Friday, 7 May 2021 | 1.1°C Dublin

Subscribe
- My Account
- Log Out

News [1]
Opinion [2]
Business [3]
Sport [4]
Life [5]
Style [7]
Entertainment [8]
Travel [9]

Menu Sections

Independentie

News [1]
Opinion [2]
Business [3]
Sport [4]
Life [5]
Style [7]
Entertainment [8]
Travel [9]

Menu Sections

Books & Arts

March 2021

Never gave up: Charles Hill recovered priceless paintings

Obituary: Charles Hill

Charles Hill, the art detective, aided the recovery of many priceless objects, in an adventurous career both with the Metropolitan Police in London and as a freelance investigator, most sensationally Edvard Munch's The Scream and Titian's Rest On The Flight Into Egypt.

December 2020

John le Carré, author of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy has died at 89

John le Carré, the spy-turned-novelist whose elegant and intricate narratives defined the Cold War espionage thriller and brought acclaim to a genre critics had once ignored, has died. He was 89,

Obituary: Homan Potterton

If nothing else, Homan Potterton did the State considerable service when he persuaded Alfred and Clementine Beit of Russborough House in Co Wicklow to donate paintings by Vermeer, Goya and Metsu to the National Gallery in Dublin, shortly before he retired as its director.

November 2020

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant in The Undoing, based on the book written by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Premium

There's no undoing damage done by Donald the Destroyer

Writer Jean Hanff Korelitz and her husband, the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, are planning to bring their adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead to Dublin next year. The New York-based couple are "talking to an important cultural Irish institution", Korelitz says.

October 2020

Empathy with the dispossessed: Poet Derek Mahon

Obituary: Derek Mahon

Derek Mahon, who has died aged 78, produced some of the most important poetry for his times; he is best known for his most anthologised poem, which has the eye-catchingly low-key title of A Disused Shed in Co Wexford.

July 2020

Premium

Obituary: Michael Cullen

The artist Michael Cullen, who died in Dublin on July 10 following a long illness, painted big, bright and often brash paintings, many influenced by his extensive travels in Spain, Morocco and Mexico.

February 2020

How John Updike predicted Donald Trump's divided America

When I was growing up, John Updike never meant to me what he was supposed to mean. A male American kid who wanted to write, I should have been reading The New Yorker but still subscribed to Sports Illustrated instead, even when I reached university.

December 2019

Coming soon: several works by murdered journalist Lyra McKee

Reading the fine print: the best books to look out for in 2020

January: Wasting no time whatsoever in availing of our New Year's resolutions, three books being published on Thursday promise to help with the post-Christmas detox of body and mind.

September 2018

Bora tribe member - whose family benefited from Irish revolutionary Roger Casement's work - is exhibiting his work in Dublin today

A Bora tribe member - whose family benefited from the work of Irish revolutionary Roger Casement - has travelled to Ireland to be part of an exhibition of Amazon painters.

May 2018

Author Philip Roth poses in New York September 15, 2010. REUTERS/Eric Thayer/File Photo

Celebrated author Philip Roth dies aged 85

Philip Roth, the prize-winning novelist and fearless narrator of sex, death, assimilation and fate, from the comic madness of Portnoy's Complaint to the elegiac lyricism of American Pastoral, has died at the age of 85.

May 2017

What Lies Beneath: Conversing with Trees Again 2 by Patrick Walshe

Ennis, County Clare, in 1952, when Patrick Walshe was born, "was a fair town with more horses and carts than cars."

The Francis Bacon that sold for more than $50m

Irish painter's work breaks $50m barrier at Christie's contemporary sale

WORKS by Francis Bacon and Cy Twombly each sold for more than $50 million at Christie's on Wednesday, helping drive a $448 million sale of contemporary art that met expectations in an uncertain market.

January 2017

Playwright Harold Pinter pictured with his wife Lady Antonia Fraser, before the opening of Harold Pinter's 'No Man's Land' in the Gate Theatre. Photo: Frank Mc Grath

Historic voyage to the Holy Land with Mr Pinter

Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter first met in January, 1975. After a dinner to celebrate the first night of a revival of The Birthday Party, she accepted a lift home. "I just must say hello to Harold Pinter," she told her lift-giver, "and say it was a wonderful play, wonderful actors, you're wonderful, blah blah blah". Having done so she told Pinter: "Now I must be off." He said: "Must you go?" She said: "No, it's not absolutely essential," and they spent the next 33 years together.

December 2016

Anthony Cronin talking to President Michael D Higgins in 2012. Photo: Tony Gavin

Tributes pour in after death of poet Cronin

President Michael D Higgins led the tributes to 'master of long poem' Anthony Cronin, after the literary genius died at the age of 88.

