ARCHIVE OF FEATURES AND PUBLISHED ARTICLES
Irish Convents were an Experiment in Manlessness
Now that the Frankenstein tendency has created human sperm in a laboratory, the great prediction is that men will soon be redundant...
Read
more...
Is it Irresponsible to Have More Than Two Children?
why I think it is ridiculous that a growing number of experts now preach that it is “irresponsible” to have more than two children...
Read
more...
“The Best Thing I Ever Did.”
It was one of the best things I ever did. And, as time goes by, I am ever more grateful for having achieved it....
Read
more...
When Gay Lifestyles were Considered Superior...
Down the years, some writers and thinkers have suggested that far from homosexuality being equal to heterosexuality, a gay lifestyle is actually superior to a straight one...
Read
more...
Paisley: Mellowed by Age – and "Mammy"?
Oldie of the Year 2008 – Rev. Ian Paisley, Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, and, at 82, oldest sitting member of the House of Commons. He was first Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly until March of this year...
Read
more...
Portrait of an Irish Feminist, deceased
June Levine, who died recently, felt driven to feminism because she had almost gone mad as an enclosed wife, mother and housewife in a small town in Canada during the 1950s...
Read
more...
Confessions of a soldier for Hitler.
Henry Metalmann is a widower aged 80. He is a retired railway worker and lives in Godalming, Surrey, where he acts as a voluntary gardener for Charterhouse School. He was born in Hamburg and served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht on the Russian front....
Read
more...
What’s Happened to Men?
A strange thing has happened to men over the course of my lifetime...
Read
more...
Theory and Experience – Reassessing Humanae Vitae
I was recently asked to give a re-assessment of a document first published forty years ago, which made a great splash at the time...
Read
more...
Cancer is not a ‘Battle’
A cancer specialist friend – she has been an oncology consultant for some years now – said to me irritably: “I do wish to heaven that people would stop referring to cancer as a ‘battle’...
Read
more...
My Risk-Filled Childhood
It now seems that risks – even dangers – in childhood are good for children. There is a growing body of expertise claiming that a worrying aspect of modern childhood is parental – and social – over-protection...
Read
more...
Lady Thatcher and Alzheimer’s
Opinion is divided as to whether Carol Thatcher, daughter of Margaret and the late Denis, should have revealed, in her autobiography, that her mother now has dementia...
Read
more...
Death of a Femme Fatale
When Terry Keane died, my niece Marie-Louise was crestfallen with a sense of loss...
Read
more...
Sex Education for Four-year-olds?
Sex education for children of four – to halt teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease? Eleven Members of Parliament have called for such a measure...
Read
more...
Winston Churchill and Ireland
Winston Churchill is such a universal brand today that I notice it is more and more common usage to refer to the great man simply as “Winston”...
Read
more...
A Brief History of William Joyce ‘Lord Haw-Haw’
From a talk given at the Cabinet War Rooms, London SW1 in January 2008...
Read
more...
Encyclopaedia of Europe
Michael Collins’ religion...
Read
more...
Body snatchers of New York...
My sisters ashes reside in an urn in my Dublin flat. But are they Ursula's
ashes at all? It emerges that something very strange happened to my late
sister's remains...
Irish Independent: 27 January 2007
Read
more...
The Champagne Queen...
As young journalists in the 1970s, we would sit under a picture of a grand dame
in Fleet Street's El Vino. The lady was La Veuve Cliquot, now recognised as an
icon for businesswomen everywhere, and historically seen as...
Irish Independent Magazine: 28 April 2007
Read
more...
Did sex begin in 1963...?
The novelist Ian McEwan has claimed in an interview that honeymoons were
misery before the 1960s sexual revolution. But surely sexual response is
more a matter of disposition than of date...?
Irish Independent Magazine: 14 April 2007
Read
more...
Yes, the woman's right to choose is the just solution...
When a man and a woman disagree about conserving the embryos they have
jointly created, the woman’s desire for a pregnancy should take
precedence....
The Guardian: Comment is Free: 10 April 2007
Read
more...
Nature versus nurture...
I lived with a foster-mother from the age of seven to the age of 15. Her
influence on me has stimulated interest in the nature-nurture debate…
Irish Independent Magazine: 3 March 2007
Read
more...
Nuns - all kinds of everyone...
The life of a nun has some advantages over that of a wife, and convents
have attracted a diversity of female characters...
Literary Review: March 2007
Read
more...
The great Chanel...
Probably the most beautiful boutique in Dublin is the Chanel shop at Brown
Thomas. When I pass by I often think of the life of the countryside orphan
Gabrielle who became the great Chanel...
Irish Independent Magazine: 6 January 2007
Read
more...
Ireland's fast breeders...
Although family size is smaller in Ireland than it used to be, the Irish
are still at the top of Europe's fertile league...
Irish Independent: 18 November 2006
Read
more...
Fascists and racists are not interchangeable insults...
A fascist may be a racist but is not necessarily so. A racist may be a
fascist, but may not even understand the meaning of the concept...
The Times: 17 November 2006
Read
more...
