Hark: You would have been only a kid, Dido. Dido: There were no kids after Bloody Sunday. With this year marking the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, there are a number of arts events happening in the city where British paratroopers shot dead 13 Derry citizens – with another later dying four months later – …
Category Archives: The whole caboodle
The Máirtín O’Connor band
I thought of the title of the Bothy Band album, Out of the Wind, Into the Sun as Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden and Seamie O’Dowd struck up the first notes at their Rath Celtair Folk Club gig at Down Arts Centre in Downpatrick last night. My journey to the venue was hampered by rain, darkness, …
Gary Mitchell interview
They say you have to suffer for your art but few have suffered as much as Gary Mitchell, the Belfast playwright who was the subject of a brutal campaign of intimidation by the people he wrote about – loyalist paramilitaries in the Rathcoole housing estate he used to call home. It seems it isn’t just …
Naysayer Nelson
You couldn’t make it up. Page 17 of today’s Irish News has a picture whose caption reads – “Busy Year Ahead: The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Audiences NI are hosting a master class today at the Ulster Hall to inspire arts organisations to take advantage of the benefits that cultural tourism can offer …
The BBC and Irish
THE recent spat over the All-Ireland Fleadh going to Derry raised a totally different issue for the Bluffer – the difficulty of BBC presenters in pronouncing anything in Irish. Foghraíocht is the word for pronunciation and when you see that group of letters together it’s little wonder people panic. Now, those nice folk off the …
An tSnáthaid Mhór in Brussels
Comhghairdeas le Andy agus le Caitríona. Belfast’s Irish language community will know of the stunning work that the publishing company An tSnáthaid Mhór does but today Andy Whitson and Caitríona Hastings are in Brussels to present their work as part of what is called the Brussels Platform. The Platform is the result of a collaboration …
Van Morrison and Slí Cholmcille
When I went to the launch of Slí Cholmcille at the Linenhall Library last night, the last person I expected to see was George Ivan Morrison, Van the Man to you and me. Slí Cholmcille or the St Columba Trail is the first visitor trail between Scotland and Ireland and is named after St Colmcille …
Plantation once again!
Late last year, I was in hillwalking on Ratharsair (Raasey) an island between Sgitheanach (Skye) and the Scottish mainland. The scenery on Raasey, birthplace of the great Gaelic poet, Somhairle Mac Gill-Eain, is absolutely stunning as are the views of the neighbouring island and of Argyle on the mainland. One of the things I noticed …
Derry Fleadh bid fails
Ah well. The Fleadh isn’t coming to Derry in 2013. The sound of the pipes, the fiddle, the bodhrán and our other traditional instruments won’t be filling the Derry air as hosts of our fellow Irish men and women and instead there will be the banshee wail of “ideology.” And all because of two little …
Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey
In contrast to an opponent’s derisive description of Devlin as “Fidel Castro in a mini-skirt”, Lelia Doolan’s documentary film, Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey offers an in-depth perspective on a formidable figure of recent Irish politics. There was a time when Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey) seemed to have the world at her feet. Adored …