I see that An Post have just issued a new edition of stamps to commemorate various post boxes used over the last century and a half in Ireland. Very pleasant too. I've long had an interest in post boxes, and I have to confess that to me a post box is more than a hole into which you drop the odd letter and the odd bundle of Christmas cards. No, in the Irish scenario, a post box is a reflection of history. Free article

She hasn't gone away you know! Like a recurring nightmare Margeret Thatcher comes back to embarrass the British Tories and spew her venom. Free the mass-murderer Pinochet! Lock up single mothers! But it was the revelation by Douglas Hurd that she wanted to repartition Ireland that intrigued me. Free article

Crunch time for trade unions and Dear Charlie McCreevy Free article

It was hard to believe they could do it again but on Sunday the women of Monaghan and Waterford served up another classic in the replay of the All-Ireland Women's Football Final. Free article

The 20th anniversary of the start of the Civil Rights Movement was marked in Haringey, North London, with a meeting in the area's Irish Centre attended by five hundred people and addressed by Tottenham Labour MP and black rights campaigner Bernie Grant. Bernadette McAliskey and journalist Michael Farrell also spoke. Free article

Gills Irish Lives Series and A Cartoon History of Anglo-Irish Relations 1798-1998 Free article

Binlids Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts New York Free article

Rush (Channel 4) Heart of Darkness (BBC1) Teen Spirits Free article

A wall which bears an IRA slogan was seen recently in the former Czechoslovakia, the state which commerciallly manufactured Semtex, an explosive more talked about by unionist politicians now than when it was deployed in IRA bomb attacks.
Czechslovakia has been dismantled as a state and replaced by the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The factory which made Semtex is closed. The IRA has... Free article

The week in quotes... Free article