Gay Byrne presents a documentary on the Catholic Church in Ireland, Last Orders With Gay Byrne, at 9.35pm, RTÉ One on Tuesday.

Wrapped in crunchy cellophane, and containing a grainy black and white photo — of Youghal or Bray, Brighton or Blackpool — this classic teeth-breaking sweet is still selling by the bucket load. In fact, the market is expanding, says Robert Hume, who has discovered some unusual details about this cheap and cheerful holiday gift

ROBERT LANAGHAN is a writer. Or, at least, he was, but, since his second book was published, he hasn’t written. Life has got in the way.

When he isn’t plotting Kilkenny’s continued world domination, Brian Cody, who tonight reaches his 80th championship match in charge, moonlights as a public speaker.

Kevin Pilley takes a cane-twirling, splay-footed stroll through Charlie Chaplin’s former Switzerland home, which has become a museum to the great man.

I don’t know about this Pope at all. I really don’t. He doesn’t fit in the pattern of popes I grew up with, writes Terry Prone

Formerly a travel writer - and a person apparently accustomed to excelling in pretty much every area he delves into - British novelist Lawrence Osbourne is something of a throwback to the classic 1930-50 literary period, a time when the likes of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene were in their prime, setting standards few could ever hope to attain, let alone emulate. 

Georges Simenon (translated by David Coward)

Denis Johnson Harvill & Secker, €15.99; ebook, €10.99

Quite a Good Time to Be Born: A Memoir: 1935-1975

What's on telly tonight? These shows are, and you should watch them.

The variety contained in 2,000 lots at four days of auctions at Sheppards in Durrow, Co Laois next week is enormous.

The crime writer PD James has died at the age of 94.

Stewart Copeland is as happy as a composer and dad as he was as drummer with The Police, writes Ed Power

With the release this week of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last film ‘A Most Wanted Man’, Declan Burke takes a look at the most influential spy films ever made

Alan Furst

Tim Butcher’s tells Juno McEnroe about his journeys to destinations that are laden with historical significance

War reporter Tim Butcher and Irish nomad Manchán Magan are among those telling their tales at the Immrama festival in Lismore, writes Orlagh Ní Arrachtáin

Lawrence Osborne

Kelly Corrigan

Flann O’Brien is the pseudonym Brian O’Nolan used as a novelist, but this collection also contains works written as Brian Ó Nualláin (for pieces in Irish), Brother Barnabas, Myles na gCopaleen, Myles na Gopaleen, Lir O’Connor, and Brian O’Nolan.

Vivien Leigh’s archive — including letters sent to husband Laurence Olivier and diaries written until just before the Gone With The Wind star’s death — have been acquired by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum&.

Confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked his jailers whether he could embark on an unusual project: Would the spy agency allow Mohammed, who had earned his bachelor degree in mechanical engineering, to design a vacuum cleaner?

Artful

After University Anne Marie worked as a film and TV producer in London.

IT’S one of the oldest kickstarters of a dull dinner party: ‘What’s your favourite film, and why?’

I’M just back from Achill, a wet windy outpost of mountains and cliffs, where it gets dark later than anywhere else in Europe.

Suzanne Joinson

IF YOUR holiday reading includes a Le Carré blockbuster or a Graham Greene reliable, then you will find no better backdrop than Estoril — the stylish coastal town just north of Lisbon in Portugal.

Richard Ford, at 68, admits that he has only a limited number of books left in him. He spoke to Declan Burke about what might shape them

BATS were flitting through the trees as I watched a group of aging Europeans with serious cases of waist-slippage drink Angkor beer and dine on slim frogs at a pavement restaurant by the riverside in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Agents of Treachery: Spy Stories

Sue Leonard talks to Pulitzer prizewinner Jeffrey Eugenides, about his latest novel, The Marriage Plot, a romantic triangle among three college students

After university, Debbie Thomas worked with the BBC around England.

LESS STYLISH than Raging Bull, less euphoric than the Rocky films, The Fighter (US/15A/115 mins) is a boxing movie made in the image of its hero, ‘Irish’ Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a solid but unspectacular Irish-American scrapper who slugged his way to a shot at the world title in the mid-’90s.

The Story of Che Guevara

PERHAPS, like me, you have found this week’s Ryder Cup celebrations more than a little surreal? All those mud-splattered Brits, mainly, but not exclusively, Welsh, chanting “Europe, Europe” at Celtic Manor, while living in a nation which, with the possible exception of Greece, is the most Euro-phobic of any of the 27 member states of the EU?

Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico

On Evil

FAMOUS for little and infamous for less, Orangeville, Dufferin County, Ontario, may finally have its day in the sun thanks to a man who clearly still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.

Helen Mirren has joined the cast of 'Brighton Rock'.

Filmmakers have named big-screen classic 'The Godfather' their favourite movie of all time.

DETECTIVES are confident they can find an al-Qaida link to the British bombers who killed 54 people in western Europe’s first suicide attack, London police chief Ian Blair said yesterday.