Sir, – Given his ability to seek out the interesting and the unusual, I was surprised at the extent of Frank McNally’s negativity on his visit to Belfast (An Irishman’s Diary, April 19th).
Yes, the stony grey of Fanum House is as brutal to a Monaghan man as it is to a Belfast native, but he really should take time to look inside City Hall, and to experience some of the sights and suburbs of Belfast that do not rely on the Troubles as their selling point. I think he would be pleasantly surprised. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL WILSON,
Belfast.
Ann Ingle: Deliberately going out of my way to move for no particular reason has never appealed to me
Gerry Thornley: How about an alternative look at Ireland’s Six Nations win over England?
Is Ireland anti-Semitic, an outlier of tolerance or in the middle ground?
How risky is it to buy a second-hand EV?
Sir, – As ever, I read Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary of April 19th with wry enjoyment. His description of Belfast’s Hope Street as ominously empty chimes with an oft-repeated story of the Derbyshire village of Hope from which there is a meandering road through Edale which ends eventually in Castleton by way of Mam Tor, where my cousin moved to many years ago. When asked where she lives, she always replies, with a straight face, “I live beyond Hope.” Might this be a reflection of Frank’s current feeling about Belfast’s Hope Street? – Yours, etc,
ROBERT HOLMES,
Letterkenny,
Co Donegal.
