Belfast was once described as “a conservationist’s nightmare”. Not much has changed. Vacant, dying buildings slouch on every other street. You notice the big ones first, places like the Crumlin Road Courthouse, a huge Victorian building cored out by decay. …
Is anyone at home in Northern Ireland?
A few months ago, driven by some romantic impulse, I moved my family into a derelict farmhouse on a steep and remote Ulster hillside, recreating a rural Irish lifestyle my maternal grandparents eagerly fled at the first possible opportunity. Visiting …
The last King of Ireland
On the eve of his coronation, King Charles peered out from behind a giant union flag at the very loyalest of his subjects gathered below. Around 200 people had gathered outside the Co-op on West Belfast’s staunchly Loyalist Shankill Road …
Joe Biden’s Irish fantasy
At the end of a winding country lane on the shores of Lough Allen in County Leitrim sits a beautiful little cemetery, seemingly all alone in the world. I discovered it while looking for the resting place of my grandad’s …
Larkin’s lesson for Northern Ireland
In May 1950, Philip Larkin was appointed sub-librarian at Queen’s University in Belfast. He knew little about the city, or indeed the university, but needed a change. His application for a job in London had been rejected. Belfast offered an …
The Tory circus must not go on
Belfast
Just as Tolstoy observed that “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, so it is with dysfunctional governments. Each is dysfunctional in its own way, though there are certain family resemblances between them — a certain shared …
The betrayal of Ireland’s borderlands
“My cousin owns that pub,” Father Joseph McVeigh says as a yellow building comes into view. “I remember the day it was bombed — just five months before Michael was murdered.”
Michael Leonard, Joseph’s cousin, was shot dead by Royal …
Northern Ireland’s dangerous future
It’s been exactly three years since the 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee was killed in the Creggan area of Derry, hit by a stray bullet from the dissident “New IRA”. She was reporting from the scene of a riot, an event …