From using a turnip as a candleholder to eating the turkey a day early to a cowgirl costume mistakenly bought for a boy, three celebrities recount their festive memories to Richard Fitzpatrick

Kate Kerrigan has lost her almost-completed eighth novel, stored on a laptop left in the back of a Dublin taxi.

CLAUDIA CARROLL is a born storyteller, whether on stage or screen, as a novelist or in person with anecdotes of pals’ romantic entanglements and stories of love gone awry.

They have changed our nappies, tended our scrapes, packed our school lunches, cured every ill with flat 7-Up and, in some cases, still wash our clothes.

CHRISTMAS memories are usually the stuff of magic, but sometimes they’re a little less so. Here, some of Ireland’s best known recall the Christmas gifts they remember for all the wrong reasons.

The shortlists for “the biggest celebration of Irish writing” was announced yesterday.

Buying chick-lit novels and flying first-class while a colleague was in steerage form part of a court claim by Waterford Institute of Technology for repayment of €120,000 from its ex-president.

AUTHOR and ex-Fair City star Claudia Carroll could barely see during her Leaving Cert because the area around her eyes was so covered with psoriasis.

MASS MARKETFICTION

MASS MARKETFICTION

MASS MARKETFICTION

MASS MARKETFICTION

MASS MARKETFICTION

MASS MARKETFICTION

The life, love, talent and generosity of acclaimed best-selling novelist Maeve Binchy have been remembered at her funeral.

Hundreds of people have attended the funeral of Maeve Binchy in Dublin.

MASS MARKETFICTION

THE head of the country’s oldest maternity hospital has repeated a 266-year-old plea for Santa to solve his facility’s funding and staffing crisis because health service management can’t do so.