SISTERS Kate Smyth and Marney Smyth Fischer have recently taken over the Bantry Bookshop, which was also previously run by siblings — Margaret O’Neill and her sister Joan.

A new book on Spike Island reveals, in the Victorian era, it was the biggest prison in the whole of Ireland and the British Isles.

I have been writing as long as I can remember.My primary school teachers used to say that I was a great story teller, but that my handwriting wasn’t great because I was always rushing and thinking too far ahead.

Here’s a round up of some of the best festival line-up’s country-wide, from Ailin Quinlan.