WHEN I sat down to write this column, it was intended to be about Mary Davis — and most of it will be.

TWO phrases that I heard recently have been going around and around in my head.

IT’S not often the death of an elderly man, someone you barely knew, pulls you up short.

WHAT a historic weekend.

DEAR Eamon, I’ve been half-wondering when it would happen.

THE gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. Read the “Response of the Holy See to the Government of Ireland” — the Vatican’s response to the criticism levelled at them by Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore — and that’s all you’ll see.

WE all know Charles Edward Trevelyan, created a Baronet in 1874 for his services to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

I WAS severely taken to task by a Mr Matt Harper, in a letter to the editor, over the article I wrote here last week.

MY esteemed colleague Terry Prone made the point in this space yesterday that the hardest question to answer, in the face of the riots that engulfed Britain last week, is why.

SOME time ago I brought a visitor from Holland, an educationalist, to visit a school here.