One of the great unrequited (almost) love stories in literature is of the poet William Butler Yeats and Maud Gonne McBride. In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a 23-year-old heiress and ardent Nationalist. Gonne was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a “paint-stained art student.” Gonne had [...]
“Tis a brave man who first eat an oyster!” so said my townsman Jonathan Swift Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin and I’m in a position to verify many still feel this way for Oysters are like Marmite, you either love them or hate them!
It’s the luck of the Irish to have the world’s finest [...]
Leaving the Oyster Festival at Clarenbridge I was delighted to return to a place which has a cherished position in Irish Culture, Coole Park, the seat of the remarkable Augusta Gregory handmaiden of the Irish Literary Revival, Founder of the Abbey Theatre and muse to the poet William Butler Yeats who wrote five poems about [...]
