Journalists

Does Helena have it all? 

Feminist icons are often unmarried or childless or both - Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Steinem - but now there is an influential feminist role-model who is a married mother of nine children.

Mary Kenny: An ill wind… How falling sick can expand our horizons 

We talk a lot these days about having "agency" - our capacity to exert our own will - and "bodily autonomy" - our rights of ownership over our own body. But if there's one thing that totally wipes out notions of "agency" and "bodily autonomy", it's illness.

Mary Kenny: Sons and lovers 

Philip Larkin's most famous poem is a catchy but sour disquisition on the malign influence of parents ("They f*** you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do"). It now emerges that his reflections were all too autobiographical: he seems to have inherited his gloomy and misanthropic view of family life from his own mother, Eva.

Mary Kenny: I found sanity at the cinema 

The Irish, I'm proud to say, are rated as the best cinema-goers in Europe (along with the French) by the International Union of Cinemas and last year, cinema attendances increased again in this country.

Mary Kenny: Because she's worth it? 

When I was a young woman, I was an executive on a London evening newspaper, and when a political storm broke over a trade union dispute, I suggested we should commission Barbara Castle to write a comment piece.

Mary Kenny: If Meghan Markle wants to promote feminism, why is she quitting her job? 

I always thought that one of the regrettable aspects of Grace of Monaco's life was that she quit her profession after marriage. Admittedly, women did, usually, resign their jobs on marrying (or were obliged to do so) in those days, but it didn't always apply to women in the arts, and certainly not in the performing arts - some famous actresses even styled themselves "Mrs" for added distinction.

Mary Kenny: Play on! An 85-year-old family piano has a story of its own to tell 

Some decades ago - back in the 1930s - my mother acquired an upright piano which pleased her very much. It had, she told me, belonged to the Archbishop of Dublin Dr John Charles McQuaid when he was Dean of Blackrock College, and whether she purchased it from him directly or through another owner wasn't quite clear. (Younger people: if you want to know something about a past episode...

Mary Kenny: Hail glorious St Patrick! 

Oh, the neighbouring nations have tried. They've tried very hard. Awed by the success of St Patrick's Day, not only in Ireland, but worldwide, there have been concerted efforts to establish St David's, St Andrew's and St George's as national saints' days in Wales, Scotland and England.

Mary Kenny: Faith accompli? 

An increasing number of parents want to remove their children from religious education classes at school - according to Education Minister Richard Bruton - and that's entirely their right. But I now wish I'd had more RE rather than less.

Mary Kenny: For better or for worse… 

Planning to marry? My advice from over 40 years' experience.

Mary Kenny: Remembering MP Markievicz 

Constance Markievicz would certainly be astonished to have been told that 100 years after she was the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons, a British Tory prime minister - also a woman - would be declaring her intention of honouring the occasion.

Curfuggled by Slurvian? 

There are 24 official languages in the European Union, but only three working tongues: French, English and German. It had been suggested that after Britain quits the EU, English might lose its official status. (Ireland and Malta, though English-speaking, don't claim English as their official language.)

Happy birthday, you legends! 

Those due to celebrate their 50th birthday in 2018 may enjoy contemplating the fascinating year in which they were born: the legendary 1968. This is 'the year that rocked history', in the words of one of its many biographers.

Whatever you do, just don't mention the 'B word' - Brexit lays bare Britain's class divide 

I was delighted to be invited to an exceptionally promising lunch - fine cooking guaranteed - in Wiltshire just before Christmas. Train schedules ordained that I arrived early, and this gave the hostess, an old friend, a chance to take me aside discreetly for a moment. "Don't," she said, "mention the B word, for heaven's sake! They're all Remainers here. We don't talk about the...

Fanny's Christmas legacy 

On Christmas Eve each year there is a lovely BBC tradition of broadcasting a carol service from King's College Cambridge, and that always starts off in the same way: a young solo chorister, with a voice of perfect clarity, begins the much-loved carol Once in Royal David's City. It's always an affecting moment, summing up so much that is comforting, peaceable and aesthetically uplifting about the tradition of the Christian Nativity.

