Opinion
Last Poll and Chorus – Frank McNally on the end of 400 years of Trinity College elections
The tradition goes back to 1613 when Trinity, still in its early 20s then, won the right to elect two MPs, part of King James I’s plan to pack the Irish House of Commons with Protestants and so end ...
The Irish Times21d
Poison Pen – Frank McNally on the late-blooming Violet Needham, children’s novelist extraordinaire
Unfortunately, suggests the Violet Needham Society, the author instead inherited her appearance from a grandfather who was MP for Armagh in the 1820s and who once described his own features as ...
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Public invited to attend NHS Lanarkshire’s Ministerial Annual Review next month
READ MORE: Coatbridge MP Frank McNally calls for more Scottish Ambulance Service investment following visit to town's ambulance station To book a place, and submit a question in advance ...
The Irish Times8d
Digging Up History – Frank McNally on the McMahon, and other once-famous spades
In the Republic of Ireland, by tradition, Protestants were said to dig with “the left foot”. In Northern Ireland, by contrast, it was Catholics who did that. The point is, there was no ...
The Irish Times13d
Power ballad – Frank McNally on the case for an Irish ‘Wichita Lineman’
Following an ESB repair crew around Cavan on Thursday, as it laboured to reconnect power after last week’s storm, I found myself thinking of Wichita Lineman. Jimmy Webb’s great ballad of 1968 ...
The Irish Times6d
Hardebeck Edition – Frank McNally on an Anglo-German musician who became the “blind bard of Belfast”
In the Walkinstown area of Dublin, there is a small but unusually shaped public park, perhaps unique in the city. I would formerly have called the shape “boat-like” or said it resembled the ...
The Irish Times9d
In the name of the father – Frank McNally on the waning tradition of family nicknames
Cutting through Dublin’s Trinity College one night a while ago, I stopped to watch a rugby match alongside a man who, every so often, shouted: “Come on, College!” At first I assumed he was ...
The Irish Times7d
Anti-social climber – Frank McNally on the pioneering cat burglar Robert Augustus Delaney
He is thought to have born somewhere in 1890s Ireland, emigrated to South Africa with his parents as a child, and later settled in England after fighting in the first World War. But Robert ...
The Irish Times27d
Pointed reference – Frank McNally on the importance of being salient
A retired former colleague, emailing about something once, mentioned in passing that I had become known in his house as “the Monaghan salient”. I think it was meant as a compliment but didn ...
The Irish Times5d
I love love, but organised romance makes me break out in mental hives. Why?
Frank McNally was still warm in the ground and the poor man barely got a look in. I was boy-mad. It’s worth mentioning that I never saw that letter again. As an adult I now realise my English ...
The Irish Times23d
Arsenic and Old Books – Frank McNally on a reader’s literary cry for help
A reader named Cian Flaherty (at least I think it’s Cian – the handwriting is ambiguous) has requested the Diary’s help with an unusual problem. It’s a sort of mercy mission on behalf a ...