Search Results for 'Brendan Behan'

One of the most recognisable brands in Ireland is changing its name. Galway owned Supermac’s has announced this morning that its 100 plus restaurants will now change their name to McDonagh's.

FOR SOME 25 years, Gary Lydon has been among the most stalwart of Irish actors with a string of acclaimed performances on stage, television, and film. His credits include leading roles in Billy Roche’s Wexford Trilogy, TV series The Clinic - for which he won two IFTAs - and the films Calvary, Small Engine Repair, and Michael Collins.

When I awoke in the middle of last night this saying was running through my head, and as I could not get it out of my mind, I got up and wrote it down and then continued to write this column. Funny how you can write some of the truest words in the silence of the night; I think it was Brendan Behan who once said, “write as if you are dead,” and in the dead of night is certainly the best time to do this.

We are at a time of the year when another batch of teenagers is ready to become worldly-wise. It’s time for many eager youths to move out of the family home for the first time. They are making plans and gathering things from their rooms. Young men and women making lists, leaves falling off the trees, and landlords second-coating and double-glazing.

le Mike P Ó Conaola

FIVE GALWAY based poets, who have been vital to the development of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, will each read five poems at a special event for this year’s Cúirt.

Towards the end of the 19th century Colman Greene came from Carna to Galway to work, mostly as a fisherman. He married Julia McGrath from Newcastle and they opened a pub near the Spanish Arch. They also sold tea and sugar and candles, etc, often as provisions to boatmen going out to fish. They had trawlers and fishing boats of their own at the Claddagh, and were fish merchants also.

For 25 years, the Kenny Bookshop and Gallery in High Street/Middle Street was not just the city’s leading bookshop and gallery, it was an iconic structure. It was a place of good business and good shopping, a meeting point for writers and artists, and a venue that brought the arts directly to Galwegians.

Conor Casby’s nude portraits of Brian Cowen, which have been causing a sensation these last few days, reminded me of a story I once heard about Brendan Behan.

It is exactly 30 years since Thos McDonogh and Sons presented Druid Theatre, for a peppercorn rent, with an old warehouse in Chapel Lane, in Galway’s Latin Quarter. It was far from a Latin Quarter at the time. Like other parts of the old city most of it was falling apart. Old 18th and 19th century buildings were roofless and derelict, a home for cats and rats. But it had a rough diamond look about it too with its pawnbrokers, ‘Nora Crubs’, the always warm Tigh Neachtain’s (if you could get in!), the Pedler and Kenny bookshops, Sonny Molloy’s very modest women’s undergarments shop, and the larger than life Mrs Mc Donagh, who showed us all that there was more to the fish industry than a stinky grilled herring, fried mackerel, and the auld cod.