Seán Feehan’s Cork-based Mercier Press published books that Dublin wouldn’t, about topics that ‘reflect us truthfully to ourselves’. He died 25 years ago but his legacy lives on, says Ryle Dwyer         

Hopefully, your correspondent (Irish Examiner, Letters, March 28) Diarmuid P Ó Luasa’s subtle but magnificent irony will not be lost on Ms Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Ryle Dwyer reads the argument that the Irish uprisings of the first decades of the 20th century were a series of civil conflicts, not wars, and they were essentially between Irish people.

The journalists at the Irish Press group were as hard drinking as they were hardworking. Sue Leonard hears many tall tales and true from David Kenny, who was there before its demise in 1995.  

A controversial sitcom set around the Great Famine will not make it to TV screens, it was confirmed yesterday.

The Haughey family has slammed claims made in a new book that former taoiseach Charles J Haughey turned down an operation that may have saved his life following a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Charles J Haughey was born 90 years ago tomorrow. Biographer Ryle Dwyer examines his political legacy and the scandal that followed him

Newfoundland feels like Ireland 20 years ago, when people left their doors unlocked, hitchhiked without fear and took time to stop and chat. Jennifer Hough feels right at home in the Canadian province.

Tim Pat Coogan’s excellent biography of Michael Collins highlighted the method that successive British governments employed to sate public opinion when they controlled Ireland.

The RTÉ television audience voted TK Whitaker “Irishman of the 20th Century” in 2001. 

Victoria White’s inflammatory column ‘We are washing our hands of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (July 31), uses the revisionist interpretation of Ilan Pappe to depict the founding of Israel in 1948 as an imposed Nakba (catastrophe) on the indigenous Palestinian Arabs of the era.

Wreaths have been laid at the site of one of three bombs which exploded 40 years ago today in the single worst day of atrocities in the Troubles.

In the past, Garda commissioners became implicated in what were largely political controversies, writes Ryle Dwyer

THE decision by the Taoiseach to publicly support same-sex marriage will mean he is about to have a fight on his hands, firstly from conservative Fine Gael backbenchers but, more volubly, from the leaders of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

In the midst of the talk of American bugging, Taoiseach Enda Kenny told reporters he operated on the basis that somebody was listening in on his telephone conversations. Of course, he has been in politics since the mid-1970s, when tapping was rife.

For the past two decades, Dublin theatre company, Smashing Times, has engaged with social issues.

In his article ‘Stronger Action Needed’, Tim Pat Coogan (Irish Examiner, Aug 22) blames corrupt and lazy politicians, senior civil servants, bankers, businessmen, lawyers, accountants and stockholders for Ireland’s affliction. But he has overlooked the dreaded fiscal triads, who scoured city streets and rural roads seeking mortgagees.

Ninety-one years after he was killed in an ambush in West Cork, it is surely time to allow Michael Collins to rest in peace.

Today is the anniversary of the death of Michael Collins and we mark the occasion by publishing a fresh look at how Collins as finance minister of the day might have reacted to the crisis besetting modern Ireland.

AFTER completing my doctoral dissertation on Irish neutrality, Tim Pat Coogan, the then editor of The Irish Press, wrote that his newspaper would be interested in publishing a series of articles based on the papers of David Gray, the American wartime minister to Ireland, but he added his own health warning.

Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte has fired a shot across the bows of some of his Fine Gael colleagues in relation to reform of our privacy laws. Fine Gael ministers have been pushing the idea of statutory regulation of the media in recent months.

Friends Michael Collins and Harry Boland fought on opposite sides in the Civil War. They also wooed the same woman, says Richard Fitzpatrick

Michael Collins’s vision of Ireland as a centre of economic excellence has been compared by many commentators both to our Celtic Tiger excess and our current woes, writes John Daly

ALTHOUGH it is neither advisable nor wise to attempt to “justify” the activities of the Provisional IRA during its violent campaign, some clarity is called for given the recent incident whereby the son of a member of the army of this state who was killed confronted Martin McGuinness.

ABOUT 3,000 book enthusiasts are set to descend on Ennis today for the fifth annual Ennis Book Club Festival.

I AM currently reading Ireland Since the Rising by Tim Pat Coogan, published in 1966.

PERMIT me to comment on a rather snide remark by Tim Pat Coogan on TG4 (May 23) when he likened Éamon de Valera’s occupation in Boland’s Mills in 1916 to “the man who shot Liberty Valance”.

EARLIER this month I was asked to discuss Irish neutrality during the Second World War on Tom McGurk’s programme on 4FM.

Author and historian Tim Pat Coogan told the Special Criminal Court today that the IRA and the INLA have "little time for each other".

A WEEKEND will be set aside every year to commemorate the Great Famine and celebrate the contribution millions of Irish immigrants made around the world after fleeing starvation.

One of the country’s best known historical writers is among group of experts who will decide how to honour the million people who died in the Great Famine.

EDUCATION Minister Mary Hanafin is being urged to issue books about Michael Collins and James Connolly to schools to make up for the Government’s distribution of Eamon de Valera biographies to students.

Dev’s papers have been transferred to UCD, which plans to digitalise them and make them available on the internet.

When a man was beaten to death in 1933 Gardaí were reluctant to question the main suspect, writes Ryle Dwyer.

A NEW whiskey launched on the Irish market has left a sour taste in the mouths of some public representatives.

IT is with regret and sadness that I learn of Brazilians without work permits being sent home from Ireland.

A documentary about Eamon de Valera’s early life that was too controversial for RTE to screen is now in production with a US television station.

DOZENS of pieces of IRA memorabilia have appeared on internet auction site eBay since the terror group announced the end of its armed campaign last week.

THE most important piece of new information to come out of the RTÉ series on Haughey was the disclosure by former Deputy Commissioner Joe Ainsworth, head of the security division of the Garda Síochána, that Taoiseach Charles J Haughey summoned him to a meeting in the spring of 1982.

NOT content with President Mary McAleese’s apology for her recent gaffe, people are now looking for an apology to Jewish people for Eamon de Valera’s condolence gesture to the German minister following the death of Hitler.