A member of a welcome committee set up to support asylum seekers due to arrive on Achill Island has said that “anybody with a heart would have to reconsider” opposing the housing of vulnerable women in a local hotel.

With these novels, Pat Barker and Michael Hughes revive the long and fertile tradition of retelling Homer’s great epic poems. The Silence of The Girls and Country deliver new and original recitations of ‘The Iliad’ — the final weeks of the Trojan War — in two different but very satisfying and successful ways.