Frank McNally

Frank McNally

Frank McNally is an Irish Times journalist and chief writer of An Irish Diary.

The Foggy Dew: Frank McNally on the Rising ballad’s confused origins and contested lyrics

Legend has it the song’s genesis can be traced to the first Dáil, but facts prove otherwise

Hecht off – Frank McNally on the testing testimony of a brilliant newspaper man

New York-born journalist and author set bar rather high for those who followed

Shafts of Light: Frank McNally on accidentally joining the golf correspondents’ club

Also: St Brendan’s voyage to the White House, and why AI talks like James Joyce and Flann O’Brien

Strong words: America’s ‘greatest diarist’ whose many dislikes included the Irish

Caustic New Yorker had little time for spiritualists, abolitionists, organ grinders, mosquitoes and snobs, either

Asterisked de Gaulle: Frank McNally on the lesser-known, and Irish-speaking, namesake of the general

Charles de Gaulle (1837–1880) anticipated Patrick Pearse by half a century

Bally-aric Island: Frank McNally on feeling surprisingly at home in Menorca

Irishman’s Diary: There is a piece of the Menorcan road network that is forever Irish

Frank McNally: Trump Tower? Doonbeg Castle’s turbulent history and mystery hoard of gold

Away from US president’s golf course, romantic ruin stands as reminder of dark days and dreams

As Shane Lowry watches on, Donald Trump reinvents himself as champion of all things Irish

The secret service needn’t have worried – the biggest danger at Doonbeg was an Irish golfer with a red-hot putter

Dance to the Music of Time – Frank McNally on a forgotten Irish-American revolutionary

The jig that welcomed General Humbert to Co Mayo can still be heard in Kilcummin and Amsterdam

The mystery of a once ubiquitous Dublin symbol

Fanlight statuettes were a nod to politics, insurance policies and personal tragedies

Stairway to Heaven – Frank McNally on how our favourite painting became a TikTok sensation

New generation is transfixed by The Meeting on the Turret Stairs

Pier Pressure: Frank McNally on a night camping at General Humbert’s landing spot

An amphibious invasion boded ill after a foray to liberate some 1798 spirit

Valentino’s Irish Valentine: Frank McNally on the extraordinary Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy

She took an exotic name and wed the unlucky-in-love Hollywood heart-throb Rudolph

How Irish kindness in a war-ravaged French town inspired unknown writer Samuel Beckett

Short poem in The Irish Times was too obscure for some, but Beckett’s time in Saint-Lô warranted a verse with deep meaning

Sinkholes, the unlikely link between Monaghan and Montparnasse

Magheracloone holds the only Irish deposits of gypsum, while the French capital was extensively mined to make plaster of Paris

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