Check out our guie to the best of tonight's TV.

Ryle Dwyer says Bitter Freedom is, a thoughtful and balanced history that exposes the need to be wary about what actually happened around 1916 before we engage in an unquestioning orgy of centenary celebrations. 

UNESCO appeals to global community to protect heritage

In 1937, Irish voters enacted the Constitution, affirming the State’s adherence to pacific settlement of international disputes by international arbitration or judicial determination.

Hollywood blockbuster tackles a story that always intrigues, writes Dan Buckley.

Masters of the Word

Archaeologists say they have discovered some of the world’s oldest known primitive writing, dating back 5,000 years, in eastern China.

LAST month saw the Cheltenham Festival, the election of the first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years and the continuing saga of horseflesh sold as beef.

We Irish have become beer connoisseurs, insisting they have obscure names and are from far-flung places, says Carl Dixon

When the email from the Orlando Hurling Club in Florida popped into my inbox a few weeks back, I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind

“JUDGED by English standards, the Irish are a difficult and unsatisfactory people.

MORE than 600 ancient artefacts smuggled out of Iraq, recovered and lost again have been found among kitchen supplies stored at the prime minister’s office.

IN his response to my article on Gallipoli (March 23), Mark Cronin (Letters, March 25) reveals that the propaganda constructed to justify England’s invasion of Mesopotamia and Turkey during 1914/15 has done its job well in Ireland to this day.

ON Tuesday night at Galway the horse known as Mesopotamia was withdrawn by order of the stewards before the opening maiden hurdle. It subsequently transpired that he wasn’t in fact Mesopotamia at all, but a horse called Golden Grace, formerly trained in England by Ed Dunlop.

JOHNNY MURTAGH rode a masterful race from the front to guide Quinmaster to success in the inaugural running of the Tote Mile EBF Handicap, formerly the McDonogh Handicap, at Galway last night

AL-QAIDA in Iraq claimed yesterday that four Iraqis carried out the suicide bombings against three Amman hotels as police arrested 120 Jordanians and Iraqis in the hunt for anyone who might have aided them.

An internet statement today in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq claimed the deadly hotel bombings in Jordan were carried out by four Iraqis, including a husband and wife “who chose to accompany her husband to his martyrdom”.

The al-Qaida in Iraq militant group said today it has sentenced two Moroccan embassy employees kidnapped last month to death.

I’VE just read a fascinating article about dates, so much so that it has whetted my appetite in every sense of the word to make a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in search of the very best dates.

Veteran Irish actor Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif are teaming up again for another big budget action film, Gilgamesh, about the first king of Mesopotamia, set in 5,000 BC.

Accurate, detailed information on the priceless antiquities looted from Iraqi museums is crucial for the international effort to track them down, experts and officials said at a meeting on stolen artefacts today.

IRAQ, a cradle of early civilisation and reputed birthplace of agriculture, beer and the written word, boasts proven oil reservessecond only to those of Saudi Arabia.

A Bulgarian historian today launched an ambitious project to reconstruct the Biblical ark, complete with pairs of animals, as a tourist attraction.