Patrick Leigh Fermor died five years ago this month, aged 96, and though he claimed to be part Irish, he was a man of the world, who walked from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul in his teens, and who later became a great travel writer, says Michael Duggan

Michele Browne adores Venice and advises that it’s on the ether of your timeline, at least once. Thronged in summer, but quieter in winter the visitor will have to contend with floods off season — but the city, which heaves with art, architecture and history, is worth it.

Allianz Hurling League Division 1A

John Daly rounds up the best and most informative business, management, and financial books of the year

Fiona MacCarthy deserves huge credit for uncovering so much new and illuminating information on Lord Byron, she has revised her biography as her subject has become more, rather than less, relevant says Marjorie Brennan.

Mick Halford is charting a possible path to the Palmerstown House Estate Irish St Leger with his two smart stayers Certerach and Dabadiyan.

Michael Barker-Caven hopes to draw new audiences with a production of Der Vampyr, his take on a rarely-seen German opera, writes Colette Sheridan.

Gordon Lord Byron finished down the field as South African star Variety Club bagged the Champions Mile at Sha Tin.

I Frankenstein, an action fantasy thriller based on Kevin Grevioux’s graphic novel, hits the big screen next week. Mary Shelley’s nameless ‘fiend’ is now Adam Frankenstein, played by Aaron Eckhart.

Some of the most memorable moments from what was a momentous year on television.

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure

MONTENEGRO, roughly the size of Northern Ireland gained independence in 2006 and confronted a readymade identity crisis. Few people actually knew where it was, apart from a hazy notion that this obscure place was hidden somewhere within the former Yugoslavia.

John Keats

Trainer Tom Hogan will weigh up the options for Gordon Lord Byron after his thrilling victory in the Prix de la Foret at Longchamp on Sunday.

George Mackay Brown: The Wound and the Gift

A RARE Stradivarius violin has smashed the world record after selling for over £9 million (€10m) at a London auction, with all proceeds going to help victims of Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

ALL farewells should be sudden, Lord Byron once said but Roy Keane’s departure as Sunderland manager came as no surprise in one of the Corkman’s old watering holes.

ACTOR Daniel Day-Lewis has scooped yet another prize — named as being amongst the top-three Best-Dressed Men in Britain.

Five members of a “family from hell” were facing life in prison today for murdering a mother-of-two who had married into the family.

THE surviving manuscripts of Mary Shelley’s famous gothic novel Frankenstein could be “saved” in a £3 million (4.3m) bid by Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.

ALMOST a year to the day since it went to market, Belline House in Co Kilkenny has been sold, for close to €4 million.