Paul Howard and Gordon D’Arcy: ‘Football has rules, but rugby has laws because they were drawn up by solicitors charging by the hour’
The author and the retired Irish rugby player have collaborated on an interactive rugby book for children. So it’ll be a shame if they fumble our young interviewers’ questions
By Jen Hogan
Power and Powerlessness in Union Ireland: illuminating Ireland pre-independence
Joseph O’Connor: ‘I don’t know what modern Ireland is yet. I’m suspicious about the new sacred cows’
Novelist Emma Healey: ‘There’s an idea that painting all the roofs in the world white would reduce the global temperature’
Poem of the Week: The Place Where Poems Come From
Reviews in brief: How the ‘other’ lives and writes, high-school satire and self-destructive undergrads
The Amergin Step: An Exploration in the Imagination of Iveragh by Paddy Bushe
The Last Days of Budapest by Adam LeBor: Examining the destruction in second World War’s final year
Book Club
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The Book of George by Kate Greathead: The arrested development and identity crisis of a modern man
By Rabeea Saleem
The Cleaner by Mary Watson: A novel probing class and privilege tends to overexplain
By Philippa Conlon
The Last Days of Budapest by Adam LeBor: Examining the destruction in second World War’s final year
By Michael O’Loughlin
Slow Train Coming by Todd Almond: The inside story of Bob Dylan and Conor McPherson’s stage collaboration
By Anthony Roche
Children’s fiction: Five books to delight the younger reader with tales of magical cats, geese and squirrels - and a busy girl called Wanda
By Sara Keating
Filthy Queens: A History of Beer in Ireland – A quaffable and comprehensive history that leaves the reader with a thirst for more
By Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire
Author Neil Gaiman dropped by US comics publisher after sexual misconduct allegations
By Ella Creamer
The Whale Tattoo and The Gallopers by Jon Ransom: A pair of intriguing, imperfect novels
By John Boyne
Confessions by Catherine Airey: A remarkably confident, complex and nuanced debut novel
By Kevin Power
Crime fiction: Quirky killers, an offbeat cop and the grimier side of Paris and the Costa Blanca
By Declan Burke