How Fido became Freddy 

The world is divided into those who favour dogs and those who favour cats: just now, dogs seem to be winning attention. Dog sociologists like John Bradshaw have observed that we are becoming much more anthropomorphic about doggies. Canine pets used to be given names like Rover or Fido: now they're christened (virtually) with much more human names, like Max or Sam, Hubert or Felicity.

Mary Kenny: When sirens called the shots 

I have before me a picture of Marlene Dietrich in her prime, sent by a friend in Berlin. It's taken soon after her 1930s debut in The Blue Angel, an erotic tale about a sedate professor who falls under the spell of a night-club singer. Dietrich played the role of femme fatale in many a film, when as a woman whose power is in her beauty and her compelling personality, she calls the shots.

Mary Kenny: The Romanovs' Irish nanny 

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 is seen as a stirring event, not unlike the Easter Rising of 1916: when an archaic and reactionary regime is replaced by a vital new leadership. Lenin and Trotsky are charismatic figures, even if the most powerful of the troika, Stalin, is now better known as a ruthless dictator.

Mary Kenny: Pimp or liberationist? 

When Hugh Hefner - founder of the famed Playboy empire - died last month, some feminists finally felt legally free to describe how they saw him. Suzanne Moore of The Guardian called him "a pimp" - as she had done during his lifetime, though under threat from his lawyers.

Mary Kenny: Postcards from the past 

It's pleasing to see shops in Ireland still display and sell pretty picture postcards. I hope that visitors are buying and sending them, but the postcard is not a thriving business, worldwide. The American postal service has been charting a progressive decline in postcard sending since 2010. Last month, in Britain, the oldest postcard publisher, J Salmon of Sevenoaks, announced its closure - put out of business by changing holiday habits and the instant gratification of social media. It's reckoned there's been a 60pc decline in the picture postcard over the past 20 years. People are taking more...

Mary Kenny: The teenage nightmare 

A British academic survey, the Millennium Cohort Study, has found that 24pc of adolescent girls at the age of 14 were depressed (compared with 9pc of boys). One of the authors, Praveetha Patalay of the University of Liverpool, said that: "Compared to previous generations, there seem to be increasing problems, particularly in girls." Twenty thoughts on this situation…

Mary Kenny: The petulant princess? 

It was always known among reporters who covered the British royal circuit that the late Princess Margaret was "difficult". She liked to be seen as a royal rebel and "with it" - in the lingo of the time - but people were warned that she'd seem friendly and approachable, and then suddenly pull rank. If those socialising with her alluded to "your sister", she would haughtily correct them with an icy "you mean, Her Majesty the Queen".

Mary Kenny: Lonely? Go solo! 

Loneliness in older life is a perennial problem; anyone who writes a problem page will tell you that. It's one of the reasons why many people don't like having to retire: it's not just that they lose contact with the daily life of work but because they feel less connected with what's going on. Maybe they feel less needed.

Mary Kenny: The diva who starved her voice 

Next Saturday, September 16, her adoring fans will gather together in many parts of the world to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Maria Callas, whom they regard at the "greatest soprano ever".

Mary Kenny: Breaking ball 

Being the month of September our thoughts naturally turn to the sporting event of the season - the GAA finals. We're told that the GAA is "in our DNA", and in one sense it's true: anyone who has grown up in Ireland hears, in the background of memory (for those of a certain vintage, accompanied by the immortal voice of Michéal Ó Hehir) the excitement, enthusiasm and acclaim associated with the GAA activities.

Mary Kenny: No kidding! 

'How are you?" "I'm good." To which the correct answer is: "I was enquiring about your health, rather than your moral character." But the Americanism "I'm good" - instead of "I'm well" (or "fine", or the nice Hibernicism, "I'm grand") - is already so engrained that there is no hope of erasing it. It is probably derived from German "Ich bin gut": it's certainly not old English practice.

Mary Kenny: Diana's tragedy 

It would be an exaggeration to say that I knew Diana, Princess of Wales, but I met her, and it later transpired that she read what I wrote. Or maybe she just read the reports about herself: for she said to the editor of The Daily Telegraph (as he recounted subsequently), "Why can't you write nice things about me, like Mary Kenny?" I suppose I did write positively about Diana because she was a very winning personality, and seemed so unstuffy: she spoke rather simply to me about how she really would have liked to be a nurse, and how rewarding it was to look after people who were...

