Success was a surprise to Jim Crace. Now, after 12 novels, he is bidding farewell to writing with his fittingly elegiac book Harvest. Declan Burke spoke to him.

Ben wrote short stories as a child. At university, he knew he wanted to be a writer.

The Children of Lovers

On Evil

Venables and Thompson — and the fictional Jack — were lucky in the sense that the State intervened when they were at a very young age.

MORNING Ireland (RTÉ Radio1, March 6) presented by Áine Lawlor featured 10 or 15 minutes of people deploring Sunday’s drive-by shooting without once using the word “wrong” or “sin”.

ANIMAL rights activists yesterday clashed with thespians in Waterford city after a local theatre company placed dead pigs on stakes around the city to promote their upcoming production of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

A US airman is believed to have killed the world's largest bear.

Nobel Literature Prize winner VS Naipaul has sparked controversy by claiming people in India 40 years ago were not intellectual enough to read his books.