With her glossy red lipstick and sculpted hair, Iris Robinson, wife of Peter Robinson, is often likened to Cruella de Vil. But there is more to the DUP's only woman MP than a famous husband and immaculate coiffure. Interview by Fionola Meredith

The latest shift in the attack on the Irish language and the democratic rights of those who speak it has come with a demand for 'compulsory' Irish to be dropped in the legal profession.

A tale of two souls liberated but tormented by their brief affair, Aidan Higgins' classic Bornholm Night Ferry has just been reprinted. Review by Rosita Sweetman

Alearned professor of law, Jerry White of Trinity College, was interviewed on This Week on Sunday (6 August) and asked his opinion on whether it would be constitutional for the government to ignore the results of the recently published provisional census and hold the next election on the existing constituency boundaries.

While BBC2 wheels out the usual retrospectives – looking back from the present and the future – Channel 4 proves that life is bizarre enough without imagining new realities

Want to understand how Bush manipulated his way into power and now fights an unjust war? Or who officially spies on citizens for the White House? Or how much oil is really left and where is it? Greg Palast's 'Armed Madhouse' unearths the ugly truth about America today.
By Michael McCaughan

On 28 July a year ago, the leadership of the Irish Republican Army formally ordered an end to its armed campaign. All IRA units were ordered to dump arms. They were directed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. "Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever" the IRA leadership declared. The IRA also authorised its representative to engage with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use as quickly as possible.

The BBC are helping Andrew Lloyd Webber find a star for The Sound of Music, but they're wasting their time, says Dermot Bolger

There is an easy intelligence about Andy O'Mahony's Dialogue (Saturdays 6.30pm, Radio One). The guests are provocative, Andy is clever, without having to show off his cleverness (unlike you-know-who). Respectful interchange between two thoughtful people is the hallmark of the programme, so different from most talk-radio, where there is usually a disrespectful interchange between thoughtless people.

Writing in the Sunday Business Post on 16 July, Pat Leahy claimed that, according to "senior government sources", relations between Fianna Fáil and Tony O'Reilly were "non-existent" after the government had failed to respond adequately to lobbying by Independent Newspapers executives. However, Leahy took pains to point out that "there is no evidence or suggestion that the editorial coverage or reporting in any of the group's newspapers was or is affected by corporate relations".