Mary Kenny: Dublin in the rare auld times 

What would our modern visitors think if they could travel back in time and visit Dublin 60 years ago? Well, I've just happened upon a guide to our capital city published in 1957, by an Anglo-Irish writer called Olivia Robertson. Her Dublin was both different and the same. She gazed at Dalkey and Killiney and compared it to Naples, as we still do, but she called the Sugar Loaf Mountain by its previous name - the Golden Spears Mountain.

Mary Kenny: Purr-fect summer reads 

Many writers have featured cats in their prose (or poetry): T.S. Eliot, Colette, P.G. Wodehouse, and a beguiling little cat appears in the first pages of Joyce's Ulysses. But maybe the most chilling feline story was written by the Gothic novelist Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat. It is a truly terrible tale - but also a gripping one - about a very disturbed man who is in the power of a "gin-nurtured… fiendish malevolence".

Mary Kenny: On the cards 

Have you ever considered walking out of your marriage or relationship? Have you ever had a career crisis where you thought "I've missed my vocation"? Have you ever asked "what should I do with my life?" Most people probably have.

Mary Kenny: He says, ze says 

Ever since I was made aware that folks from the city on the Foyle favoured different names for their home town ("Do you come from Derry?" "Yes, I come from Londonderry") I have believed that people should be called whatever the heck they like. So I have no problem with the transgender (or "intersex") pronoun "ze" replacing "he" and "her".

Don't shy away 

I felt sorry for Theresa May during the turbulent month of June because she was so widely blamed for having the wrong kind of personality. The British prime minister had a bad election campaign, seeming arrogant, aloof and unable to connect with people - so unlike her Labour rival, Jeremy Corbyn. She was savaged for not responding more spontaneously to the dreadful Kensington inferno at Grenfell Tower - while Mr Corbyn knew, instinctively, you just go to suffering victims and hug them. It's not Theresa's way. She can't.

Mary Kenny: Good old bad old days 

An animal charity in Britain, Spana, has found that half of adults over the age of 50 think that life was better in the past - only 19pc like it better today. But there are pros and cons in this debate, surely…

Class divides so evident after London fire can also be found closer to home 

Since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, London's Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is seen as a "metaphor for inequality". There's always been a posh element of London W8 and London W11, but extremes of health and deprivation have undoubtedly intensified since I lived there, first in the 1960s, and then the 1980s and '90s.

Mary Kenny: Marriage or master's? 

In the latter years of his life, my husband used to greet breathless announcements of new developments and events with the philosophical words: "'Twas ever thus!" In old age, you see the same themes of life returning as if in a cycle.

Mary Kenny: The town of kings 

Ah, Dún Laoghaire! It seemed like a glittering jewel from the Côte d'Azur in our childhood, whither we would travel on the CIE train, which preceded the Dart, to swim in those fabled Dún Laoghaire baths, and afterwards to partake of an ice-cream at the immortal Teddy's, served by the very dapper Teddy himself. On Sundays, it was my mother's pleasure to walk the length of the Dún Laoghaire pier, there to look out to sea mistily, pondering on the oceans further away, just as in the opening pages of Ulysses.

Mary Kenny: Generations in harmony 

Mothers and daughters: daughters with their mothers: that was one of the most striking images that emerged from the terrible Manchester atrocity. Ariana Grande's concert attracted, overwhelmingly, an audience of young people - which turned a wicked massacre into a tragedy of even greater dimensions - but it was evident that the family attendance was inter-generational.

Mary Kenny: Everyday sexism? 

Laura Bates's Everyday Sexism Project is a mission to document the varieties of sexism to which women are subjected in many countries. She's had an enormous response online and the book she wrote about the humiliations endured by respondents makes for depressing reading. Her reports on 'street harassment' alone make you wonder if the Victorians weren't right in providing chaperones for young ladies.

Mary Kenny: Soul sisters 

Feuds between sisters are well enough known: the movie stars Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland maintained a sisterly quarrel all their lives. The writers Margaret Drabble and her sister A.S. (Antonia) Byatt only meet - acknowledging each other with a formal nod - at funerals, never having patched up a family difference. Among the notorious Mitford sisters, Jessica was a Communist and Diana was a Fascist (and the mother of Desmond Guinness, who saved Georgian Dublin from destruction): throughout their adult lives they were not "on speakers".

