The west is of course best, but one of the undeniable advantages of living in Dublin is its cultural vibrancy. Whether it is the galleries, or the theatres, or the wide variety of gigs and events, you can usually find something to do of an evening.

In 2017, I was extremely fortunate to be in the presence of former United States Senator George Mitchell at Mount Falcon. I like to claim it was a private audience, as that’s what it felt like.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. So the word goes. And Catholic Rome doesn’t move very far in a day, a year or even a lifetime. It’s why the famous Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, composed a reflection on ‘The Slow Work of God’.

Recently, Bishop Donal Roche, Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, said he was worried that the sacredness of the liturgy is being eroded by, for example, people looking for pop-songs at funeral Masses and wanting to bring up footballs and fishing rods in ...

Nobody knows anything. William Goldman, the Oscar-winning writer of screenplays for All the President’s Men, Marathon Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, coined this phrase when speaking of the Hollywood industry.

Here on this ribbon of bog road  where curlews cry and teal and mallard burst from darkening bog-holes  I stand cathedralled.

How should we describe this move to bring back tariffs? The end of free trade, the death of globalisation, the collapse of our business model - it has been called all those things and to what extent it becomes any of them remains fully to be seen.

It would take a particularly cold-hearted individual to watch the final episode of the acclaimed Netflix drama Adolescence and not find it heartbreaking. I won’t lie – I was a blubbering mess watching it.

In what can only be described as economic chest-thumping of Cro-Magnon proportions, US President Donald Trump has unleashed his latest fiscal cudgel upon the world.

“We have your phone. . . we know you intend to work in your brother’s restaurant. . . you have no money otherwise. . .