The general point of demarcation between the Old English and Old Irish emerges obviously from the Cambro-Norman settlement of the mid 12th century & continued more or less unabated up until the Henrician programme of 'surrender & regrant' (1534) which had the effect of diluting in many cases the rigid polarity that existed between both groups. The Old English as a descriptive category is used by historians mainly from the 12th c (more rarely) up to the time of the Williamite Wars after which...

Most of the non-European immigrants we get in Ireland are already "Westernised" in that vague sense that they wish to step aboard the property express and have all the goodies often denied them in their place of origin. I used to work in a refugee center and irrespective of nationality; Cameroonian, Congolese, Iranian, Egyptian, Muslim/Christian or whatever, it's the base economic determinants - the need for a job and a roof over their head which obliterate any differences that arises...

The unconscious has a timeless, pulsatile function and if you were to ask what is a prevailing cause of crisis in this troubled region I would say it is the Israeli mind itself - a mind which needs to be expunged of its darknesses.

For the entire process of Holocaust remembrance, of continually revisiting the events both in their public and private lives has obviously had an incalculably strong - and deleterious impact. There are painful, recurring modes of renewing this compact with...

Away from the often complicated nuances of theory, I would say that socialism is simply the attempt to artificially inject a greater degree of justice and fairness into our myriad goings on. Its success depends on the notion that 'justice' and 'fairness', though abstract concepts, must be forced, through our own labours, to be given real concrete existence in the world. Of course, any government or monarchy or even a tyranny may claim that their form of governance is permeated by considerations...

'Marxism', in so far as that term refers to what the man actually wrote was an unstoppable success; he completely upended the accepted hierarchy of the day, laying the seeds for almost all of the advances in working rights, pay and entitlements we take for granted today.

I'd say the aristocracy were flabbergasted when they read 'Das Kapital', not merely the ideas, but the tone in which they were presented, it oozed a jaw-dropping self-assurance. All of this 'dictatorship of the proletariat'...