4th December 2025
I have seen many British Prime Ministers come and go - back to Harold MacMillan. But there’s never been one as loathsome both in terms of policy and persona as Keir Starmer. Not even Thatcher.
Picture of the Week
Snowfields by Diana Kingston is on view with over 200 new works at the Hunt Museum’s Open Submission show in Limerick - running until 28 February. Kingston started life as a photo-realist back in the 1970s. She was taken on by Tom Caldwell shortly after her graduation show in the Crawford and two sell-out exhibitions followed at Caldwell’s prestigious gallery in Fitzwilliam Square. She was also a regular at the RHA Annual Show back then and had a number of successful exhibitions in her native Cork. Her style changed in the 1980s and 1990s to a quasi-abstraction, where she would focus close-up on natural objects such as shells, rock, fruit, and flowers. These closeup images had an ambiguity and mystery that invited the viewer to speculate. Over the past 20 years, influenced no doubt by her move to South County Dublin, on the threshold of Wicklow’s wonders, she has turned to landscape - often favouring misty, isolated moorlands or occasionally snow-clad fields.
The Moronic Inferno
It gets worse by the day. And for those hoping that the mid-terms will offer succour in 2026, there are some very disturbing suggestions in the current edition of the Atlantic in a piece by David A. Graham - here’s a flavour:
“ Trump has made his intentions clear. At a rally last summer in West Palm Beach, Florida, he offered his supporters a promise. “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” he said. “We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
We’ll have it fixed so good. It’s not hard to guess what Trump might do to fulfill this promise. He has, after all, already attempted to disrupt and overturn an election. In 2020, those efforts involved questioning results, asserting widespread fraud without evidence, pressuring local officials to overturn outcomes, filing spurious lawsuits, and ultimately inciting supporters to sack the Capitol. Now that he’s back in the White House, he will draw from this playbook again—perhaps adding new maneuvers, such as deploying armed troops.“
Musical Interlude
Gene Clarke was a founding member of the Byrds and wrote most of their early hits (Eight Miles High, Feel a Whole Lot Better etc.). He is inclined to be overshadowed reputationally by Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and briefly Gram Parsons - unfairly I feel. His lifestyle didn’t help matters - drink and occasionally heroin were problems and he had a dread of flying (ironic indeed for a Byrd). He was a gifted and prolific song writer but the thing that resonated most with me was the inescapably melancholy tone of his voice. A voice that reflected a sad and short life.
Tom Stoppard
I have long had a special affection and admiration for Tom Stoppard - dating back to my university days when I appeared in two different productions of Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead (for the Everyman Theatre and the UCC Dramat). My roles were modest but I was exposed over a lengthy period (rehearsals and long runs) to his humour and verbal dexterity. Over the years I’ve seen most of his plays, often in London. His gift was the ability to write lightly about heavy subjects and with wit and humour in abundance. Random lines have stayed with me over the years.“We’ve no reason to fear death as we don’t know what it’s like. It might be quite nice.” Or, reflecting on how fingernails grow after death, one character remarks “the toenails on the other hand don’t grow at all”. He wasn’t afraid of sheer silliness. When a character with a pet tortoise named Pat resolves to murder someone and confides in the tortoise (held under his arm) “now might I do it Pat”. (A Hamlet reference for those who neglected their Shakespeare.)
There’s a lengthy love-letter and perceptive tribute to him by his friend Tina Brown from which the following is an extract, you’ll find the whole piece on her Fresh Hell post on Substack.
“I have been obsessed with the great Tom since our first meeting, when I was sixteen. He was then the rising—or, rather, the already blazing—thirty-one-year-old star of British theatre. The blaze had been ignited by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which burst from a humble venue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and wound up at the National Theatre in 1967. When asked later, in New York, what the play was about, he replied, “It’s about to make me very rich.” And it did.
In 1969, Tom showed up at my childhood home in Buckinghamshire to see my film producer father, George Brown, about the possibility of bringing his most recent play, The Real Inspector Hound, to the screen. He lived only twenty minutes away, and eventually bought a country manor nearby for a new life with his second wife, Miriam, a glamorous TV doctor. They became, in a way, the first media power couple, until Tom blew up his marriage in 1990 for one of his leading ladies, Felicity Kendal. (Cf. Charlotte, the wife in The Real Thing, his play about marital infidelity: “There are no commitments, only bargains.”)
