I don't particularly like Ed Sheeran's music. I think Steve Earle wrote the better "Galway Girl", and one of Ed's Brisbane concerts once cost me a $140 parking fine. Yet living near Suncorp Stadium has taught me that his significance lies elsewhere. He fills stadiums, supports local businesses and helps sustain communities like Caxton…

My generation lived through the end of exile. We left Ireland before smartphones, social media, livestreams and FaceTime transformed emigration into a permanently connected experience. The digital revolution brought home closer than ever before, but it also complicated the question that has always faced emigrants: where do we truly…

Five centuries after the Reformation severed ties between Rome and the English Crown, a little-understood honour exchanged between Pope Leo XIV and King Charles III offers a remarkable symbol of reconciliation, mutual respect and Christian fellowship. For Irish people, whose history has been deeply shaped by the consequences of that…

LUAIN -- On Oct. 26, 1771, John (Juan) MacKenna, who would rise to fame in South America, was born in Clogher, County Tyrone. MacKenna was related to Gen. Alexander O'Reilly, of the Spanish army, and O'Reilly helped MacKenna get established in Spain. In 1787, MacKenna was appointed a cadet…

First drafted during the Covid lockdowns of 2021 but left unpublished, this article remains as relevant today as it was then. The Brexit passport debate exposed a lingering tendency among sections of Ireland's intellectual establishment to question diaspora identity even while claiming to celebrate it. Ultimately, the debate was never…

The death of Moya Brennan in 2026 brought a flood of tributes celebrating one of Ireland's most distinctive musical voices. For Tim Flynn, it also triggered an unexpected journey back to October 1982, a time when Britain was living in the aftermath of the Falklands War, Northern Ireland was engulfed in the Troubles, and a…

TARA — Fidchell: Rediscovering an Ancient Celtic Game of Strategy - An ancient game, a modern experience.

Across the Celtic world, board games were part of a rich tradition of storytelling,…

For many Irish people, Orangeism begins and ends in Ulster. Yet for more than a century, the cultural and political currents of the Boyne flowed strongly through Merseyside as well. A chance conversation in a Brisbane pub reveals how Liverpool, Everton, Southport, and even a football anthem still carry the echoes of a forgotten chapter…

By T.S. Flynn

The conventional story is that Thomas Keneally discovered Schindler's List in a Beverly Hills luggage shop. The more important story is why he immediately understood Oskar Schindler. Long before Kraków entered his imagination, Keneally had spent a lifetime writing about convicts, exiles,…

By T.S.…