When Belfast-born William John Lawrence died in penurious English exile at the start of the second World War, his manuscript on the origins of Hamlet was lost too

Frank McNally sits in on a new production of Seán O’Casey’s play and revisits the ‘chaotic scenes’ that greeted it in 1926

An American publisher dismissed them as unfunny, senseless and dull

The 20th century’s greatest poetry critic looks at the greatest of these poets and chooses WB Yeats

New collection of essays dwells comprehensively on role of Irish overseas during revolutionary period

Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel’s history shows extent to which Irish drama was important in London

Seán O’Casey’s daughter Shivaun, a living link to one of our most famous playwrights, has written a memoir that includes previously unpublished letters from her father

It was a week of oral exams as the art of storytelling excelled at parties and awards ceremonies

What should have been the peak of the sculptor’s career was doomed to coincide with what the Chinese call interesting times

Catholic anti-divorce crusaders deliberately made outrageous analogies and used modern tactics, too

The Belfast-born poet, who died five years ago, left us a precious legacy of transcendent beauty, vigour, wit and profundity

This same legend turned up on the Dublin City Marathon medal two years ago

In the second in her series on county towns, Rosita Boland discovers there is a lot more to Sligo than its Yeats connection

Musician and art historian Lyndsey McDougall on her muse Lily Yeats, and the unexpected convergence of religion and rock’n’roll

Television: Engaging Aistear an Amhráin series is the sort of show RTÉ needs to make more of

A luminous centre of the Irish literary renaissance, a figure of world importance

The artist’s paintings are a blend of quasi-religious iconography, personal memory, poetic allusion and feminist semiotics

The trial had its origins in the ‘Red Scare’ general election of 1932

Scholars have long maintained that WB Yeats was being fanciful when he claimed one of England’s greatest poets was in fact Irish. But a new look at the story suggests an alternative possibility

Many far-right groups in Ireland now appropriate traditional symbols of Irishness and present themselves as guardians of a ‘pure’ Irish nation