Nostalgia for Christmas past differs between the generations but that doesn’t lessen the magic for children - no matter what era they grow up in, writes Richard Hogan

Valentine’s Day may have become an excuse for commerciality and excess, but there is worse these days than having a day that celebrates love in whatever form.

Literature doesn’t get much stranger — nor more fun — than this. 

RATHER like the dive suit worn by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, Daniel Pennac conveys the story of an entire lifetime from the perspective of his body. 

Eric Kaplan Little,

Theatre: The Improvised Panto - Half Moon Theatre, Cork

As far as we know, the great French writer Marcel Proust did not play golf but he would have been intrigued by Graeme McDowell’s responses to his famous Questionnaire.

JOHN McGuinness is the latest TD to be undone by that highly contagious, and extremely debilitating, political affliction, entitlement.

Historically, make-up was for harlots and actresses.

IN A GALLERY shop the other day, surrounded by Banksy prints and street artists that were so cutting edge that nobody but the gallery owner had heard of them, there were several prints of Marilyn Monroe by the pop art god Peter Blake.

WHAT is it about Irish governments and overseas funding?

ANDREÏ MAKINE’S 11th novel is really two separate stories: one the tale of an emigré Russian author named Ivan Shutov, the other the titular life of an unknown man, Georgy Volsky, a wheelchair-bound occupant of a small room in a St Petersburg communal flat.

Mariella Frostrup has complained that blonde women are still saddled with prejudice.

THE MARDYKE still exists.

THE idea that drugs and alcohol can fuel creativity is a myth, it was claimed yesterday.

Journalist Nuala O’Faolain who revealed in a frank interview she was dying from cancer was today praised for raising the issue of how we face death.

Arsonists burned a Jewish community centre in eastern Paris before dawn yesterday, leaving behind red graffiti with menacing anti-Semitic messages such as “Jews get out”, police said.