Stanley’s prescription for combined secular instruction and separate religious instruction in common schools may find greater acceptance in the 21st century, says Patrick F O’Donovan.

ARISTOTLE, who was born in 384BC, considered elephants superior to all other animals in ‘wit and mind’. Many wildlife rangers, zookeepers, and mahouts living with working elephants, would agree.

POWER is at its most potent when it is implied. Revealed it loses its mystique. What inspires awe at a distance, provokes resentment not understanding in the actual encounter. So it proved in Seanad Éireann. Largely ignored for decades, some senators forgot that the cameras and microphones fixed to the furnishings in the Duke of Leinster’s former ballroom allow others to look in as well as them shout out.

REAL Madrid’s star turn was one of a 60-strong squad who last night descended on Carton House in an onslaught of foreigners not seen on the shores of the Rye since the days of the Norman invasion.