My father used to demand silence at the dinner table for “an important” programme at one o'clock every...

Community activitists and residents in Dublin's south inner city have been successful in their efforts to regenerate the local area. Its designation as a deprived community has brought in State resources but more are needed to address the poverty and inequality experienced by those who live there. Rory Hearne reports

The Rossport Five are due in the High Court on Friday 7 April to hear whether or not they will be punished for disobeying the court in 2005. The five men were jailed last June at the request of Shell E&P Ireland for refusing to undertake not to obstruct the laying across their land of the Corrib Gas pipeline. They were released 94 days later, again at the request of the company.

After Frankfurt airport, Shannon is Europe's most popular stopover airport for CIA planes, according to a new Amnesty report. Colin Murphy reports

Two great Irish writers were well remembered this week on TV. Flann O'Brien's 40th anniversary was featured in Lives of Brian, while an Arts Lives documentary was re-run on the eve of McGahern's funeral. By Dermot Bolger

An American classic gets a vigorous staging at the Peacock, but doesn't quite ring true for Colin Murphy

Darina Allen takes a chance on some authentic cuisine in India

An series of understated black and white photographs taken in Mali in the 1940s, and now part of The Paradise series at the Douglas Hyde's Gallery 2, is helping to put Gallery 1's little sister on the map. By Billy Leahy

‘Real life,” John McGahern once observed, “is too thin to be art”. I forget where he said it, bu...

How, then, we have changed: it is a bright afternoon in March. The sky above New York is blue as birdshell. I am walking with the Irish novelist Sebastian Barry across Brooklyn Bridge. We have no other reason than to clear our heads. To chat. To walk. There is an isolated grace to walking in New York. Everyone else seems to be moving to a purpose and we, the walkers, seem to belong to the very air of the city, as if we have become particles that float, along with every other particle in the city. It is a Whitman feeling. The wooden footpath beneath us trembles.