Mary Kenny: Fallen woman 

It's a sad fact of life that the older you get, the more likely you are to fall. And not in a good way, like falling in love, or falling (as they say) pregnant. I mean tumbling to the ground because you've lost your balance.

If TDs won't stand for Dáil prayers, maybe 'Songs of Praise' will get them on their feet 

Prayers in Dáil Éireann? My alternative solution to this controversial question - since secularists continue to be opposed to it - is to begin proceedings with a hymn.

Mary Kenny: Vive la feminism 

Feminists all over the world clamour that "more women's voices must be heard". More women's voices in science, on business boards, in academia, in the media, and, above all, in politics. However, no feminists I can trace have praised the French Presidential candidate Marine le Pen as representing an advance for women's voices in politics. As Marion Anne Perrine le Pen has led the National Front party, and thus "the extreme far right", she is never seen as a role-model for women and she is not supported by feminist groups.

Mary Kenny: Dope talk 

When I open my email these days, I find it flooded with various commercial offers. Especially around cannabis products. Now is the right moment, I'm informed, to invest in cannabis. It's getting legal everywhere! It's a profitable product -and, besides, it helps with a range of illnesses "including chronic pain, anxiety, arthritis, diabetes, PTSD, strokes, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer".

Is Theresa the new Maggie? Not quite 

It's almost a cliché now to describe Theresa May as "the vicar's daughter": but it's an essential element of who she is, and she has frequently referred to herself in that way. The key to her character and formation is, indeed, the Church of England: Michael Gove has even referred to her as "Britain's first Catholic Prime Minister" because her background was High Church (and she also attended a convent school for a time).

Mary Kenny: The mating game 

Matchmaking today is done often via the internet - often successfully too - but previously, it was the job of the matchmakers either in person or through "marriage bureaux". London's best-known - and first official - marriage agency was started by Heather Jenner and her business partner Audrey Parsons in 1939 and the archives they left behind are a priceless record of how men and women looked for partners over the next decade.

Mary Kenny: Your funeral, your way 

If anyone plays Frank Sinatra's My Way at my funeral, I'll be mortified in more senses than one - the embarrassment of anyone finding out that secretly I rather loved this mawkish, self-pitying and self-justifying song, composed just 50 years ago. It's shamefully bombastic as it boasts and brags of the ego's achievements in "planning each chartered course", sometimes biting off "more than I could chew": but always standing tall and doing it "my way". It's been called "shamelessly self-mythologising" and "lamentable" by music critics. And yet, I have to admit, it gets to me every...

Every nation needs 'soft power' - our Mrs Brown has it in spades 

I was in Paris on the day that British Prime Minister Theresa May started the procedure to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union - the famous "triggering of Article 50" - and the air was thick with discussion among the political classes. The theme of 'perfide Albion' came up more than once, though no one quite recalled that General de Gaulle predicted Britain would never fit into a continental club anyway.

Mary Kenny: Grin and wear it 

A young man came to see me recently for what I thought was a business meeting. When I saw that he was wearing track suit trousers and a T-shirt, I knew the deal was off. If he was serious about the project he'd have been less casual in his semiotics (the study of signs and signals and their interpretation).

If Sinn Féin TDs want to talk about Nazis, they should look to their own party's history 

There's a contemporary adage about political debates that whoever first brings up a Nazi comparison in an argument, loses the argument. Nothing compares to the Nazi crimes and anyone who tries to inflate their talking-point by doing so seems absurd and insensitive.

Mary Kenny: Princesses over politics 

Honestly, I do wish Prince Harry would hurry up and get married. I'm not that fussy who he marries - this Meghan lass seems to be his heartfelt choice - just so long as he provides the world at large with the general spectacle of a royal wedding.

Criticising Foster isn't misogyny - it's just treating her like any other leader 

Arlene Foster certainly broke a political glass ceiling in Belfast when she became the first woman chosen to lead the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in 2015, a movement whose founding father, Ian Kyle Paisley, seemed the very epitome of an Old Testament patriarch.

