I was meeting a friend in a Brussels cafe on Friday afternoon, and we were joined by an diplomat from one of the smaller EU member states, stretching his legs during a break in proceedings in the summit. At that point there was no indication of how things were going, and I asked the diplomat if his government had made provision to stay all weekend ( Read more... )

17) The Warden, by Anthony Trollope ( Read more... )

13) The Independent Irish Party 1850-9, by J.H. Whyte ( Read more... )

The Guardian has an article today taking the first steps in "constructing a true record of Britain's ignored, decaying and under-resourced radical heritage ... to celebrate the insurrectionary meeting places, non-conformist chapels and martyrs' memorials of the people's history". The places/events he suggests commemorating (subject to future reader ( Read more... )

Last weekend's Observer reports that Francis Campbell, the new British Ambassador to the Vatican, "will be the first Irishman to represent the UK abroad since the partition of Ireland in 1921". The Zenit newsagency goes a step further, saying he is "the first Irish Catholic to be elevated to ambassador since the republic of Ireland was granted ( Read more... )

Ken MacLeod has done me the honour of replying to my last post at length, and deserves a final reaction from me - though I don't think we can really push this argument a lot further.

( Read more... )

This is a rarity from me - a serious political entry questioning statements by a writer I admire, and also worrying that I might not have got the joke, if there is one.

( Long post on the kind of political stuff that I left Northern Ireland to get away from, yet somehow I couldn't resist taking the bait this time. )