20 October 2026

Try Not To Get Involved With Any Spooks

Dan McGinn on October 20, 2026, 10:13 pm

| Readers 711

It was ‘Blue Lights,’ folks but not as we know it. But before we dissect Episode Four of the fourth series, let’s make our customary appeal. If you’ve watched the entire fourth series on the BBC iPlayer, please don’t give away any spoilers about the remaining episodes in the comments below. Please be aware this review also inevitably contains spoilers from previous series and recent episodes, so maybe you should pause reading this if you haven’t watched them. (SPOILERS ALERT) …

Go East, Old Man – Part II: Opting Out of Opting Out

Peter Emerson on October 20, 2026, 2:00 pm

| Readers 617

From an interrogation at the Russian border to an anti-war lecture in Moscow and a power cut in wartime Mykolaiv, Peter Emerson travels through Putin’s Russia and into Ukraine. Along the way he asks why binary referendums, the “matryoshka” votes of Crimea, Bosnia and the Donbas, so often end in bloodshed, and what that means for Northern Ireland’s border poll.

‘We collect without fear or favour’: embodying inclusion at the Linen Hall Library

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on October 20, 2026, 9:48 am

| Readers 338

A Good Relations Week workshop at the Linen Hall Library offered an unusual angle on this year’s theme of ‘Include’: rather than framing inclusion as a goal to be worked toward, it asked how a library collection can embody it. Patsy Horton of the Linen Hall Library and Sam Manning, its outreach and engagement officer, drew on the breadth of the institution’s holdings to trace over two centuries of Belfast’s life and political history, and to explore how archives can …

From grievance to governance: why Irish nationalism needs a Long Peace strategy

Mick Fealty on October 20, 2026, 7:00 am

| Readers 5168

sunflower field under blue sky during sunset

At 105, partition is unlikely to end on a 50%-plus-one border poll. Nationalism’s vote has stalled at 40% while voters drift to “neither”. The path forward runs through governing Northern Ireland well, not waiting it out, and Micheál Martin’s Bodenstown speech shows what that looks like.