‘A beacon of brazenness and defiance’: Edna O’Brien remembered by Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín and more

Critics rarely picked up on how funny her writing was’ … O’Brien at her London home in 2019. Photograph: Antonio Olmos

‘A beacon of brazenness and defiance’: Edna O’Brien remembered by Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín and more

The acclaimed author of The Country Girls, which was burned in the market square of her home town, has died aged 93. Here, Irish novelists pay tribute to a titanic figure who liberated their country’s fiction

Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Megan Nolan, Eimear McBride and Alex Clark

MONDAY 29 JULY 2024

Anne Enright: ‘She was all in, every time’

O’Brien blew open the possibilities for Irish fiction, not because of the taboos she broke but because she had broken them as a woman. In 1960, her first novel The Country Girls was burned in the market square of her home town of Scarriff, and every Irish woman who has published since is indebted to the hurt she took on there.

Edna O´Brien

Obituary

Edna O’Brien obituary

Novelist who scandalised her native Ireland with The Country Girls, and explored the lives of women who love and suffer

Luke Dodd

Monday 20 July 2024

Before Edna O’Brien, Irish female writers tended to come from the preserve of the “big house” or enjoyed the kind of privilege that made a life of writing possible. And by and large, their books dealt with genteel themes and conformed to recognisable genres and narrative forms.

Liam Neeson joined by lifelong friends in new crime thriller 'In the Land of Saints and Sinners'

 

Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson joined by lifelong friends in new crime thriller 'In the Land of Saints and Sinners'

GEORGE PENNACCHIO

24 March 2024

HOLLYWOOD -- Liam Neeson is heading back to the box office in a tough new role. He leads the cast of a crime thriller that takes us to Ireland. It's called "In the Land of Saints and Sinners."

Neeson plays an ex-assassin who decides to use his gun again when some IRA terrorists come to his coastal Irish town.

"It was a good script. It had a, you know, a few levels to it. It wasn't just pure sort of violence or anything," said Neeson.

Neeson joked that his character's bluntness and dark humor may just be rooted in the Irish heritage.

"I would like to think it is, you know? However, I'm sure the Scots and the Welsh would disagree with me," laughed Neeson. "But I'd like to think it's Irish."

For Neeson, part of the fun of making this movie was working with old friends.

"I know! Ciaran (Hinds) is the brother I never had. We've known each other for 50 years. Colm Meaney, I've known for 40 years. So that was lovely," said Neeson. "Generally speaking, I think they're in for a good, a good evening's entertainment. It's not a movie that's three, three and a half hours long. God knows these directors! It's, you know, a hundred minutes. Perfect length, you know, to sit with your bag of popcorn and have a good time."

"In The Land of Saints & Sinners" is rated R for violence and language. It'll be in theaters on March 29.

ABC 7

DE OTROS MUNDOS
Liam Neeson / Lista de bajas
Liam Neeson / El viudo que homenajea a su esposa en cada película desde hace 13 años
Liam Neeson / “Encontrar una razón para salir de la cama cada mañana es un regalo”
Liam Neeson, el vengador de la tercera edad

DRAGON

Jaume Collet-Serra, top of the US box office once more

The 50 best films of 2018 in the UK / No 8 / Widows
Michelle Rodriguez Says Liam Neeson Can’t Be Racist Because of the Way He Kissed Viola Davis in ‘Widows

The Hard Luck and Beautiful Life of Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson / On iconic roles, Irish pride, and the influence of Ian Paisley
Liam Neeson / ‘Finding a reason to get out of bed every morning is a gift’

Liam Neeson joined by lifelong friends in new crime thriller 'In the Land of Saints and Sinners'

Liam Neeson / The senior avenger

Liam Neeson, in an image provided by the San Sebastián Film Festival, where 'Marlowe' was screened.Photo: JORGE FUEMBUENA

Liam Neeson: ‘Finding a reason to get out of bed every morning is a gift’

The Irish actor — who stars in the recently-released film ‘Marlowe’ — will turn 71 this summer, but he’s already lived the lives of many men. He’s been a talented stage actor, a sex symbol, a brooding hero, a box office success, a survivor of tragedy… and he’s still going strong

Juan Sanguino

San Sebastian, 14 May 2023

On many occasions, Liam Neeson, 70, has been compared to trees.

Standing at over 6 ft 3 with a solid build, the Irish actor has been referred to as an “oak tree” by journalists, while a theater critic once described him as a “sequoia of sex.” And, in 2017, he even played a yew tree in the film A Monster Calls.

The 63-year-old Ballymena man is to receive an Outstanding Contribution to Cinema award at the Iftas tonight at the Mansion House

Liam Neeson: on iconic roles, Irish pride, and the influence of Ian Paisley...

Ahead of receiving an industry award at the IFTAs, Liam Neeson on the journey that saw him play Michael Collins, a Jedi and God

Patrick Freyne

Saturday 9 April 2016

Liam Neeson – aka Michael Collins, a Jedi, Oskar Schindler, God (in the sitcom Rev), an otherworldly lion deity, a Batman villain, the avenging fury of the Taken films, Hannibal from The A-Team – is unafraid of playing icons.

