One of the many positive effects of the ongoing peace process in Northern Ireland has been a deepening complexity in recent films about the Irish. With former adversaries talking peace, it's no longer possible for Hollywood simply to sentimentalize or demonize Irish characters, as it did just a few years ago in such films as Far and Away and Patriot Games. Some of the movies' … [Read more...] about Filming Ireland’s Pagan Underbelly
1999
The Bard of Ireland
Collin Lacey interviewed author Morgan Llywelyn, who has created an entire body of work chronicling the Celts, and Ireland, from the earliest times to the present day. Brown eyes glinting in the low afternoon light, best-selling Irish author Morgan Llywelyn draws herself up straight in an armchair in her rural North Dublin home, and turns several shades of indignant. You get … [Read more...] about The Bard of Ireland
Flyfishing? Golf? Both!
A vacation at any of a number of golf/angling resorts in Ireland can enable the sporting couple to enjoy two favorite daytime activities together – or apart. Some visitors to Ireland are surprised that the meadows really are as green as those pictured in the Birnbaum Guide. Others are surprised that the stout really is fresher than in Boston, New York, or Chicago. As a … [Read more...] about Flyfishing? Golf? Both!
Winging Her Way to Stardom
An interview with Touched by an Angel star Roma Downey It's a little after seven on a chilly evening last fall and a few hundred people are assembled at Gallagher's, the famous Theater District restaurant in Manhattan, for a fund-raiser organized by the Omagh Relief Fund. Sharply dressed men and women are listening to various speakers from the Irish community, one of whom is … [Read more...] about Winging Her Way to Stardom
Man of Peace
John Hume, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize, is interviewed by Kelly Candaele. John Hume is the rarest of political figures. For over thirty years he has doggedly pursued peace in Northern Ireland, initially as a civil rights activist in Derry, his hometown, and later as leader of the largest nominally Catholic political party in Northern Ireland, the Social Democratic and … [Read more...] about Man of Peace