a racer... @frankie49.bsky.social

Quote from a book you're currently reading: There was always one thing, said Shanahan wisely, that the Irish race was always noted for, one place where the world had to give us best. With all his faults and by God he has plenty, the Irishman can jump. --Flann O'Brien, At Swim Two Birds

The Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies is sad to learn of the death of Breandán Ó Conaire, author of the pioneering 1986 study "Myles na Gaeilge". Read Breandán's 2018 TPR article on O’Nolan’s Irish language background for free via @openlibhums.bsky.social: parishreview.openlibhums.org/article/id/3...

The International Flann O’Brien Society is sad to hear of the death of Breandán Ó Conaire. In addition to research on Flann O’Brien, Breandán conducted important work on Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Douglas Hyde. We mourn him and the loss to his family and community.

Best non-literary use of O'Brien? Walter Moore’s 1962 textbook "Physical Chemistry" uses The Third Policeman to describe atoms to students - “spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go, [...] as lively as twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone”.

Lovely write up of the recent Flann O’Brien Conference, hosted by the Alley Theatre in collaboration with Derry City & Strabane District Council, Tourism NI, Strabane History Society, & @ndirishstudies.bsky.social. Congrats to all involved, especially Maebh Long and our own Brian Ó Conchubhair.

Challenge interrupted: 30 Day Book.. Day 20: Unreliable narrator ”The Butcher Boy” — Patrick McCabe* *My photo of Patrick McCabe reading at the Flann O'Brien Conference in Dublin, 2019 © Adrian Oțoiu (Collage/homage © Adrian Oțoiu) 🖋️📚💙

Fantastic to see Mikelyn Rochford @mikelyn.bsky.social win the British Association for Irish Studies @bairishstudies.bsky.social essay prize for her challenge to the ways 'narrative theory has conceived of afterlife stories as unnatural, oppositional, or dependent on a privileged realist norm'

Every Flann conference from now on needs an enormous statue of a pig

It was such a joy being involved in the recent Flann O'Brien Conference in Strabane. Louise and all the wonderful people at the Alley Theatre were fabulous hosts.

If you are ever looking for me I'll be spending "a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones" According to Flann O'Brien that makes me more than half bicycle

56. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien An incredible insight into how working in the civil service will eventually drive you to madness. 💙📚

J’adore cet homme surtout quand je viens de m’acheter un nouveau vélo. Comprenne qui pourra!

I uncovered this yesterday while emptying a box of books from my husband's childhood home. I have no memory of buying this particular edition

big fan of BAIS ✨✨✨

Essay Prize: Mikelyn Rochford @mikelyn.bsky.social (@york.ac.uk ):'"I took the left turn for eternity": Otherworlds, Afterlives, and Discursive Storytelling Traditions in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré ne Cille / Graveyard Clay'

Belated, but what a good time the @flannobriensoc.bsky.social conference in Strabane was 🚲

💥New publication alert!💥 "‘Our own good Editor’: Brian O’Nolan, Niall Montgomery and the Drafts of the Cruiskeen Lawn" by @maebhlong.bsky.social, @jessiepb.bsky.social & Marie Theunisz out now! Check their article out for new insights into the co-authorship of Cruiskeen Lawn.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Flann O'Brien Society Awards: Best Book: Brian Ó Conchubhair, 'Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht' Best Article: Joseph LaBine, ‘“Information, Please”: Brian O’Nolan and the Radio’ parishreview.openlibhums.org/news/840/

Read Joseph LaBine's winning article in the Flann O'Brien awards 2025. The judge found LaBine's work 'well-researched, innovative, and persuasive' and wrote that 'LaBine compellingly argues that the largely overlooked medium of radio offers fresh insight into O’Nolan studies'

Great to talk with Mark Patterson of BBC Radio Foyle last week about the Flann O'Brien conference in Strabane. You can check it out below - our conversation is from 22.06.

We are delighted to announce the winners of the ✨2025 Flann O'Brien Society Awards!✨ Congratulations to Brian Ó Conchubhair for Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht and to Joseph LaBine, ‘“Information, Please”: Brian O’Nolan and the Radio’. Two excellent, important works!

Frank McNally on Mike Gleeson and the much-lamented pub, An Béal Bocht, where Mike employed female bar staff when it was mainly men behind the bar, encouraged customers to speak Irish, and staged a theatrical version of Myles's book that ran in Irish and English. @frankie49.bsky.social

Hired models accessorising the new book from @tobias-w-harris.bsky.social at the @flannobriensoc.bsky.social conference in Strabane.

Strabane has been putting up with an influx of Flanneurs with exceptional patience and hospitality

It makes me feel better about the state of the world to know that at this moment people are gathering to talk about Flann O’Brien. (No doubt as truly true Gaelic Gaels who speak in true Gaelic Gaelic about the truly Gaelic language.)

Some fabulous photos from the opening ceremony of the Flann O’Brien conference in Strabane