 

Liam Neeson

The Hard Luck and Beautiful Life of Liam Neeson

Actor, ass-kicker, widower, philosophizer, big man, funny man, capable drinker of pinot noir: may we introduce to you, the man you've known for all these years

Tom Chiarella

15 February 2011

Originally published in the March issue

Liam Neeson and I last spoke a week before I wrote this sentence. At that time, I asked him what he remembered about the interview I'd done with him at a restaurant in New York almost three weeks before that. He said, "I remember you told me that story about your accident, and that was pretty hard for you. I remember that you made me draw that picture of my house, and I remember that we talked about Natasha. I started to worry: Why would I tell him that? Why did I speak about the hospital? And then I thought, No, he's a man. This is not some newspaper story. So I wasn't sorry. Except about your accident. That was bloody awful."

Cillian Murphy’s Bedtime Routine

Cilliam Murphy

Cillian Murphy’s Bedtime Routine

By Wendi Aarons and Johanna Gohmann
March 28, 2024

5 PM

Call ’round to the pub and dine on a hearty meal of potatoes, bangers, and the knowledge that you are Christopher Nolan’s favorite.

 

Photograph: Dani Pozo

Review

A History of Loneliness by John Boyne review – a denunciation of the Catholic church

The story of a guilty priest and the church's cover-up of sexual abuse makes for a lacerating portrait of Irish society

Helen Dunmore

Fri 3 Oct 2014 08.59 BST

"Ireland is rotten. Rotten to the core. I'm sorry, but you priests destroyed it." These words are spoken by a young man who was sexually attacked in his childhood by an Irish priest, a friend of the family. They go to the heart of this novel's passionate denunciation of the role played by the Catholic church in the scandal over child abuse by the clergy. It is a study of the corrupting effects of power in an Ireland that came close to being a theocracy. Sexuality was strictly governed; contraception, abortion and divorce were forbidden; and yet the abuse of children went unpunished and was deliberately concealed by the church hierarchy for fear of damage to the institution. It is this cover-up, this shifting from parish to parish of offending priests, this determination to put the good name of the church – and its resources – above the sufferings of children that has caused such shock, shame and anger in Ireland, and many other parts of the world.

 

Cillian Murphy

Cillian Murphy: ‘I’d happily appear in Peaky Blinders again’

The Bafta and Oscar-nominated actor says he would like to reprise his role as the Birmingham gangster Thomas Shelby

Vanessa Thorpe

11 February 2024

The Oscar and Bafta-nominated Cillian Murphy, a hot contender to win best actor awards for his portrayal of Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s film about the creator of the atom bomb, has revealed he would still happily return to the role of Peaky Blinders’s Thomas Shelby, on the small or the big screen, if the chance came his way.

 

Cillian Murphy

Interview

Cillian Murphy on Oppenheimer, sex scenes and self-doubt: ‘I’m stubborn and lacking in confidence – a terrible combination’

This article is more than 7 months o

If Peaky Blinders made the Irish actor a household name, will Christopher Nolan’s nuclear blockbuster send him into the stratosphere? He talks about extreme weight loss, hating school and why his next character won’t be a smoker

Charlotte Edwardes

Saturado 8 July 2023

Cillian Murphy is struggling with what he can and can’t say about his title role in Oppenheimer, the latest Christopher Nolan epic, such is the secrecy surrounding this film. Murphy is under “strict instructions” not to talk about the content. Which is awkward when you’ve flown to his home in Ireland to interview him specifically about playing the physicist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb, later detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s not clear who issued these instructions. Nolan? The studio? The US government? All I know is that as well as Murphy being gagged by hefty NDAs, I am not allowed to see it (“bit unfortunate”, he concedes).

Paul Lynch / Beyod the Sea (2019)

BEYOND THE SEA (2019)

BEYOND THE SEA is the haunting story of two men stranded at sea pushing against their physical and mental limits to stay alive, from the author of Grace, winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.

Illustration: Lara Harwood/Heartagency.com

A new Irish literary boom: the post-crash stars of fiction

Dynamic, radical, often female … Irish fiction is flourishing. Gone is the conservative writing – all nostalgia and sexual repression – of the Celtic Tiger years. The writers of the new wave are original and bold

Justine Jordan

Saturday 17 October 2015

“Money kills the imagination,” says the narrator of Claire Kilroy’s 2012 novel The Devil I Know, a fiendishly good satire of the moment the Irish boom went bust. “It makes us want the same thing.” The book is set in 2016 and takes the form of one man’s testimony to a tribunal intended to uncover the sleaze and short-termism that enabled a giant property bubble to inflate in the years leading up to the global financial crash of 2008. In the autumn of 2015, we have not yet caught up with Kilroy’s future setting, but as the real-world aftershocks of the Celtic Tiger’s downfall continue, one Irish sector is booming: with the rise of a new wave of writers, from Paul Murray, Kevin Barry and Donal Ryan to first-time authors such as Eimear McBride, Sara Baume, Lisa McInerney and Colin Barrett, there is a palpable energy to Irish fiction.

John Boyne: ‘It’s not easy to be a young, gay teenager and to be told that you’re sick … 

particularly when you hear it from someone who groped you on your way to class.’ 

Photograph: Patrick Bolger

John Boyne: ‘The Catholic priesthood blighted my youth and the youth of people like me’

John Boyne – author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – grew up gay in Catholic Dublin. Now, after years of silence he is finally ready to write about sexual abuse within the church – and to talk about the effect it has had on his life

John Boyne
Friday 3 October 2014

O

ver the course of my writing life, I’ve often been asked why I don’t set my novels in Ireland. To this question, I had a stock reply: that I didn’t want to write about my own country until I had a story to tell. Now, having written a book that takes the subject of child abuse in the Irish Catholic church as its theme, I wonder if that answer was entirely honest.