Clonmel has a great history. Bianconi launched the first stagecoach company there. It is the birthplace of Laurence Sterne, the clergyman who became famous as the author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, that grab-bag of whimsy, pseudo-intellectual discourse and ribald humour which turned the 18th-century world on its head.
It was one of the flukes of the current political theatre that a meeting with Sinn Féin was the occasion for the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste's first public engagement after what was obviously a difficult tête-à-tête between the two earlier that morning.
Robots Don't Cry is number 15 in the O'Brien Flyers series for young independent readers. Like other books in the series, it is instantly appealing with its comic-book format of large print, excellent big pictures and a narrative that is easy and exciting to follow.
It was called the artistic crime of the 20th century. It started even before he had seen the towers. He was sitting in a dentist's waiting room in Paris when he flicked open a newspaper and saw a drawing of the projected buildings. At the time, Philippe Petit was a vagabond street artist with a toothache. Six years later, he was walking the air between the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
As the Bertie scandal disappears in a welter of smoke and plain glass, we are left with two not very consoling points. Firstly, even though a majority of voters don't believe that Bertie was right to take the money given to him, that majority still prefers to see him in charge of government than the Rainbow alternative. It's a bit like the Huey Long slogan when he campaigned for governor of Louisiana: "Vote for the crook you know!"
Photographer Robert Adams' latest exhibition at the Douglas Hyde gallery charts the uneasy relationship between man and nature. By Billy Leahy
Always the sworn enemy of all that is popular, Book Notes feels obliged to give readers fair warning. The festive season is but three months away and publishers have a glittering mass of blockbusters targeted at your unfortunate Christmas stocking.
While this book stands out in its genre as a balanced overview of Ireland's adaptation to globalisation, it fails to offer solutions to the problems it identifies, says Peadar Kirby
Labelled by journalists as arrogant, Booker prize-winning Irish author John Banville believes in his own opinions and writes for himself. He talks to Colin Murphy about his fascination with other people's lives and his new crime novel, written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black