Books & Boots

My literary or spare-time compositions, written not infrequently with animation and enjoyment, I always found tedious of subsequent perusal. This sense of tedium is so deeply seated in the texture of my mind that I can rarely suffer myself to endure the pain of it.
(Pretty much my response to this book)

I like t...

FLUTHER: ‘There’s no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.’

‘The Plough and the Stars’ is a play in four acts which follows Nora Clitheroe, her husband Jack (a Commandant in the Irish Citizen Army), and their neighbours in a Dubl...

MRS TANCRED: Sacred Heart of the Crucified Jesus, take away our hearts o’ stone an’ give us hearts o’ flesh… Take away this murdherin’ hate and give us Thine own eternal love.
(Mother of a young man killed in the civil war, seeming to express O’Casey’s own pacifist principles)

‘Juno and the Paycock’ was the second of O’Casey’s plays to be...

‘What danger can there be in being the shadow of a gunman?’
(Would-be poet Donal Davoren, happy to let others believe he’s an IRA gunman laying low, when it suits him)

Sean O’Casey biography

Sean O’Casey (1880 to 1964) had a hard start in life. He was born in Dublin, the son of a mercantile clerk, raised a Protestant, and was an active me...

The Print Room at the Photographers’ Gallery is currently hosting a display of striking work by English photographer Nicholas Hughes.

They are all black and white and all landscapes, devoid of people, aspects of the English landscape – mysterious woodland, starlit glades, rocky coastlines, shimmering seascapes.

Multi-levelled approach

What makes them special is ...