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Mary Kenny Opinion Thinking of becoming a mum in your 60s? Before you proceed, spare a thought for the child

We have become accustomed to those horrible little pictures of deadly diseases printed on cigarette packets. They don’t affect me directly as I’m not a smoker, but I find them distasteful and like a form of bullying. Let grown-ups take responsibility for their own health.

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Mary Kenny Opinion We wrote them off as Holy Joes, but Frank Duff’s Legion of Mary was really ahead of its time

As a youngster, I had regarded the Legion of Mary as an awful bunch of Holy Joes, appearing with their book stalls in Dublin’s O’Connell Street and imposing their sanctimonious presence.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Fiction attracts more women than men, but maybe the topics just need broadening

Will you be rushing to the bookshops next week for the new Sally Rooney nov- el, Beautiful World, Where Are You?

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Mary Kenny Opinion Lessons of de Valera and Churchill tell us that Joe Biden’s steady pair of hands should be kept to a single term

United States President Joe Biden is an experienced politician and a steady pair of hands, which made him an attractive alternative to Donald Trump last year. But President Biden is 78, and his televised press conferences since the Afghanistan debacle have been described as “incoherent”, a “word salad” and “stumbling and slurring”.

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Mary Kenny Opinion I’m at an age when, sadly, I’m seeing many old friends die, yet hardly ever from Covid 

Sarah Grazebrook was an enchanting woman who I knew as a comic novelist and creative writing teacher. This summer, she felt a little off-colour and tired and by July had lost her appetite. Because of Covid restrictions, she had found it awkward to see her GP and she didn’t press for an appointment. Finally, her husband insisted she get a blood test; when it came back, she was diagnosed with a virulent leukaemia. She died within three weeks.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Queen’s favourite, Prince Andrew, might never recover from sexual assault claims 

As a young man, Prince Andrew was so popular with the ladies that he attracted adoring fans of groupies, merrily shouting: “We want Randy Andy.”

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Mary Kenny Opinion The reason more women want a divorce? They have higher relationship standards

As a teenager, I acted as a companion to a worldly-wise, elderly Frenchwoman who sought to instruct me in the ways of sophisticated society. “The chains of marriage are so onerous that sometimes it takes three to carry the responsibility,” she would say slyly.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Kids today don’t deserve school reports as awful as mine, but are we too soft on them?

How well I remember the dread with which I anticipated my school reports, which would arrive during the summer holidays. They were invariably awful.

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Mary Kenny Opinion He’s been branded right wing and racist. So why does this TV host represent free speech?

Éric Zemmour is a media celebrity in France: he may very well be a candidate as president of France in succession to Emmanuel Macron. Unlikely that he’ll get to the Elysée Palace next April, but as a candidate, he would draw votes away from other parties, and certainly make a splash. After the recent regional elections, 10,000 posters appeared across France with the words, “Zemmour for President”.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Ideas of ‘gender equality’ need revising to accommodate our sexual differences 

Yes, Josepha Madigan was brave and right to disclose she had been a victim of sexual assault and to point out that so many women shared the same experience.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Classic novel highlights how wider society was behind treatment of unmarried mothers

Historical investigations like the Mother and Baby Homes Commission report are valuable contributions to our knowledge of the past, and yet anyone who wants to know what it felt like to be an unmarried mother 50 years ago could well turn their attention to a classic novel about the situation.

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Mary Kenny Opinion It’s only human to make a moral judgment when one behaves as badly as Matt Hancock did

We don’t like to be judgmental these days – it seems so pious and pompous – and words such as “adultery” seem so very Old Testament. Anyway, we’ve renamed adultery with the American “cheating”, although that isn’t particularly complimentary either. Who honours a cheat?

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Mary Kenny Opinion Like it or hate it, our use of ‘bad’ language in everyday life is only getting stronger

I would be a hypocrite if I expressed dismay that an official report has found people nowadays are much more inclined to swear. Nearly half of young people use “strong language” every day, and nearly half of parents use swear words more liberally than they did five years ago. Swearing, in general, has risen by 30pc since 2017. Blimey O’Reilly!

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Mary Kenny Opinion Aviation opened up the world to us, now it needs our support to get airborne again

My mother came of age in the early years of the Free State, and over the course of her lifetime two aspects of being Irish made her hugely proud. One was the “little green passport” with “Eire” embossed on the front cover. The other was the sight of an Aer Lingus aircraft flying the flag to international destinations.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘I’ve just attended the wedding of one of my oldest friends. The bride was a radiant 78 and the groom a glowing 83’

Can people find love — and marriage — in their mature years? I have the evidence that they can: I’ve just attended the wedding of one of my oldest friends. The bride was a radiant 78 and the groom a glowing 83.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘After a long exile, soon I’ll be back in my native Dublin... free to stroll the banks of the Dodder and reminisce about bohemian Baggotonia’

Very soon, all going well, fingers crossed, le cúnamh Dé, and Inshallah, I expect to be back in my native Dublin again, after a long exile caused by the wretched virus. So, doubly vaccinated, distance-abiding and in the open air, I should be free to stroll by the banks of the Dodder river and its environs, watching the waters run over the little brooks and weirs, and the willows bend their graceful boughs.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Jeff Bezos may have changed how we shop forever but no amount of AI can replace real retail’s human touch’

