This year the world looks back and remembers the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. The scale of human slaughter achieved nothing except to sow the seeds of the Second World War.

The death of the beautiful Lauren Bacall reminded me once again of one of my favorite Bogey/Bacall movies, To Have and Have Not.

Jim Monaghan (in Letters to the Editor, August 14) draws parallels between the Northern Ireland situation and that of Gaza, implying that — like the IRA — Hamas is merely fighting for the rights of its people.

After reading of the latest offering from John Bruton. its seems to me that he has spent far too much time in the first class lounges around the world in his different guises.

I should like to put on the record my opinion that although the sexual abuse of young children by Father Brendan Smyth was undoubtedly criminal, the concealment of those crimes by Cardinal Sean Brady was evil.

As outlined in the letters page of August 15, Val Martin is as entitled as any other citizen to use his vote at election time to oppose what he calls the “scourge” of the “wind energy programme”.

Gerard Howlin is a little ungenerous to Pat Rabbitte (‘Unwilling to exit the stage with dignity, Pat foolishly Rabbittes on’, Irish Examiner, 6 Aug 2014) and declares that "the audience...was seldom won for his cause".

Kevin McCarthy (Letters, August 6) frames Israel’s attack on Gaza — which has killed 1,849 people, including 426 children, injured 10,000 and made hundreds of thousands homeless — as a reaction to Hamas rockets.

Is John Bruton understating the position when he says that "Home Rule only left open the option of a United Ireland" [‘The lost chances of Home Rule, August 8’]? Did the terms of the Home Rule Act, passed into law in 1914, not give self rule to Ireland as a whole with a parliament in Dublin?

Former taoiseach John Bruton’s recent statement that he is a Redmonite and his call for the government to mark the centenary of the passing of the Third Home Rule Bill calls into question his political allegiance during his tenure as taoiseach.