JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
The Metal Mountain
John Healy
Etruscan Books £14.95
IT is 30 years since John Healy wrote his classic Grass Arena — his autobiography of growing up Irish in London.
His new novel continues this theme as we look back at 1950s Britain and the lives of the Docherty family, Irish immigrants who have survived the second world war, and are bringing up their children in a bombed-out London.
AARON SMITH discusses why the Protestant diaspora are still part of Yeats’s ‘Indomitable Irishry’, and an integral part of any future united Ireland.
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
KEVIN DONNELLY accepts the invitation to think speculatively in contemplation of representations of people of African descent in our cultural heritage
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation


