Brian O'Connell

Charlie was looking for companionship, but why did he find dogs easier than people?

The Harvard anthropologists Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball came to Ireland in the 1930s to study rural communities in Co Clare. What has changed since then?

‘It also confirms what I (as someone sober for more than 10 years) have long suspected: that we stigmatise sobriety far more than active addiction in Ireland’

Bill Malone recalls that December 26th on Khao Lak started out as the ’perfect day’

In Ireland it's hard to be an emotionally open man. Wherever the key lies, it's not in drink

Paul Markham lives in a rambling house in Kilmurry McMahon, west Clare

Imagine as many people as live in Dublin suddenly arriving in Ireland, seeking food and shelter. That’s what has happened in Lebanon, as neighbouring Syria implodes

Anna May McHugh, who is in her 70s, lives on a farm with her husband John. “ I have no notion of ever leaving here. The only way I’ll leave here is, well, I don’t want to say, but you know . . . I couldn’t see myself living anywhere else,” she says

‘We like our house, but it’s not amazing at all’

It seems like a gift straight from heaven – a Georgian house on four acres right in the middle of the city - but living in a tithe house has some drawbacks too

Losing a van to flooding was an experience one new firm could have done without

The ideal gifts for anyone spending Christmas away from the auld sod

Three women tell of their weird and wonderful Christmas experiences away from home

Protestant fee-charging secondary schools feel under attack. Staff and parents object to the charge of elitism and believe that forcing schools into the free system does not make financial sense

Artist John Kelly is having a close brush with an inhospitable environment for the next three months