Independent.ie - Ruth Dudley Edwards RSS Feed

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Scandal shows how prone we are to hypocrisy and hysteria

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I had a struggle to feel proud to be Irish this St Patrick's Day. Normally I would have smiled tolerantly at the ubiquitous shamrock-bespattered leprechaun hats and orange beards infesting central London. But I was afflicted by an attack of existential gloom, brought on by listening to Morning Ireland in full cry over Cardinal Sean Brady.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: A miserable week for the families of Omagh victims

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

THE bereaved and the mutilated of Omagh have had another terrible week. There was the huge bomb in Newry last Monday, which is thought to bear the hallmark of the Omagh bomb-maker. And there was the acquittal in Dublin of Colm Murphy -- whose mobile phone was used by a bomber on that dreadful day in August 1998 when 29 people and two unborn children were murdered -- on charges of conspiracy to cause an explosion.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Short was hardcore in dishing the dirt

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

'What did you think of Clare Short's evidence to the Iraq inquiry?" asked a friend the other night. "Hardcore, wasn't it?"

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Robinson seen as a joke but Adams must face serious questions

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

MOST of the Iris Robinson jokes are too gross for a family newspaper, but here is a printable one that is also my favourite. "Police in east Belfast are currently looking for a 19-year-old man who was last seen walking down the middle of the road, wearing a sash and singing, 'She was old but it was beautiful.'"

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Ireland needs fewer fruitcakes and more Terry Wogans please

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

FEELING cross with a variety of people the other day, I remembered a cathartic party game I invented some years ago. The principle is that each participant chooses whom they would most like to run out of the country and whom they would like to bring in. You put a euro in a hat for each entry, have a minute to make your case to your playmates and then a popular vote wins the jackpot.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Cool heads better than hot air in Copenhagen

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0000

WITH its thousands and thousands of delegates, officials, journalists and protesters, the hundreds and hundreds of planes (commercial and private), and the trains and cars and limos required to transport people, food, drink and equipment, the Copenhagen climate summit is on course to create more C02 than would a medium-sized African country. It looks set to deliver little other than pious rhetoric and ambiguous promises, and I'm glad, as I deplore bad decisions and ruinous expenditure based on dodgy science and scaremongering.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Obama failing to stand the test of time

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Mostly, I avoided talking about President Obama when I was in the US last month. The right cried communist and traitor; the left were plunged in gloom because he had sold out to capitalists and war-mongers; and the polarisation and anger was such that the centre seemed scared to talk about him at all.

Writing sharp as any dagger

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0000

We may lament that William Brodrick pipped Gene Kerrigan to the post for the 2009 Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger last week, but we should celebrate our boy for being one of the short listed six, along with bestsellers Mark Billingham (UK) and Lawrence Block (US).

Why Mrs Brown should have skipped the heroics

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

It's weird, living in the land of Gordon Brown, control-freak and squanderer of our taxes. In the satirical magazine Private Eye, he is known as the Supreme Leader, who fortnightly issues a Stalinist Decree.

Banville scored an own goal even before our crime fiction spat

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I published my first crime novel in 1981 and was short-listed for the British Crime Writers' Association's Best First Novel Award.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Incredible Hunk leaves Obama healthcare plans floundering

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

'OBAMA SUNK BY HUNK' was The Sun's excited take on the Republican capture of Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts senate seat by 52 per cent to 47 per cent. And one has to agree from the photographic evidence that Scott Brown, Cosmo's 1982 'America's Sexiest Man', is indeed a hunk.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Political correctness impairs airport security

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I bought an ulu in Alaska a couple of years ago. It's a sharp pocket knife with which Sarah Palin could efficiently skin a caribou or a terrorist cut the throat of a recalcitrant air steward. On return from a recent trip to Dublin, I found it nestling forgotten at the bottom of my handbag, having been undetected by both Heathrow or Dublin X-ray machines.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: We all have to make amends now for our sins of the past

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0000

'ONE down; 15 to go," chuckled my most anti-clerical friend on Thursday, as the news came through about Bishop Murray's resignation. And though I am less hardline than him, I didn't argue. For truly it is good to see the mighty humbled, if only to serve as a warning to the wannabes and a consolation to those whom the mighty push around.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Rejoice! The resurrection of Conrad is coming soon

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0000

CONRAD Black hasn't gone away, you know. Indeed, this week he's making another bid for freedom -- this time in the US Supreme Court.

Ruth Dudley Edwards: A good Alaskan, but not a good candidate

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

So Sarah Palin, until lately Governor of Alaska, is back polarising the American public from the Atlantic to the Pacific, criss-crossing the US to small towns where admirers queue for hours to have her sign her memoirs.

Cam 'n' Sam love-in adds to misery for Brown

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The compassionate should bleed for poor Gordon Brown. On Thursday, he had a terrible afternoon: there was the betrayal by Bono, the sighting of a hated ghost, the shock of the despised enemy moving policy tanks onto his Downing Street lawn, an attack on his record and judgement that must have had Downing Street staff ducking for cover from flying staplers and mobile phones, and, to cap it all, when he most needed love, four hours till midnight arguing inconclusively with Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness about the devolution of policing and justice to Northern Ireland, hardly on his priority list.

Togmeister shows why he’s not any old geezer

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:07:45 +0100

LAST Monday morning, just after the 8am news, a cloud of melancholy descended on eight million or so listeners to BBC Radio 2’s Wake up to Wogan.

When babies become the new celeb handbags

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Another day, another ethical dilemma for those of us who worry about such matters: should Elton John, 62, and his long-time partner David Furnish, 46, be permitted to adopt Lev, a 14-month-old HIV-positive boy with whom Elton fell in love a week ago while on a philanthropic mission to a Ukrainian orphanage? Bars and blogs of the world are alive with discord.

Divorce: don't get mad, get everything

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0100

'DID you hear they just released a new Barbie doll called Divorced Barbie?"

At least Jackson never inspired young boys to go out and kill

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:59:36 +0100

HE came from a dysfunctional family, lived much of the time in a world of fantasy, as a grown man sought out the company of children, was attracted sexually only by boys, but became a hero and legend in his death.