Linda Máire

A brilliant read.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

Saturday morning, tea and ‘Ordinary Saints’ by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin.

Reacting to Labour's devastating loss to the Green Party in Gorton and Denton, Keir Starmer claims that only Labour can unite communities. I agree. He convinced Muslims to vote for a white working class woman representing a party led by a gay Jewish man.

Andrew Scott To Star Opposite Emily Blunt In Pic ‘Walk The Blue Fields’ As Netflix Boards Project; Ciarán Hinds And Tom Cullen Among Those Rounding Out Cast Andrew Scott is set to join Emily Blunt in Walk the Blue Fields, based on the stirring romance short story by acclaimed author Claire Keegan

Andrew Scott is set to join Emily Blunt in Walk the Blue Fields, based on the stirring romance short story by Claire Keegan.

deadline.com/2026/02/andr...

On the beach: ‘Watermarks’

"Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless ‘information’ that fails to inform our ignorance or our irresponsibility." from "Deep in Admiration" by Ursula K. Le Guin

"Deep in Admiration" was a talk given at the conference Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Dangerous Planet at UC Santa Cruz in May 2014. The text appears as the foreword to the collection Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014 (published by PM Press).

It was one of those days when you can see the ghosts of all the other lovely days. You drink a bit and watch the ghosts.

‘The bathrooms were rank, but we didn’t care’: how the grimy-but-great CBGB changed rock for ever Half a century ago, the famed New York venue run by a former marine and folk singer was ground zero for the punk and new wave scenes. Now the bands who played there are being celebrated on a 101-track...

“Inside, an array of young, unknown artists were making music that would change rock’s sound and look, attitude and aesthetic. These outsiders created a template for punk, spoken word, powerpop, new wave, no wave, mutant funk, hardcore and so much more besides.”

'The Interview': The Woman at the Center of the French Rape Trial That Shocked the World Podcast Episode · The Daily · 2026-02-14 · 1h 4m

This is the most extraordinary interview I have ever heard - Gisele Pelicot is a hero, though she should not have had to be. Her courage, strength, insight and backbone are awe-inspiring. Kudos to the NYT for giving this conversation the space and time it deserves. podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/t...

To writers, boneyards are lithic libraries. We borrow from them the names of the dead to clothe our characters. We read their stones and find whole stories to tell in their economy of words. We gather the whispers of the dead to give our tales life. – #DAKilroy, 1982 #Writing

New documentary series explores history of Irish women and the law A new documentary series is to explore seminal moments in Irish history where women took on the legal system. Ceartas Crua – Mná v An Dlí, a bilingual two-part documentary series t...

‘Ceartas Crua – Mná v An Dlí’, a bilingual two-part documentary series to be broadcast on TG4, covers legal action in the Irish courts and legislation enacted in the Oireachtas.

(TG4 streams online for free.)

💚

Four years have passed since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia was supposed to win in three days. Instead, Ukraine reinvented modern warfare, built a drone industry, and can destroy a thousand Russian soldiers in a day. Ukraine can win.

⁣Untitled (Yellow and Blue) ⁣
by Mark Rothko (1954⁣⁣)

For what it's worth, the House had a chance to effectively ban floor-crossing in 2012: C-306 would have required an MP to run in a by-election before sitting with another party.

It was defeated by a vote of 181 to 91 at second reading.

Just 3 Conservatives voted in favour, 142 voted against.

The Year of the Fire Horse is here.

Design: Timorous Beasties (Glasgow)

It’s 15 years since I made SOUND IT OUT about the last record shop in #Teesside - and now I’m coming home with my 10th feature, premiering in competition at CPHdox

I can’t wait for you to meet Stan and the fishers of Hartlepool in this intimate and urgent portrait, filled with North East humour.

“When you make a documentary, you need to submit, to be humble about how little you know and how much you want to know. Documentary makes you feel young, unjaded, alive, hungry.... The greatest films are documentaries.”

~ Mark Cousins 🎬
irishpages.org/product/dear...

As Valentine’s Day #ValentinesDay arrives, here’s one of Ireland’s greatest love poems: Dark-Haired Miriam Ran Away by Patrick Kavanagh (1946), inspired by Hilda Moriarty, a 22-year-old med student he became infatuated with. Later set to music as Raglan Road and famously sung by Luke Kelly.

Someone told me lately "Bluesky is just like Twitter." I argued that was untrue on the basis that last time I had a Twitter account most times I got a new follower their bio said "single & looking for fun" & here when I get a new follower it tends to say something like "professor of rare moths".

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast review – if you see nothing else this year, watch this When old school friends reunite at a funeral, they suspect foul play. Cue this frenetic, witty caper from Derry Girls’ Lisa McGee – complete with a sensational performance from Saoirse-Monica Jackson

“Buckle up, and enjoy.”

Six planets line up for rare parade throughout February Celestial spectacle will be at its most impressive on 28 February, when Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will align across the sky

Look up.

Small Finds #7 Andy Goldsworthy

Interesting piece on Andy Goldsworthy's Gravetstones art work on the BBC website. It's an "exclusive first look" apparently. I offered it to a national newspaper last year but they turned it down. I ended up writing it for my Substack. smallfinds.substack.com/p/small-find...

Elon Musk on Twitter: Whoever said "money can't buy happiness" really knew what they were talking about sad emoji

Imagine being so self absorbed and evil that you cannot understand you could easily solve world hunger, save the environment and be one of the happiest people in the world by doing so. But you actively choose to hoard that wealth and make yourself and the world miserable instead.

Whither 'Wuthering'?: 12 Words from Wuthering Heights Say hello to our Brontë thesaurus

12 Words from “Wuthering Heights”
www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/wor...

The Trump administration sure has a wierd way of celebrating Black History month.

Morning Light
Elizabeth Lennie
2025

What Seamus Heaney Meant to Me, a Kid From Carrickfergus As an eager, new student at Oxford in the autumn of 1991 I had arrived early at the Examination Schools on High Street to hear Seamus Heaney’s latest lecture as the Professor of Poetry. These lectu…

Adrian McKinty on the legacy of one of Ireland’s great poets: “Seamus Heaney’s poems were read in classrooms where children were growing up with soldiers patrolling their streets.”

‘We are one people:’ Canadian consulate set to officially open in Greenland | CBC News A delegation of Inuit from Canada is in Greenland for the official opening of the new Canadian consulate in the capital of Nuuk, both to show solidarity with Greenlandic Inuit and to bring a stern mes...

🪶🙌🏽🇨🇦❤️🇬🇱 #ThisCanadianStandsWithGreenland #FuckTrump www.cbc.ca/news/politic...