In pictures: Trinity College Dublin scholars from 1955 onwards assemble for photograph
All photographs: Tom Honan
Samuel Beckett
Former Kildare hotel offers scope for redevelopment at €1.75m
Cooldrinagh House, famously known as the childhood home of Samuel Beckett’s mother, comes for sale
Author Lisa Harding: ‘I have never been scared to look at the dark side of life’
The novelist on her latest book, Wildelings; her penchant for unlikeable characters; and how her acting background is a boon to her writing
Waiting for Godot review: Olwyn Fouéré, breaking ground as the first woman to star in Beckett’s play, gives a sublime performance
The extraordinary acting of Fouéré and her fellow principals is all the more remarkable for being unpolished, undirected and unrehearsed
Samuel Beckett vs Archbishop McQuaid: Why an infuriated Nobel laureate withdrew his play from Dublin Theatre Festival
Festival acquired letter playwright wrote to friend in 1958 to apologise for feeling compelled to cancel planned run of Act without Words I
Calling extremely early birds: Beckett tickets go on sale 11 years before performances
In Krapp’s Last Tape, Richard Dormer and Samuel West will use recordings they made 30 years earlier, in line with Beckett’s vision
The Guide: The Cruellest Month, Finneas, Death of a Salesman and other events to see, shows to book and ones to catch before they end
April 12th-18th: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett: Into the abyss, again
Faber’s new editions come with excellent introductions by Colm Tóibín, Claire-Louise Bennett and Eimear McBride
‘The Constitution will soon put women back in their place. Everything is fizzling away’: Sarah Jane Scaife on Youth’s the Season–?
Mary Manning wrote her first play in 1931, when she was 26. It’s astonishing how modern it can feel, says the director of the Abbey’s new production
Tara Brandel: ‘I am always analysing power dynamics in performance. Who holds privilege? How is it expressed?’
The Croí Glan choreographer explains why she believes in the power of dance to be an agent of change
A Finn on Inis Mór: ‘In Finland you just ignore everyone you don’t know. Even people you know sometimes’
Jenni Nikinmaa from Finland moved to Ireland in 2019
The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride: Author experiments to draw readers in, not to keep them out
McBride’s style is distinctive, a wholly original exploration of what is possible with language and fiction
The Vanishing Point by Paul Theroux: If this is his last round–up, his final words are good and true ones
Closing story in this collection imagines an award acceptance speech which would ‘represent a summing up’
John Minihan: Many of my most iconic photographs have a religious connection – even Lady Diana Spencer
My introduction to art happened in my hometown of Athy, Co Kildare. It was an age of belief; religion dominated everyday thinking and behaviour
The Traitors makes no sense. Its logic is flimsy, its flaws obvious. So why do I happily yell through three episodes a week?
Claudia Winkleman’s smash reality show is an effective analogy for the Sisyphean pointlessness of existence. But the contestants can’t say that, obviously
Mike Leigh: ‘I did a film in Northern Ireland about Catholics and Protestants. I did a play about Jews. To me it’s about people’
Hard Truths is as moving and acute a film as the 82-year-old has ever made. The director talks about rejection, vindication and never changing his approach to movie-making
Alan Bennett’s Beckettian look at life in a care home; Irish links with Romanov Russia; bell hooks on girlhood
Killing Time by Alan Bennett; Anarchy and Authority: Irish Encounters with Romanov Russia by Angela Byrne; Bone Black by bell hooks
The best theatre of 2024: Blessed are the risk-takers
Gambling on longer runs of unfamiliar work paid off in a gratifying number of cases. But Irish theatre still isn’t as inclusive as it should be
Author Georgi Gospodinov: ‘The past is not a good place to live in. And the dealers of the past roam among us’
The Bulgarian author on the dangers of nostalgia, his 2023 Booker-winning novel Time Shelter, and Irish writers he admires
Book reviews: Placeholders; The Long Look Back; Leaning on Gates
New fiction and memoir by James Roseman, Tom MacDonagh and Seamus O’Rourke includes a book that deserves a place among the classics
Julianne Moore: ‘When a friend really needs to unburden themselves, what are they asking you to do?’
The Oscar winner stars in The Room Next Door, a euthanasia drama that is Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature in English. It’s an ideal film for her to appear in
Sam Thompson: ‘I really don’t think there is a distinction to be made between writing for adults and writing for children’
Thompson’s new book, The Forest Yet to Come, is part of the Wolfstongue saga, which began as a direct response to his son’s difficulty with speech
Shades Through a Shade: Experimental theatre that pulls itself apart even as it transports you
Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: Gare St Lazare Ireland’s virtuosic, mesmeric ensemble brings texts by Beckett, Dante, Melville and others to life
Walking in Samuel Beckett’s footsteps: In some mysterious way, the landscape captures the soul of the artist
Alan Gilsenan, who leads a walk, Samuel Beckett: Walking After My Father, explains why the Wicklow and Dublin mountains exerted such a pull on the author
Author Charlotte Mendelson: ‘There’s nothing more fascinating than other people’s marriages, particularly when they start to go wrong.’
The author on her ‘darkest, queerest novel yet’, what makes Iris Murdoch special and the words she would abolish
Endgame review: Druid’s exquisite production brings a lightness of step to Beckett’s indestructible tragicomedy
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Garry Hynes directs Rory Nolan, Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen and Bosco Hogan
Francis Bacon’s Nanny: A peek into the darkness of the artist’s childhood
Maylis Besserie’s novel lays bare the cruelty of Bacon’s father as seen through the eyes of the family’s domestic servant Jessie Lightfoot
I wanted to write a book about Irish women’s writing. They told me to include men
If anything will embitter you, it is researching and writing a history of Irish women’s writing
Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan take on Beckett: ‘To understand Endgame is to understand that you can’t understand Endgame’
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: For Druid’s Endgame, Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan are immersed in Beckett. It’s surpringly enjoyable, they say
Adrian Dunbar on Beckett: ‘I seemed to be getting knocked around emotionally but didn’t know how he was doing it’
For Beckett: Unbound 2024, the actor has teamed up with the composer Nick Roth to stage a festival of the writer’s work in Paris and Liverpool
In a Word...Good Friday
Seamus Heaney was born on Thursday, April 13th, 1939. ‘Thursday’s child has far to go.’
A sense of foreboding descends on Liveline. Then Joe Duffy takes an unexpected turn
Radio: Talk of saints and babies has the RTÉ broadcaster in flighty mood. Over on Today FM, Matt Cooper has the better show
John Montague: An Ulster Catholic who was ‘a marooned northerner and an apprentice southerner’
The charismatic poet whose intimacy and boldness continues to inspire was born 95 years ago
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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