Mary Kenny: Kiss me, I'm (now) Irish 

Our St Patrick's Day duties could be more onerous this year: a personal fáilte is surely due to the many individuals who have chosen to become Irish over the past nine months. I'm talking about those people who seldom previously thought of themselves as Irish who have applied for an Irish passport since the Brexit vote on June 23, 2016.

Mary Kenny: The leopard changes its spots 

Here's a blinding flash of the obvious: a study carried out at the University of Edinburgh has found that people change over the course of their lives. Between the ages of 14 and 77, profound shifts of personality occur: individuals alter "beyond recognition", according to the Scottish project - which was led by Mathew Harris, an academic brainbox, and examined the mental health of Scots over six decades.

Fake it until you make it - hypocrisy is the glue that holds society together 

Where would we be without a little hypocrisy?

Mary Kenny: The 'modern' wedding is an antique 

Jasmine works in a supermarket where she has the responsible job of checking that the items are always correctly priced. She is in her 30s and has been living with her boyfriend for a few years now, and to her great delight, in May of this year, they'll be getting married.

Women are used to calling shots on fertility - 'reversible vasectomy' will change this 

Developments in contraception are constantly in progress, and the boffins seem optimistic with the latest breakthrough in male contraception - the "reversible vasectomy".

Mary Kenny: Why is sorry the hardest word? 

The smart advice used to be: "Never apologise, never explain". Apologies and explanations may only remind the offended party of the offence taken, thus re-inflaming the wound, and so make things worse.

Mary Kenny: A Trump dynasty 

There's one set of liberals who should be pleased - even jubilant - about the ascent of President Donald Trump: those who uphold and champion the benefits of divorce. During our several divorce referenda, liberals advanced the claim that divorce could be good (as against defenders of traditional marriage, who said it broke up families).

Look to Sweden and Norway for how to handle our border controls after Brexit 

Every month I experience the "Common Travel Area" between Britain and Ireland which is now - rightly - upheld as such a necessary part of trade and economic relations.

Mary Kenny: From Playboy to puritanism? 

That venerable national treasure, former senator Professor John A Murphy, has expressed concern we are moving into a new age of puritanism. This worries him, since he is old enough to remember the old puritanism when the word 'breast' could get a book banned and a Doris Day movie which contained the expletive "darn!" was registered as indecorous, if not actually shocking.

Mary Kenny: A deposit of loyalty 

Apparently, Irish people are the slowest in Europe to switch banks. Even though "banksters", as they're now called, are often seen as baddies, there's a loyalty to our own bank. This could be a bit like the relationship with the Catholic Church: people rage against the "institution" and the hierarchy, but they often like their own neighbourhood priest and he's the first they turn to when there's a local tragedy.

Syrian refugees will get a warm welcome - but integration is key 

The people of Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, surely deserve a round of applause for the way in which - so far - they have welcomed the prospect of 240 Syrian refugees being placed in their small town as an emergency measure.

Mary Kenny: The year that shaped the world 

It was the year that ushered in the word "surrealism" - coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. It was the year when Benito Mussolini, recovering from a war-wound, developed a special theory of populism: "a country needs, at its head, a man who knows the people as a friend, but directs and guides them".

Brexit vote shattered my view of the English as a nation of dull conformists 

My mother, though always courteous to individuals, didn't have a high opinion of the ordinary Englishman (or woman). She considered them a "dull" people, ground into cogs in a wheel by the industrial revolution, which required people to be dullards serving Mammon and master. This was in contrast to the imaginative and poetic Irish.

Mary Kenny: A Cavanman's tale 

It's the story of the Cavan boy's picaresque adventures and it made me laugh more than anything else I read during 2016. I shrieked with merriment at some of John McEntee's stories as he went from apprentice on The Anglo-Celt newspaper to earning £100,000 a year as a London journalist when he "often woke up blinking in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking the champagne-fuelled carousel had finally stopped…

The cup that cheers? No, too much boozing makes for a bore 

The woman's face was vaguely familiar to me as she hove into sight among the party's throng. "Ooh…..darling! Kiss, kiss, hug, hug!" she slurred. Oh dear: so early in the evening and she's already drunk. I'll never get a word of sense out of her, I thought.

Mary Kenny: Auld acquaintance time 

Christmas is supposed to be about families - and of course it is. But it should also be about friends and friendship. The nice thing about all those Christmas cards - from the impressive and tasteful to the glittery and gaudy - is that they express friendliness, and often a desire to keep friendships alive.

