Art, media, opinion and ideas
For reasons too complicated to go into, I spent a whole day last month in the National Library, scrolling through microfilms of 1846 editions of The Kilkenny Journal and Leinster Commercial And Literary Advertisor. The paper, as best as I could make out, was an organ of the Catholic middle classes, and a staunchly pro-Repeal one (Daniel O’Connell was never referred to by name, only as “The Liberator???).
Two and a half weeks in, and it’s been a cracker of a World Cup. Not only has the football been excellent, but (at least as important from the point of view of an armchair fan like myself) televisual entertainment of the highest order has been on offer. Adrian Chiles of the BBC continues to delight, some of his best moments coming after last night’s bad-tempered Portugal – Netherlands game.
From the Sunday Tribune:HUNDREDS of top-level civil service jobs are to be opened up to the public in an effort to bring fresh blood into what the Department of Finance admits is "an ageing civil service". Now, I know more than a little about this. I was a serving Executive Officer for some time and faced resistance to being promoted.
The Sunday papers are, as expected, full of the recent internal warfare in the Progressive Democrats. What interested me most was the degree to which the PDs apply their privatised world view to the management of their party. The PDs are currently at about 3% of the vote, but the PD mindset is a remarkably pervasive one.
Al Alvarez’s slim volume The Writer's Voice is a book I’d highly recommend to anyone who’s ever spent any time thinking about writing as a craft. In it he considers the nature of an artistic “voice??? which he distinguishes, correctly in my view, from “style???. Style is often artificial and brittle, and can easily degenerate into mannerism.
Sarah Byam has been a longstanding contributor to tuppenceworth, and one of its most prolific. However, as some may have noticed, she has been a bit quiet of late. In her new essay, Breaking My Silence, she talks about the depression that floored her and the people who helped her stay alive.
Not much peotry here in recent times, for which I apologise. My excuses are threefold. Firstly the weather.
Haughey Funeral Preparations Originally uploaded by Editor_Tupp. Crash barriers are being collected at Donnycarney Church in advance of CJH's funeral. The Herald today excitedly told me that it expected tens of thousands to turn out.
Disk Rescue Originally uploaded by Editor_Tupp. Thanks to the good offices of my wife's brother, I have been able to rescue my previously seemingly lost info. Phew.
Bill O’Herlihy’s recent appearance before the Mahon Tribunal was a peculiarly Irish curtain-raiser for the World Cup, and one which showed that he, and not Jimmy Magee is the true Memory Man of Irish Sports Broadcasting.
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