THE ancient Greeks had an appreciation, maybe sharper than ours, of how raw life could be. 

AT the opening of parliament in London yesterday, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth set out her government’s legislative plans which focus largely on Brexit. 

WALTER Matthau, Peter Finch, Gary Oldman, and John Malkovich. 

Any remark about “old goats” will conjure up images of cranky old men with beards. 

FOR centuries those who were certain that they knew best comforted the struggling, the doubtful, the poor and the not-so-poor with the promise that the meek shall inherit the earth. 

IN a world where, for the majority of people, the majesty of the law is at least as remote as the majesty of the Bourbons anything that might resurrect the foundation idea that our courts are a place where citizens can seek redress, no matter how powerful their opponents, must be welcomed.

THE adage “by their actions shall ye know them” is a time-honoured and reliable guide.

Many of us have a love-hate relationship with this country. Most of us are proud to be Irish, even if not all of the time.

Negotiations on Brexit began in Brussels yesterday but, beyond those bare facts, it is not possible to record any achievement beyond the beating of chests so very usual at moments like this.

Because of the week that’s in it, it seems a justifiable exercise to consider how those great managers of image, expectation, and their supporters — New Zealand’s All Blacks — have come to be all-conquering and all but unassailable, to see if their culture, their way of realising their ambitions offer any lessons for our new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.