How come no one ever went to Laois on one of these erotic journeys?

TV review: Little Birds tries to be shocking but can just look like a Duran Duran video

Juno Temple: ‘Real eroticism is about how somebody’s sweat tastes’

The stars of Little Birds on underwear, sexual liberation and the worst thing about sex scenes

Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir biographer, dies at 84

Writer scored coup by persuading the reclusive Irish writer to let her chronicle his life

100 books by women you have to read

Iris Murdoch, Edna O’Brien, Marian Keyes and Eimear McBride all appear on the list

The photographer who started when her father stopped

Photographer Dragana Jurisic picked up a camera after her father's entire archive was destroyed. And that's not the only mystery in her family history

The Book Club: An extract from The Thrill of it All by Joseph O’Connor

In the opening chapter of The Irish Times Book Club choice for August, the protagonist recalls meeting his future bandmate for the first time in 1980s London

Erotic fiction that puts 50 Shades in the shade

As EL James’s new Fifty Shades book Grey breaks sales records, here’s a top 10 list of literary erotica that has stood the test of time

Jenny Erpenbeck: ‘The greatest discoveries can be made just around the corner’

Brought to Book Q&A: Author of The End of Days on the books and authors that have inspired her

Lykke Li: ‘I had the blues and that was a good thing’

Sadness permeates the Swede’s third album. She talks about musical catharsis and how David Lynch led her to meditation

Joanna Hodgkin: Amateurs in Eden