New baby for Jagger at age 73 proof that parenting is anything but equal 

When I was born, back in the 1940s, friends and family took pity on my mother, who was 42. "Poor Ita! Imagine having another child at her age! A dreadful burden!"

Mary Kenny: A portrait of the artist as a woman 

Women artists have often been overlooked - or under-rated - by history, so it is good to see the inspiring paintings of Lady Elizabeth Butler in the exhibition currently at Dublin's National Gallery, 'Creating History'.

Mary Kenny: Lessons of 2016 

So, as 2016 enters its last month, I ask myself - what did I learn this year?

We may have changed, but we will always need powerful friends like the Vatican 

A small, poor, fledgling state which has just defied the world's greatest empire needs all the friends it can get. No, I'm not referring to Cuba's defiance of the USA - though there are parallels - but the Irish Free State in 1923, after its separation from Great Britain, which at that time was an empire holding sway over a quarter of the globe.

Mary Kenny: The etiquette of affluence 

What should you wear if invited to go shooting game in Scotland? Should a host give a tour of his stately home before sitting guests down to dinner? How much should one tip the servants after spending a weekend with friends in the country? I don't know anyone who is much disturbed by these questions, but the world of toffs is filled with anxious sorts who turn to Sir David Tang for nervous guidance on social matters and his advice has become renowned.

Mary Kenny: Acting authorities - Should we take our political views from celebrities? 

We all adore the wonderful Michael Fassbender: and I particularly adore him since he actually performed in a play of mine at Edinburgh. High point of my life. But do I want to take my "rules for living" from the adorable Fassbender? Probably not. I think I might pay more attention to Nietzsche ("Live dangerously!") or Wittgenstein.

Mary Kenny: The 'D' word is the least of Prince Harry's romantic problems 

Should we be sorry for Prince Harry? The 32-year-old is never going to be short of a few bob, and his life is unlikely to be troubled by anxiety about procuring a mortgage. On the other hand, he's always had to play 'the spare' to 'the heir'.

Mary Kenny: Despatches from 1963 

Do you have any old letters in the attic? Don't chuck them, keep them: they are social documents. They are voices from the past which may impart many lessons - some of them possibly embarrassing - but striking, just the same.

Mary Kenny: Time to squeeze in a visit 

It might be a fun idea to be in London for a pre-Christmas shopping trip: what with the pound sterling almost heading for parity with the euro and all that...

Clinton lost because people do not like to be lectured by over-privileged, out-of-touch elites 

Most commentators seemed to believe that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the American presidential election in 2016: but the first doubt was planted in my own mind after a conversation in New York in the spring.

In the mind of FIFA, the causes of the poppy and Easter Rising are linked 

The Irish nationalist tradition has seldom favoured the ritual wearing of the poppy in November - it smacked of imperial militarism - so it is somewhat ironic that the 1916 commemoration emblem should now be inextricably linked with the right to wear a November poppy.

Leonard's your man: Surely Cohen is as worthy of a Nobel Prize as Dylan? 

Does Bob Dylan merit the Nobel Prize for Literature? Is he really up there with Yeats, Hemingway, Solzhenitsyn, TS Eliot, and Heaney? The Swedish academy gave the award to the American balladeer "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

Mary Kenny: Royal old times in Dublin 

Dublin is a dynamic city, with new tram-tracks being laid, buildings going up and buildings coming down. And it's gratifying to think that a major building which will soon be under the wrecking ball is one voted by environmentalists "the worst building in Dublin", "an eyesore", and "a monstrosity". This is the concrete tower block already half-decayed and propped up with scaffolding, in Hawkins Street, adjacent to Poolbeg Street and the Liffey, which was once the site of the Theatre Royal.

Mary Kenny: Why not Bridget Jones's Abortion? 

Everyone seems to love Bridget Jones. The cinema was full - 98pc female - and the audience laughed, clapped and empathised with Bridget (the fabulous Renée Zellweger) and her zany antics. She drinks a bottle of vodka at a rock concert, falls on her face in the mud, and then falls into bed with a hunky stranger in his yurt.

