IT CAME as no great surprise that Charlie McCreevy praised Margaret Thatcher in a speech to the Association of European Journalists in Dublin.

IT was not so long ago that Michael McDowell was calling for the jailing of gardaí who leaked information.

IN selecting his generals Napoleon Bonaparte was more concerned that they were lucky than that they were talented. In recent days it is beginning to appear like Bertie Ahern may be running out of luck.

PEOPLE may have felt a sense of betrayal over the disclosure that Bishop Eamon Casey had fathered a son, but in the last analysis it was their own sense of innocence that was exposed.

THIS week marked the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy.

JUST before Christmas in 1996, an elderly farmer was awoken in the early hours of the morning. Pat Duggan lived alone in an isolated cottage near Claregalway in Co Galway.

A SENIOR editor once said to me: “Do you know, I have no qualifications?” I have all the degrees I could get in my field, but only a person who does not have them thinks they are so important.

THE clergy have been taking a bit of pasting in recent days, but the World War One armistice commemorations yesterday reminded me of an extraordinary 1971 interview with a priest.

EAMON de Valera, founder of Fianna Fáil, attached enormous importance to symbolism. It could be argued that his attachment to symbols was the major contributory factor to the civil war.