Irish Life

Kinsale Pottery and Art School

"The Match Box - By Frank McGuinness

Directed by Lia Williams

Designer: Colin Richmond

A Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse production

The London premiere of a new play by one of Ireland's greatest playwrights."

"You shout Mary in the street and all the women (and a couple of the men turn around). You get excited by the 'grand stretch in the evening'. You go into a restaurant for a 'feed'...."

Coolaney, Co. Sligo

"Although it is 3.2 kilometers (two miles) away from the seacoast, and sits atop a mountain, the well has one legendary property that caused Giraldus Cambrensis in 1188 to name it one of the wonders of Ireland.

 It was said that it exhibited low tides and high tides, as if it were connected to the ocean. 

'A well there is of sweet water; the property of that well is, that it fills and ebbs like the sea, though it is far from the sea.'

Other medieval texts claim that the well could alternate between fresh water, and seawater."

"Will Self nominates Oscar Wilde. He and Matthew are joined by Franny Moyle, author of a biography of Oscar Wilde's wife. Actor Simon Russell Beale reads Wilde's De Profundis."

The official website for The Commitments in the West End. Read more about Roddy Doyle’s best-selling novel, now live on stage for the very first time.

4th and Vine + interview + Reason with Me + interview (2013-01-12 The Saturday Night Show)

Máirtín de Cógáin on his album, From Cork with Love:

The Máirtín de Cógáin Project's album From Cork with Love is filled with songs, stories and tunes about the Cork of my youth.  These always bring me back home to the Rebel County on Ireland's south coast by recalling its many sights, like Cork City’s bustling small back streets, the pastoral boreens of the countryside, the River Lee’s romantic allure, the Coal Quay and Grand Parade’s rustic beauty, and even the majestic castles of my ancestors in Carrigaline itself – it’s all there. 

This DVD, an hour long music travelogue, uses these songs, stories and tunes to guide you through Cork and her many charms, and will show you my home the way I grew up knowing it. 

I invite you to come along and enjoy the journey, From Cork with Love.

Reflections On the Emerald Isle Landscapes That Inspire Authentic Donegal Weave

"The latest film from acclaimed documentary-maker Marc Isaacs offers a fascinating and intimate insight into the lives of people who have come to London from afar and struggled to make the city their home.
Isaacs introduces a diverse number of characters who have made their way to London, from all over the world, in order to seek a better life. There's a young Irish woman who dreams of becoming a singer, who takes a job pulling pints in Cricklewood, serving the generations of Irish people who came over before her; a lonely Irish ex construction worker loosing his battle to booze; a man from Kashmir working in a hotel, trying to earn enough money so his wife can join him; an elderly Jewish woman who fled Vienna when Hitler was in power; and a glamorous retired German air stewardess living with her estranged husband.
Fused with wonderful moments of humour and equally heartbreaking moments where broken dreams are revealed, The Road: A Story of Life and Death is a study of immigration that manages to be highly affecting, whilst avoiding being polemical or didactic."