Mary Kenny: Sex and the classroom 

A teenage mother was telling me she had two pregnancies before the age of 15, and I then ventured to ask if there had been any sex education at her school.

Michael D, Mary Berry, Hillary, Trump - all prove age no barrier to active life 

Both main contenders for the American presidency have faced fierce criticism - and there will be more of that this week for the TV debates. But let's give both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump a round of applause on one count anyway: both of them are past pensionable age and have at least shown the world that oldsters can cut the mustard on the campaign trail.

Mary Kenny: A winning smile is priceless 

When older feminists get together, they will sometimes discuss "what development was the greatest benefit to women in our lifetime". Some name the Pill, some the motor car, some choose better education and career opportunities, some nominate equal pay: I would like to suggest that modern dentistry be added to the list.

Wogan's Westminster Abbey memorial highlights the English approach to death 

Fans of Terry Wogan - or, as he is now described on this side of the pond, Sir Terence Wogan KBE DL - may set their diaries for September 27, when the great Limerick broadcaster will receive the final accolade that a nation's establishment can bestow: a formal memorial service at Westminster Abbey in London.

Mary Kenny: Retreat, pray, love 

The doors of the old church were open, and you could see, even from outside, a blaze of candles by a side altar. I'd been told about the prayers and candles offered before the statue of St Rita, an Italian woman of renowned holiness (born in 1381), venerated in this seaside resort in Brittany. And between two stands of candles (the tapering kind, for €1, the longer-last candle, in a jar, €2), an open book of prayer requests.

Mary Kenny: Hanging 'em high? 

World-wide, ever more people are against the death penalty - in America, state after state is removing execution from the statute books. But 70 years ago this autumn, the judges at Nuremberg - where 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide' were first properly defined - unanimously decided that a dozen of the top Nazis should be sentenced to hang. Twenty four were tried, but 12, most famously the mad Rudolf Hess and Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, got custodial sentences.

I'm too much of a crock to ditch the NHS and gamble on Ireland's broken health system 

Like so many Irish exiles, I always thought I would eventually return to live in Ireland once I was free to do so. My English husband was severely disabled for a long time, and, I thought, if he pre-deceased me, I would probably go back to live in Dublin. The latest statistics show that many of the Irish diaspora are indeed doing that. Conor Cruise O'Brien always spoke about the "pull of the...

Mary Kenny: The platonic remarriage 

'Yes," he says, "I am married, but sort of re-married, in a manner of speaking." He was a man in his 60s and he explained that he and his wife had been married, first, in their 20s. They'd had two children, but the marriage was turbulent and became hopelessly adversarial. So, in their middle 40s, they separated. They didn't get divorced because neither of them was looking to marry anyone else. Also, the husband had religious feelings and didn't want to embark on a divorce unless his wife demanded it, which she didn't.

West must offer idealistic young Muslims a real alternative to Isil's 'higher cause' 

One of the most enduring and iconic female novels of the twentieth century is essentially about an impressionable schoolgirl who, infused by the ardour of her teacher, runs away to join Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. And, indeed, the poor girl dies for her foolish and immature idealism.

Mary Kenny: The landlady's return 

Digs! There was a time when all students - and nearly all young people migrating to the city - went to live in "digs". And now, to relieve the dire shortage of accommodation in Dublin and Galway, the college authorities are recommending that students return to the system whereby they became lodgers in a family house. Back in the day, digs were run by a bean an tí - the landlady - who usually exercised a matriarchal discipline on her young tenants. There were rules and regs, and certain guidelines about morals and decorum.

In praise of the lowly moth 

Everyone loves butterflies - but moths? We tend to think of moths as our enemies - we buy moth repellent to kill off moths and their eggs, so that our winter woollies (they love cashmere) are protected from their depredations.

Desire for changes in the church won't stir Holy See any time soon 

It's the ordinary Catholic in the pew you'd feel for, hearing about the alleged carry-on at Maynooth, learning, perhaps for the first time, that there is a "gay dating app" which trainee priests were allegedly in the habit of availing; and that the usually liberal Archbishop of Dublin seems to consider St Patrick's College - once the powerhouse of Catholic Ireland - such a worry that students have to be despatched to Rome to acquire their pastoral and theological training.

