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The Whole Bustle

Siobhan Kilfeather, 9 January 1992

The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing 
edited by Seamus Deane.
Field Day Publications/Faber, 4044 pp., £150, November 1991, 0 946755 20 5
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... intriguingly disruptive of the meta-narrative. Northern writing is otherwise well-represented. Tom Paulin edits a section on ‘Northern Protestant Oratory and Writing 1791-1985’, which includes Drennan, Cooke, Carson, Craig, Paisley, and Orange Toasts from 1795. Northern writing is also well-represented in fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography and the ...

Diary

Colin Kidd: After the Referendum, 18 February 2016

... too overstep the bounds which separate academic history from partisan distortions of the past. Sir Tom Devine, Scotland’s most high-profile historian, was also drawn into the fray. Devine confesses in the preface to his new book, Independence or Union: Scotland’s Past and Scotland’s Present, that he was part of Scotland’s great disenfranchised ...

Highlight of Stay So Far

Stefan Collini: Beckett’s Letters, 1 December 2016

The Letters of Samuel Beckett Vol. IV: 1966-89 
edited by George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck.
Cambridge, 838 pp., £29.99, September 2016, 978 0 521 86796 2
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... of his death, was a response to a request for permission to make a film of his earliest novel, Murphy: ‘I am ill and cannot help. Forgive. So go ahead without me.’ Fittingly, the film was never finished. Now that this widely admired edition is complete, we can see how much it has added to our understanding of this self-erasing writer, not least in ...

Failed Vocation

James Butler: The Corbyn Project, 3 December 2020

Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour under Corbyn 
by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire.
Bodley Head, 376 pp., £18.99, September, 978 1 84792 645 6
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This Land: The Story of a Movement 
by Owen Jones.
Allen Lane, 336 pp., £20, September, 978 0 241 47094 7
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... vice and personal flaws. Sometimes Left Out overreaches in this respect – repeated references to Tom Watson’s weight as an index of his appetite for controversy fail to convince. Jones, in his chapters on Brexit, and especially on antisemitism, moves in the other direction: in attempting to do scrupulous justice to his interviewees, he sometimes leaves us ...

My Darlings

Colm Tóibín: Drinking with Samuel Beckett, 5 April 2007

... Post Office and measure the height of the ground to Cúchulainn’s arse’, as Neary in his novel Murphy wished to engage with the arse of the statue of Cúchulainn, the ancient Irish hero, patron saint of pure ignorance and crass violence, by banging his head against it. The need to buy a stamp or a TV licence or fill in a form is often too pressing, the ...

We Are Many

Tom Crewe: In the Corbyn Camp, 11 August 2016

... a shadow cabinet. ‘I had the opportunity to see what was happening inside the PLP,’ Richard Murphy, once credited as the author of Corbynomics, recently wrote on his blog. ‘The leadership wasn’t confusing as much as just silent. There was no policy direction, no messaging, no direction, no co-ordination, no nothing. Shadow ministers appeared to have ...

Diary

Chris Mullin: A report from Westminster, 25 June 2009

... and crossed back via a little hand-pulled ferry to find the secretary of state for Wales, Paul Murphy, sitting with three clergymen on the other bank. Back to our lodging to discover that two more heads have rolled: Julie Kirkbride and Margaret Moran. 29 May. Like those in the Big Brother house we wake up each day to see who is in danger of ...

Who had the most fun?

David Bromwich: The Marx Brothers, 10 May 2001

Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx 
by Stefan Kanfer.
Penguin, 480 pp., £7.99, April 2001, 0 14 029426 0
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The Essential Groucho 
by Groucho Marx, edited by Stefan Kanfer.
Penguin, 254 pp., £6.99, September 2000, 0 14 029425 2
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... you off my feet. Something has been throbbing within me. Oh it’s been beating like the incessant tom-tom in the primitive jungle. There’s something that I must ask you . . . Mrs Rittenhouse: Why, Captain, I’m surprised. Groucho: Well, it may be a surprise to you but it’s been on my mind for weeks. It’s just ...

I sizzle to see you

John Lahr: Cole Porter’s secret songs, 21 November 2019

The Letters of Cole Porter 
edited by Cliff Eisen and Dominic McHugh.
Yale, 672 pp., £25, October 2019, 978 0 300 21927 2
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... did not fit easily into the social mould of a Yale man,’ as his college friend Gerald Murphy put it, by the end of four years his music had engineered a place for him at the hot centre of campus life: he was elected to exclusive clubs and secret societies (the Pundits, Scroll and Key) as well as to the Whiffenpoofs, the most prestigious acapella ...

Who to Be

Colm Tóibín: Beckett’s Letters, 6 August 2009

The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929-40 
edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck.
Cambridge, 782 pp., £30, February 2009, 978 0 521 86793 1
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... plays and novels, and it was he who found Beckett a publisher in London for his first novel, Murphy, after it had been rejected by several firms. Like Yeats and his brother the poet, and the playwrights Shaw, Synge and O’Casey, Beckett was a Dublin Protestant. The fact that he played no part in the development of the Abbey Theatre, and did not write ...

Architectures of Containment

Clair Wills: Ireland’s Lost Children, 20 May 2021

Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes 
Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Government of Ireland, 2865 pp., October 2020Show More
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... that provided facilities for pregnant women before and after birth. The commissioners – Yvonne Murphy, a former circuit court judge who chaired two inquiries into the sexual abuse of children in the dioceses of Dublin (2009) and Cloyne (2011); Mary Daly, a professor of 19th and 20th-century social history, whose work has focused on poverty, emigration and ...

Diary

Alan Bennett: What I did in 2011, 5 January 2012

... Fenton tells me of a memorial service he’s been to at St Marylebone Parish Church for Maurice Murphy, the principal trumpet of the LSO, who did the opening trumpet solo in the music for Star Wars. The service due to kick off at 11.30, George arrives with ten minutes to spare only to find the church already full, the congregation seated, silent and ...

Act One, Scene One

David Bromwich: Don’t Resist, Oppose, 16 February 2017

... Betsy DeVos, a promoter of charter schools who has denigrated the very idea of public education. Tom Price, the doctor who is the nominee for health secretary, owes his appointment to his agitation for the repeal of Obamacare. Andrew Puzder, the CEO of the fast-food franchise Carl Jr, chiefly known for his opposition to raising the minimum wage, is Trump’s ...

When Ireland Became Divided

Garret FitzGerald: The Free State’s Fight for Recognition, 21 January 1999

Documents on Irish Foreign Policy. Vol. I: 1919-22 
edited by Ronan Fanning.
Royal Irish Academy and Department of Foreign Affairs, 548 pp., £30, October 1998, 1 874045 63 1
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... Twenties, before serving as Minister in Washington and, during and after the war, in Italy; Sean Murphy, Minister to France from 1938 to 1950, the only diplomat accredited to Vichy who de Gaulle allowed to serve in Paris after the war, and Secretary of the Department of External Affairs in the mid-Fifties; and Smiddy, who became Minister to Washington until ...

Irangate

Edward Said, 7 May 1987

The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey 
by Salman Rushdie.
Picador, 171 pp., £2.95, January 1987, 0 330 29990 5
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Turning the Tide: US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace 
by Noam Chomsky.
Pluto, 298 pp., £5.95, September 1986, 0 7453 0184 3
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... on Irangate matters, according to the Tower Report, was one of complete detachment. Representative Tom Lantos of California (a Hungarian by birth) could announce to North, when the Marine officer was hauled up by (and refused to testify before) a Congressional Committee, that such a man was a national hero, and go on to promise a contribution to his defence ...

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