Tributes paid to ‘Ireland’s greatest writer' Jennifer Johnston at public memorial she arranged
Family, friends and literary luminaries read from Samuel Beckett and the Bible at event
The BBC’s national question: Frank McNally on Edna O’Brien and ‘the North of Ireland’
Author’s 1979 TV appearance included an implicit history and geography lesson for British viewers
Dictionary on the Double – Frank McNally on the enduring literary life of Patrick Dinneen
Lexicographer was described by profiler as “in some ways, as mad as a March hare”
‘This wonderful horse seems to have been as remarkable in death as in life’ – Frank McNally on an unbeatable stallion
Eclipse was sufficiently revered that his death created a market for relics not unlike that of saints in medieval times
Setting the Bar High – Frank McNally on pubs called The Irish Times (and more songs about newspapers)
An empire on which the sun never sets
Lexicographer at Large – Frank McNally on Dinneen’s Dictionary and the Dáil row about unparliamentary Irish
Myles na gCopaleen blamed Dinneen’s Dictionary for his decision to stop writing columns in Irish
For Whom the Bells Toll – Frank McNally on the ups and downs of “sound baths”
It’s another organised way to relax, like yoga but without the stretching
The Real McCabe - Frank McNally on a great (and much-married) American newspaper columnist
He received the editorial equivalent of a 21-gun salute: “He was six columns ahead at his death”
Comic Stripped - Frank McNally on the cancellation of P.G. Wodehouse
His presumed crime was to make a series of broadcasts from Berlin in 1941
Signifying Nothing - Frank McNally on a new linguistic plague
A little bell had started to ring in my head every time he said ‘very significant’ again
Hardebeck Edition – Frank McNally on an Anglo-German musician who became the “blind bard of Belfast”
He travelled widely in the Gaeltacht areas of Ulster on a mission to save traditional airs from oblivion
Anti-social climber – Frank McNally on the pioneering cat burglar Robert Augustus Delaney
Handsome, charming, and well-dressed, Delaney was a popular figure in the West End of London
Digging Up History – Frank McNally on the McMahon, and other once-famous spades
You didn’t call a spade a spade – you called it a “McMahon”
In the name of the father – Frank McNally on the waning tradition of family nicknames
There was a ‘Boss’, a ‘Yankee’, ‘Pipes’, ‘Mick Miley’, ‘Wee Mick’, and ‘Slasher’, among others