Mary Kenny: Don't fall into the parent trap 

The best-known quotation from the economist John Maynard Keynes was: "In the long run, we are all dead." Critics of Keynes's more left-wing approach to capitalism have claimed that he said this because he was childless. A man with children and grandchildren would not have dismissed the long perspective so easily: he'd have been thinking of his descendants.

Nothing excuses the horror of Nice, but France's burqa ban alienates Muslims 

There will be many experts with many analyses of just why France is now the main target for Islamist atrocities, like the horrific event that occurred in Nice last Thursday night. But one theory advanced by the BBC's experienced security expert Frank Gardner is that the banning of the burqa - that full-cover garment some Muslim women wear - is a focus of alienation among France's five...

Mary Kenny: Globetrotter to globesquatter 

Everyone seems to have a "bucket list" of goals they want to achieve and places they want to see before they die (or "kick the bucket", in the vernacular) but, necessarily, it grows narrower with age. "I don't want to travel just for the sake of going places," said the old chap next to me at a lunch. "I only want to go where there are people I know. Or that I have some connection with."

Vicar's daughter will need all the faith she can muster when crunch negotiations with Europe get under way 

A few years ago, I spent an afternoon with David Davis - the new British Minister in charge of conducting the Brexit negotiations - and I thought him one of the most optimistic, grounded and positive politicians I have encountered. The optimism was particularly striking given his background. He was born to a single mother, Betty Brown, in York in 1948. His natural father abandoned...

Mary Kenny: Hope should spring eternal 

There were ructions all through last week after the Brexit referendum vote: I'm not talking about the politics but flaming rows between families, friends, colleagues. Last year, after the same-sex marriage referendum in Ireland, some anecdotal stories emerged about older people being put under pressure by their adult offspring to vote "yes". In the UK, it was something similar. One friend of mine was distressed when her son told her she had sabotaged his career and the prospects for her grandchildren (by voting Brexit) and he was never speaking to her again.

What would the world be like if it was ruled by women? We could be about to find out... 

What would it be like if women ruled the world? The proposition has been made both as an ambitious feminist dream and as a misogynistic nightmare. There used to be at least one running joke about the dangers of a menopausal female head of state hitting the nuclear button in a hormonal bad mood.

Mary Kenny: From the Somme to the soccer 

How wonderful to see those happy, smiling Irish football fans in France for Euro 2016. A hundred years ago, how many similar young lads would be setting off for the killing fields of Flanders, to be slaughtered in their thousands at the terrible Battle of the Somme?

Britain - our sister island dining at the EU table - needs us now more than ever before 

Whatever our political views, surely any Irish person with a scintilla of the rebel streak must have some respect for the sheer cussedness, stubbornness and defiance of the almost 52pc of the British electorate who voted to leave the EU - despite all the big cheeses who tried to boss, bully and nag them not to do so?

Tying the knot is great - for the minority who can afford it 

Did you see those lovely wedding pictures of happy, smiling Jerry Hall with her new groom, media magnate Rupert Murdoch? Apparently, the marriage is blissful and it's halcyon days for all concerned.

Mary Kenny: The drama of fertility 

Fertility can be unpredictable. My mother married at 23, had a miscarriage at 25, a baby at 26, two more babies subsequently, and then (without recourse to contraception), 10 years of what she called "normal married life" without a pregnancy. Then, in her 40s, she surprisingly - and to her great annoyance - conceived again. That was me. My father was 67 and delighted. Ma could never figure out why she could go a decade without a pregnancy, and then it happens.

Mary Kenny: A spot of pontificating… 

It is evident that someone will have to brief Pope Francis before he comes to Ireland, north and south, probably in 2018. So I've taken it upon myself to outline some of the pitfalls - and treats - that may await the Argentine Pontiff. The point has been made that it won't be a re-run of 1979, when John Paul II visited Ireland. That was the last hurrah of old Catholic Ireland, which is dead and gone. And, Papa Francis, be aware that a lot of folk think that's all for the best.

Brexit or Remain? I'm torn between the two - and the future's a risk either way 

It was the feminist movement that coined the phrase "the personal is political", and when it comes to the looming Brexit vote in just over two weeks' time, the personal will indeed be political as I enter that voting booth (where I have a vote, in deepest Kent).