Author and poet Anthony Cronin passed away on December 28 at 88. Photo: Tony Gavin

Anthony Cronin 1928-2016: Bohemian lost soul who grew into grand old man of Irish letters

In the last decades of his long life, Anthony Cronin modestly wore the mantle of grand old man of Irish letters, a sage-like presence of unassuming authority and wisdom. Yet before old age conferred on him such gravitas, he had also been a controversial figure, largely because of his close ties to Charles J Haughey, who deferred to him on almost all cultural matters.

Author and poet Anthony Cronin at home in Ranelagh.
Photo: Tony Gavin 27/11/14

'Unfailingly courteous and generous' - Poet and critic Anthony Cronin dies aged 88

Tributes have been paid to poet and critic Anthony Cronin who has died, aged 88.

August 2016

J. K. Rowling attends the press preview of "Harry Potter & The Cursed Child" at Palace Theatre on July 30, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images)

'The paper version doesn’t deliver the magic' - Read Emer O'Hanlon's review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Released at midnight on Sunday, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the script of a two-part play now showing at the Palace Theatre, London.

July 2016

The Palace Theatre in central London, with signage for the new Harry Potter and the Cursed Child production, which will officially debut tonight. Photo: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire

Pottermania: Irish bookshops gear up for midnight party for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Nearly eight weeks of previews and months more of fans' excitement are over.

April 2016

Harry Potter event for children postponed because adult fans have FOMO

Harry Potter has never been “only for kids”, so when a library tried to set up an event sans adults, it was never going to end nicely.

March 2016

RACY LADY: Mum-of-five Jacqueline was a source of great support for her famous husband, Vincent O’Brien

Obituary: Jacqueline O'Brien

Although best known as the wife of legendary horse trainer, the late Vincent O'Brien, Jacqueline O'Brien was an accomplished photographer and writer in her own right.

Cecelia Ahern says she used a fake name when submitting her book to get an honest review. Photo: Ronan Lang.

Cecelia Ahern slams suggestions Bertie boosted her career: 'As if my father rang up Warner Bros asking him to turn my book into a movie'

Best-selling author Cecelia Ahern said she has less tolerance for suggestions her father, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was the driving force behind her success.

June 2015

What lies beneath: Nude

A man walked into a . . . No, no, this isn't smutty. How could it be when that man was walking into an art gallery? And so smitten was this business man and diamond dealer by Rocco Tullio's large painting that he "released a diamond" and bought it there and then.

Summer reading has just got more exciting

Not everyone gets to jet off to the sun during the summer holidays, and if you are stuck at home, or somewhere not particularly warm, then pick up Catherine Alliott's latest, Wish You Were Here (Michael Joseph, €12.65). Restaurant reviewer Flora and her doctor husband James have scored a freebie holiday in the villa of famous opera singer Camille. Unfortunately the couple are joined by their large extended family, Flora's first love and the Diva herself (Camille). Alliott's description of the South of France is wonderful and you can almost feel the heat on your face as you turn the pages.

May 2015

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is said to have 'reinvented' narrative fiction for young readers

Newspaper apologises for alleging JK Rowling 'wrote false claims about her time as a single mother,' High Court hears

Author JK Rowling has been "fully vindicated and her reputation restored" following a newspaper's apology for alleging she wrote a "sob story" containing false claims about her time as a single mother, the High Court has heard.

April 2015

George Best With Angie & baby Calum. Photo: Eddie Sanderson

The day George Best told Calum 'You're not my f***ing son'

George Best had gone on the missing list for Calum. As the soccer icon once said himself of his infamous missing routine - Miss UK, Miss Sweden. Miss World. George, so the story goes, flew his son - then just 13 - to London over from America, where Calum was born in California on February 6, 1981, to help him celebrate his 50th birthday. The birthday party was not at George's home but rather at his second home, Stringfellows, 'the gentleman's' strip club in London. Calum was at the party but his dad wasn't. He was too drunk to attend and left Calum to be minded by the club's proprietor instead.

January 2015

Joker by SG at Shelton Abbey, at the launch of the National Prisoner Art Exhibition titled "FALLEN BIRD take 2" at City Hall in Dublin. Photo: Arthur Carron

Stunning artworks by convicted criminals and ex-prisoners go on exhibition

Former ‘Love/ Hate’ star Peter Coonan was one of the guests to attend the launch of The National Prison Education Art Exhibition ‘Fallen Bird’ in Dublin’s Town Hall tonight.

December 2014

Olwen Fouéré rehearsing a reading from WB Yeats The Tower in the National Library

Timing is everything at Yeats launch

"How much is it?" poet and playwright WB Yeats supposedly asked upon hearing he had nabbed the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

Amazon's Book of the Year 2014: Literary thriller US loves

You may never have heard of Celetse Ng but this book, her debut novel, has beaten Hilary Mantel, Stephen King and all the other big names to take the Amazon.com Book of the Year title for 2014. It's already been a New York Times bestseller and may well now repeat the success on this side of the Atlantic.

John le Carré, author of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy has died at 89