Major emergency! I lost my mobile phone charger — and without an electric charger the battery would run down, with the unthinkable result of no mobile phone. What to do? Go on Amazon. See screenshots of various charging devices. Click on suitable one. The next morning, a new phone charger plops through my letter box, for the price of a tenner.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Punctuation inspires passion. People have been driven into paroxysms of rage by the simple misuse of an apostrophe’

There’s a joke about an old grammarian on his deathbed. “I die, or I am dying — both are correct,” are his last words. I don’t think that grammar and syntax will be the last thing on my mind when I depart this world, but it’s surprising how much passion and inflammatory feelings such matters can inspire.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Before Article 41.2 is deleted, let us face the honest truth about the “woman in the home”: it was never more than window-dressing’

Abolish the “woman in the home” clause in the Constitution! That seems to be the judgement of the Citizens’ Assembly. The 99-member body concluded that Article 41.2, wherein it is affirmed that “the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved”, should go. The phrasing is outdated and the pledge is a hindrance to gender equality.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘A united Ireland will happen in the foreseeable future — but a shared island will be a different country’

Predictions are often a mug’s game — who predicted the pandemic and its impact? — but I’d still take a futures bet on this: there will be a united Ireland in the foreseeable future.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘We are fascinated by “the family face”: we see it in old family photographs — and we look for it in the royals’

Despite the global spotlight on Prince Philip’s funeral last weekend, not everyone is a fan of royalty. Some people in this country weren’t keen on flags flying at half-mast. And plenty of rational republicans — those who favour a republic as a democratic form of governance — can’t understand the survival of monarchy. Why should an accident of birth favour one family? Why should an individual receive exceptional deference because an ancestor ascended a throne, once upon a time? That time is over, surely.

Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Colour-blind casting treads a delicate path between fair employment and plausible drama’

Thandiwe Newton is a terrific actress — and, as it happens, a stunning beauty — who has recently attracted even more renown by changing her name back to its original African composition. When she first began her career, the original Zulu “Thandiwe” was anglicised to “Thandie”. For Ms Newton, now 48, restoring the original is about reclaiming her identity: her father was English, her mother a Zulu princess. She has received overwhelming support from people who applaud the authenticity of the gesture.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Prince Philip: the penniless exile who overcame a nomadic childhood marked by tragedy

WHEN it was first known that Prince Philip and the then Princess Elizabeth were in love – she had been smitten by him since she was 15 – the royal family was not delighted.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘The social peck is a relatively new feature of Irish society. Is it one we should kiss goodbye to post-lockdown?’

Were you brought up to kiss, hug and embrace those you only knew quite slightly? Most Irish people, I think, used to be quite reticent on this score. The kiss and the cuddle might be a family thing — although even among families, not all were kissy-huggy — but the ‘social kiss’ wasn’t a common feature of Irish society.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘It’s fascinating that in an increasingly secular world, the challenge of a pilgrimage has been growing steadily’

Here’s another Easter passing by, and I still haven’t fulfilled an ambition to walk the Camino pilgrimage, those 780km across Spain to Santiago de Compostela. This year, I’m blaming it on the restrictions imposed by Covid, rather than admit that the notion of setting off on such an April trek is probably beyond my capability.

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Mary Kenny Opinion From pop in Papua New Guinea to golden oldies in Japan, my trip around the world in 80 radio stations…

Gay Byrne always said that radio was more person-to-person than television: on TV, you’re speaking to masses. On radio, you’re communicating with just one person at a time.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Museums used to be about conserving the past, but now they’re also about forging the present and even predicting the future’

Won’t it be marvellous when the museums and galleries open again and we can actually see real art, real sculpture, real antiquities? Online is fine, but “being there” is the experience.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Maternity leave is great — but there is always going to be a degree of FOMO’

We should, I think, all welcome the statement made on behalf of Minister Helen McEntee that she intends to take her full six months of maternity leave — not just for her own benefit, but to “pave the way” for other female politicians’ rights. (At present, there is no provision for TDs to take maternity leave, although this is likely to be amended in the near future).

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Isolation is the worst thing for alcoholics — they need social networks if they are to recover’

As a recovering — hopefully, recovered — alcoholic, I have no problem with the Minister for Justice’s proposal to bring Sunday pub trading hours into line with longer weekday hours, or allowing the sale of alcohol at a variety of venues. Hours of the day at which you can purchase liquor are not the problem.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Is one person’s erotica – and freedom of expression – another person’s offensive pornography?

Saoirse Ronan’s new movie, Ammonite, is about Mary Anning, a shy young woman who was a pioneering fossil-hunter. Her achievements were never credited in her lifetime by male academics, but the value of her work has been rediscovered. The film also introduces an apparently fictional theme in Mary Anning’s life — a same-sex relationship, which is said to be hot stuff, when Kate Winslet as Mary falls for Saoirse’s character, Charlotte.