With the recent publication of Prof Declan Kiberd’s commentary on Ulysses, Dr John Wallace reflects on the development of the book that revolutionised the modern novel James Joyce had little time for middle-class thrift. Because of financial hardship, he wrote Ulysses in over twenty different flats, located in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. However, though he [...]

Dr Charles Dupont offers some helpful hints that you should bear in mind, if you are considering recording your memoirs for posterity. When a reporter once asked Noel Coward, ‘Is it true that you drink champagne for breakfast?’, he replied, ‘Doesn’t everybody?’ If somebody enquires as to whether you intend to write your life story [...]

Kealan Flynn writes that a new book outlines Barack Obama’s vision for America and his plans to fix a broken country. Every US presidency brings a mixture of hope and trepidation — and the traditional avalanche of books about the candidate, the campaign, and the potential — as well as the perils (real or imagined) [...]

This recent, short book focuses on one of the least-known periods of Samuel Beckett’s life. The Irish writer had just returned from Paris to teach in Dublin, but had not yet written his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Rachael Burrows, then aged nineteen, was a student in Beckett’s class when he lectured [...]

Dr John Wallace looks at a new book on the distinguished and flamboyant don, Prof R.B. McDowell, and his charmed existence within the halls and squares of Trinity College Dublin. Born in 1913, Robert Brendan McDowell entered Trinity College Dublin as an undergraduate in 1932. Trinity was then an academic enclave, with few people passing [...]

Dr John Wallace looks at the spectacular but short-lived political career of Donogh O’Malley —the Minister who introduced free secondary education to Ireland in the 1960s. Donogh O’Malley died suddenly, aged 47, on 10 March 1968. Historian Roy Foster regards him as perhaps the most energetic and charismatic Minister for Education that Ireland has ever [...]

Dr John Wallace looks at the background to the epic film Doctor Zhivago, which was adapted from the eponymous book about the surgeon and poet, written by banned Russian writer Boris Pasternak. Told in flashback by Alec Guinness, the intimate yet epic film Doctor Zhivago tells the story of surgeon-writer Yuri Zhivago, played by Omar [...]