A Book at Bedtime
I’ve never been a lover of Ann Enright’s fiction, its world is too circumscribed for my taste: The family, motherhood and the poor suffering female body - along with constant reminders of what beasts we all are (men that is). However, she writes well and I usually enjoy her non-fiction. An exception to that was an unfortunate and misguided essay she wrote in the London Review of Books in 2017 about the unfortunate McCann family. In addition to expressing reservations about the parent’s story and inferring some culpability, she also suggested that Kate McCann (a GP) had done a “Harold Shipman” on her patients. Disgraceful stuff of which I’m sure she is now thoroughly ashamed. Her recent book of essays (Attention - Writing on Life Art and the World) contains many gems. There is a wonderfully insightful piece on John McGahern, referencing his novel The Pornographer. It alludes to McGahern’s neglected son, whose existence only became generally known after his death. Other stand out essays were a sensitive piece on Maeve Brennan and a love letter to Edna O’Brien. Also, flavour of the month Helen Garner provides a fine introduction for this reader. But she can’t help herself where men are concerned and in one essay she tells us about a University of Toronto study of 1.3 million patients that found that 32% more of female patients were likely to die when a male surgeon performed the operation rather than a female one. A statistic that demands some unpicking but doesn’t get it. This tiresome “men don’t care about women” trope is a constant in her writing. It makes you wonder about her history with men.
A Morsel of Memoir
At its peak in the late Fifties and early Sixties, Collins Tennis Club in the Campfield was the epicentre of social activity for the Cork middle-classes. This was where the action was: dancing, mating and a very vibrant tennis club with multiple teams. In addition to the busy tennis schedule involving regular league matches and many tournaments, there were hops at the weekend with live bands and records. Old 78s were still in use initially and I remember hearing Elvis’s I Got Stung for the first time on that soon to be superseded medium. These hops were attended by teenagers and post-teenagers from all over the city. A feature of those days was that everybody could jive, and boys and girls enjoyed dancing for the sake of it rather than as a tiresome prelude to some carnal adventure. This was the era of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran and the great Chuck Berry. Rock and roll was in its prime. I would sit on the sidelines and watch all that twirling and gyrating and thought there was nothing cooler than a good jiver. It was very much down to the man. He drove the action although some girls made the most of minimal guidance. Then of course as the night wore on we’d get the slow foxtrots as they were called in those days. And the glorious opportunities offered by ladies’ invitation. The music was mostly records but once a forthnight or so an undistinguished trio would take over with Christy Mahon on drums. He was more often to be seen as our janitor in CBC where he wore a brown dust coat and a surly expression at all times. After the dances, the deserted courts with their grassy banks and the small woods nearby provided opportunities for romance on the way home.
In the mid 1950s the courts in Collins were tended by Tom Hayes – a hard-working and courtly old soldier. He expertly tended the six grass courts and the two en-tout-cas red clay courts (on which my lethal backhand slice just didn’t work the same). There was a very strict hierarchy regarding the use of the courts. The rule of thumb was that the lower you were in the pecking order, the higher the court you ended up on. And the quality of the surface declined accordingly. Courts 1 and 2 were kept for tournaments and for the club hierarchy – Frank Taylor, Tim Riordan, Tom Seacy et al. The surface was immaculately maintained and there was rarely a brown patch. Having to play on the clay courts (7 and 8) meant you had run out of options. Although they came into their own in the winter.
Poker games were played in the men’s changing room – a small, smelly, dank and dark room with leaky showers down a step. The games were open to anyone with money and I often found myself as a 13 year old playing with a group of working guys in their 20s.
The club was well organized with the multiple teams operating across all the Cork and Munster leagues. I can see still the tennis playing characteristics of the main players: the portly Tom Seacy with his exquisite touch on the volley; Frank Taylor’s languid power; Willie Nagle chipping and slicing his way to victory and passing you with that top spin forehand if you ventured to the net; John Phelan’s powerful first serve and the dolly drop of his second; and the beautiful flat strokes of Peter Aherne.