Search Results for 'Nell McCafferty'

There is a swirl of wonderful wordiness and lively debate in Westport today and continuing all weekend for the fifth annual Rolling Sun Book Festival.

What dominated our news and much of our conversations during the 1970s (at least in the early years), was the deteriorating crisis in Northern Ireland. When I think of that decade I remember the initial hope that something would be settled quickly rather than letting it drag on fuelled by appallingly bad political decisions, thuggery, and deeply imbedded hatred. Seamus Heaney remarked that in the early 1970s ‘there was a promise in the air as well as fury and danger’. But in Northern Ireland any nervous sense of hopeful expectation quickly soured; as Heaney recalled: ‘Soon enough it all went rancid.’ In John Montague’s poem The Rough Field, he observes: ‘In the dark streets, firing starts.’

I get both embarrassed and amused, in an hysterical sort of a way, reading back over the recent social history of poor Cathleen Ní Houlihan. Particularly when it touches on anything sexual. It is surprising that any of us were born at all, such was the misery caused at the mention that anyone might be enjoying a healthy sexual relationship with a partner. The impression was given that everyone who had sexual contact outside marriage was not only in a state of serious sin, but that they were some kind of social pariah, to be scorned and driven away from normal society. Even sex within marriage could be shaky. It really was a subject that could not be discussed in public at all without inviting legions of self-righteous men and women out on the streets proclaiming well-meaning but ill-informed opinion.

One of Athlone Literary Festival’s key events is an “in discussion” forum which features a well-known personality. Previous participants have included President Michael D Higgins and well-known author Ruth Dudley Edwards. This year’s festival will have eminent Irish psychiatrist and author Dr Ivor Browne talking about changing attitudes in Ireland to mental health and his book, Music and Madness, on Saturday October 6.

Along with providing ten days of superb entertainment for all the family, this year’s arts festival which has recently drawn to a close, has also lent a hand in boosting the local economy.

The 37th Kilkenny Arts Festival programme is set to entice thousands of people to the city over the next 10 days with a line-up that will challenge all of the senses.

“Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.”

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

I've never been to Wales. Well, technically I suppose I have in that we passed through it once on the way to the South of England on a holiday.