Despite the air of innocence that overlays the Rose of Tralee Festival, a distinct lack of sentimentality, hard business acumen and scandalous trivia are the order of the day, as Oistin MacBride discovered when he attended this year's festival, now in its 36th year. The Rose of Tralee, one of the biggest and oldest of the burgeoning number of festivals now dotting the Irish … [Read more...] about Less than Rosy
Archive
November December 1994
Blazes Boylan
Three Irishmen have been remanded in custody in Antwerp, Belgium, in connection with the theft of four of the most important paintings from the Beit Collection, stolen from Russborough House in Wicklow in 1986. Works by Goya, Vermeer, Metsu and Vestier, which police said were valued between £30 and €40 million in total, were recovered from what was the biggest heist in the … [Read more...] about Blazes Boylan
Goodbye Columbus, Hello St. Brendan
As the rest of America celebrates the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus arriving in the New World, Irish-Americans can boast that one of their own may have beat him by nearly 1,000 years. The idea that Irish monks in an ox-hide boat might have beaten the Conquistadors and the Vikings to America was largely relegated to Irish folklore before 1976. That year, British … [Read more...] about Goodbye Columbus, Hello St. Brendan



