Gerard Howlin: After nine years on the outside, Fianna Fáil still out in the cold

I have a childish liking for unusual words. They are a weakness to be resisted when writing. Good writing is simplicity of language expressing originality of thought.

There was a word I was searching for on Sunday: Insouciance. One dictionary defines it as “a light-hearted lack of concern”. In literature, it is sometimes an attribute of the leisured or the in-love. It’s an attitude that expresses the surfeit of the materially or emotionally well-off.