She was enjoying her job as a management consultant but a change in career has Lesley Emin feeling as high as the tallest peaks in the west, she tells Lorna Siggins.

Despite the surging costs, secretary general of Oireachtas services Peter Finnegan said the price tag represents "outstanding" value for the taxpayer.

Marjorie Brennan speaks to James McLoughlin about his striking life-size piece of sculpture on display at Cork Airport

Reviewing the White Album is a bit like passing judgement on Michelangelo’s ceiling doodles for the Sistine Chapel or wondering why James Joyce didn’t use shorter sentences in Ulysses.

It’s to witness power, strength, in body and mind, writes Tadhg Coakley.

Hidden away on the Beara peninsula is one of our last remaining rainforests, discovers Carl Dixon.

To have an airport called after you demands a wider international celebrity most Irish sportspeople simply do not have, writes Paul Rouse.

As computers get creative, a new exhibition addresses the blurring of the lines between humanity and the digital world, writes Jonathan deBurca Butler.

FORD has been in Ireland for 100 years now and I’m nearly afraid to admit it, but I have been around for far more of those years than I’d care to come clean about.

Damien Enright has some interesting artistic and historic insight into the cave artworks created by early European.

Reassessment of great collection includes undiscovered rarities, writes Des O’Sullivan. 

John Kelly is an artist. His father is from Cork, and mother from Bristol. The family emigrated to Australia in 1965, the year of John’s birth. Kelly has lived in all three countries and for the past decade has resided in West Cork. This week, his exhibition, John Kelly: A Group Show, will open at Uillinn in Skibbereen.

I ran out of songs I enjoyed singing so I began writing my own.

Before his death from Aids at the age of 42, Robert Mapplethorpe challenged the stigma of being gay, and left a rich body of artistic photography, writes Richard Fitzpatrick

Pope Francis, galvanised by a scandal over Vatican finances, has ordered the most powerful bodies in the city-state to launch an unprecedented audit of its wealth and crackdown on runaway spending.

The glory of Rome is long renowned, but as Crispian Balmer reports, that splendour is starting to diminish due to Mafia corruption, sclerotic development, and labour disputes

The strangest things bring happiness. And a lot of the time, they come out of nowhere. Take, for example, my immense love for animation.

A former madam who bragged of doing black-market “body sculpting” on thousands of women was convicted of murder in the death of a dancer whose heart stopped after nearly half a gallon of silicone was injected into her buttocks.

Italy gave us the Roman empire and the Renaissance two of the most influential forces in European history. Has this legacy coloured Italians’ perception of themselves and their place in the world, wonders Marjorie Brennan.

Good guy, Donal Lenihan, and a fine analyst both in print and on TV, but don’t ever ask him if you’re looking well — and if you do and he tells you you’re the picture of health, then depart rapidly in several directions, writes Enda McEvoy.

Two bronze sculptures which had languished in obscurity for more than a century may be the work of Michelangelo, researchers have revealed.

Declan Burke casts his eye over the latest movie releases. 

This week, Robert Downey Jr stars in courtroom drama The Judge, live-action fantasy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and high-school sweethearts get a second chance at love in The Best of Me.

MOP HANDED

The heroes in a half-shell battle the Foot Clan and the evil Shredder.

The pizza-loving heroes with half shells will be back in 2016.

HOW much for a pound of flesh? That depends whereabouts it’s from.

The Queen’s Vase is a race worth getting involved in on day four of the Royal Ascot meeting and the John Gosden-trained Marzocco looks the type to appreciate the step up to two miles on fast ground, and the lightly raced colt can continue his progress with victory here.

The 34,000 students of Junior Certificate French had their written and listening tests at schools around the country yesterday morning.

Experts in Italy have warned one of the world’s most famous statues — Michelangelo’s David — is in danger of collapsing because it has weak ankles.

So, the trailer for the brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out last night. It's rubbish.

No surprise to learn this week that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi declined to vote for each other in the Ballon d’Or.

Hans Asperger, the erstwhile prominent Viennese paediatrician, could never have envisaged the global phenomenological fervour which enveloped and exponentially developed his collated observations on the perceived ‘psychopathy’ exhibited by some children with apparent communication, social-skillset, peer-empathy and physical adroitness issues.

It is a matter of taste, or maybe conviction. Either way the relics of St Anthony have prompted the devotion of thousands in all-weathers around the country.

What is it about a naked girl?

EVER wonder what showtime must have been like at Rome’s Colosseum? Cast your mind back to Ireland and Italy’s recent rugby showdown at the Stadio Olimpico. The Six Nations is as close as rugby gets to all-out gladiatorial combat: by the time the Irish and Italian teams were done tearing chunks out of each other, bruised and battered bodies were legion.