MORE than 3,670 locals in Kilkenny have set an Irish and European record for assembling the most Christmas carol singers in one spot, the local GAA ground. But did anyone notice that the world record of 7,514 carol singers was set by the Bob Jones University in South Carolina in December 2004 – where Ian Paisley received his ‘doctorate’? I’m sure he won’t be gloating… after all, it’s a time for gaadwill to all men.
It’s not often we get free things to give away to our readers, but courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan we have a nice paperback copy of Brian M Walker’s excellent history of partition of the island and how identities shifted in both the north east and the south and west: as most of the territory that [...] read our review »
Which reminds me…. Platform for Change’s driving force Robin Wilson has produced a corrective to the notion that the lessons of the NI conflict are easily exportable. Like myself, Robin is associated with the Constitution Unit. He introduced his new book in a CU blog which I here reproduce. The water crisis in Northern Ireland [...] read our review »
It’s the quiet ones you have to watch, they say. When I last saw Eamonn Namcarrow, back in the mid 1980s he was a congenial, good-natured and highly sociable young lad. The next time was 26 years later, in Lavery’s Gin Palace in Bradbury Place. He’d just brought out his first book, Holywood Star about [...] read our review »
What a pity they could not have included our very own emigre wunderkind, Lembit Opik, who was lustily singing at a carol concert in Wales yesterday as the press rushed to congratulate him on his delightful new love partner, the Romanian chanteuse, Ms Aventia Cheekibum. Perhaps next year the happy couple might return to the ancient land of his forebears and help Cullybackey Choral Society break the record of these pushy southerners.
See my next entry.
And there’s nothing wrong with Cullybackey. Really…