It goes without saying that chef Tadgh Byrne is a very good cook, as satisfied customers over the years, on three continents, will readily confirm. But, as well as serving up a good dinner, the Arklow man is capable of providing food for thought too as he explores the ideas behind his craft. He has produced a recently released film exploring the menu of the future and he previously examined the history of what we eat.
Nobel laureate author Ernest Hemmingway penned a novel called ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ which earned him the big prize in 1954. Like that grizzled old man of fiction, Niall (pronounced Kneel as in saying prayers rather than Nile as in the river) Meehan can also claim a special relationship with the sea.
“I am so grateful to live by the sea,” says writer Ellen Ryan of being in Greystones. “We have really come home here, where you are never far from forest or sea.” The award-winning author resided in the town as a child before the family de-camped to Dundrum where she received her schooling.
From her home on the Wicklow/Wexford border, Pat O’Malley keeps a flame alight. It is a flame which has flickered in the face of individual loss and of events which have garnered global headlines. Yet it continues to burn, bearing witness to the enduring optimism of the human spirit.
On a rainy autumn night, preliminary details of a new venture arising from the rising of 1798 were made public at a reception in the Parkview Hotel. The three-day ‘Festival of Remembrance’ will take place over the last weekend of May, culminating with a re-enactment of the battle of Newtownmountkennedy on the Sunday afternoon. The star turn of the reception hosted by the local tidy towns committee was Professor Ruán O’Donnell, a man in his element talking about the events of 225 years ago.