The Year that Changed my Life
In 2003, my sister Ursula died of cancer. It was a sorrowful parting…
Daily Mail 31.12.03.
Read
more...
Sex and the older woman...
Charlotte Rampling's movie "Heading South" and 67-year-old American academic
Jane Juska's search for senior sex strike most sixty-something women as
not so much liberated as pitiful...
The Irish Independent Magazine: 19 August 2006
Read
more...
John Updike - political psychologist par excellence...
John Updike is America's greatest living writer. A committed Christian, he writes incisively about sexual relations - and brilliantly about the psychology of terrorism...
The Catholic Herald/The Irish Catholic: 12 August 2006
Read
more...
Michael Collins and a passionate romance...
Lady Lavery, the beautiful American who for so many decades adorned the
Irish pound note as the perfect "colleen", was passionately in love with
Michael Collins. Did they have an affair? No, but a romance all the same...
Irish Independent Magazine: 29 July 2006
Read
more...
Is cohabitation the new courtship?
A recent report has shown that cohabitation, now as common as marriage,
has a much greater chance of breaking down. So, is it a useful preparation
for marriage, or an alternative to it?
Daily Telegraph: 12 July 2006
Read
more...
Why I became a young feminist...
It was general rebellion against all the "thou shalt nots" of my elders
which drove me towards feminism. But have we replaced old orthodoxies
with new ones?...
The Irish Times: 20 May 2006
Read
more...
Remembering John McGahern...
John McGahern, perhaps the finest Irish writer of the late twentieth century
died in March 2006. He was a gentle, modest, wry and witty man whose life
was part of his country's times...
Irish Independent: 3 April 2006
Read
more...
Bad times in Vichy France...
A remarkable new book about wartime France is driven not by hatred of
the Nazis, but by hatred of the Catholic Church, which the author seems
to consider worse...
The Tablet: 15 April 2006
Read
more...
Meeting Cherie…
Mrs Blair, the Prime Minister's wife, is often portrayed in the tabloids
as someone keen on 'freebies' and a lavish lifestyle. Actually, she turns
out to be sincere and spiritual...
Irish Independent Magazine: 22 October 2005
Read
more...
Confession of a desperate housewife...
When broadcaster Michael Buerk claimed that women were now running the
world, I was too busy at the kitchen sink to pay much heed...
Irish Independent Magazine: 3 September 2005
Read
more...
Witness at Nuremberg...
A veteran translator in Brussels recalls her working life, which began
at the celebrated Nuremberg Trial in 1946…
The Oldie: February 2005.
Read
more...
Marriage counselling? Try throwing the china...
Marriage and relationship counselling is a booming industry. But is it
as useful as throwing the crockery at your spouse?...
Irish Independent Magazine: 4 March 2006
Read
more...
My most romantic movies...
We've had lists of the sexiest movies, as a hommage to Sharon Stone: but
how about a list of the most romantic movies, (as a hommage to spring?
) These are my nominations...
Irish Independent Magazine: 15 April 2006
Read
more...
Simone de Beauvoir is regarded as the mother of
modern feminism:
A new biography revisits her remarkable intellectual life – but is she
in some respects outdated?
The Tablet magazine: August 2005
Read
more...
Immigrants? Yes please!
The Conservatives are wrong to flag up immigration as a touchstone issue.
Most Conservative voters are very grateful indeed for the services of
migrants, and would be concerned if this supply of motivated and hard-working
young people were to dry up...
The Times 2nd May 2005
Read
more...
Taking It Like A Man...
Most women actually like men and sympathise with them. The notion that
all men are rapists and oppressors of women is neither true nor widely
held by women - and Norah Vincent has proved it...
Irish Independent Magazine: 4 February 2006
Read
more...
Dawkins The Influential Fanatic...
Professor Richard Dawkins calls himself a rational scientist. But his
attacks on faith are carried out with a distinct lack of rationality,
displaying an unkind fanaticism which he ascribes to believers...
The Catholic Herald: 20 January 2006
Read
more...
Why Ireland Has Changed Utterly...
A new study of Northern Ireland dwells upon the old historic divisions
there. But the truth is that the whole Irish story has been historically
based on poverty, deprivation, dispossession. Whereas now, Irish conditions
are about wealth, acquisition, maximising market opportunities. This has
changed everything...
Literary Review: February 2006
Read
more...
The Joy Of Fur...
No garment is quite as beautiful as fur. We should not kill endangered
species, and we should ensure that fur is farmed humanely: but women should
not be intimidated about wearing mink, fox, or sable...
The Guardian: 18 January 2006
Read
more...
An Asylum story...
In times gone by, people were sometimes committed to mental asylums for
unjust reasons. But sometimes it seemed a compassionate option...
Irish Independent Magazine: 1 October 2005
Read more...
FCUK no more: Thank heavens for that!
On the imminent disappearance of a well-branded logo...
The Times: 3 October 2005
Read more...
The Power of the Papal Brand
Many young Irish people now are agnostic and have little interest in religion.
But they are highly brand-conscious and media-savvy, and in that context,
they recognise that the Holy See puts on a very effective gig...
Irish Independent magazine: 30 April 2005
Read
more...
