Honor goes, ‘People will talk about my speech for years to come. And that's just in the libel courts'
This is most definitely not how it was
supposed
to be? Yeah, no, Sorcha dreamt that one day she would have a daughter who would follow in her footsteps as head girl of Mount Anville, but she's actually dreading what's going to happen tonight, when Honor delivers the valedictory at the sixth-year graduation.
'Can I even read your speech?' Sorcha goes.
But Honor's like, 'There's no speech. What I have to say is all in my head.'
This is us in the cor, by the way, on the way to the school.
READ MORE
I'm there, 'What, you're going to freestyle it? In fairness, I did something similar before Seapoint played Bruff in the famous Division 2B relegation clash back in the day. People were in actual tears.'
Sorcha looks at me like I'm the postman telling her there's duty owed on one of her online purchases.
She's like, 'That's not focking helpful, Ross.'
I'm there, 'Fine, I'll stay out of it. Will there be drink at this thing?'
Yeah, no, Sorcha's driving tonight.
Honor goes, 'No, no drink – that's why I preloaded.'
I thought I smelled vodka when she was getting into the cor.
Sorcha's less worried about her daughter having a few straighteners than she is about what people might think of her skills as a mother. Yes, we're
those
kind of people.
She goes, 'I really wish you'd
written
a speech?'
Honor's like, 'What, so you could redline it? So you could censor my thoughts?'
Sorcha's there, 'No one is talking about censorship, Honor. I'd just like to know what you're going to say in advance, forewarned being foreormed.'
Honor's like, 'All I
will
tell you is that there's going to be a little something in it for everyone.'
Honor is quite nasty with drink on her. Takes after her grandmother
I'm there, 'That's nice, Honor,' because I have faith in our daughter, even though she's never given me any cause for it.
She's like, 'The fakers. The sleeveens. The hypocrites. They're all going to get a mench tonight.'
'Or,' Sorcha goes, 'you could choose to say something inspirational. You could say something that touches people's horts, that defines what it means to be a member of the Mount Anville class of 2025, that makes people feel – I want to say –
uplifted
? You want people to talk about it in years to come, don't you?'
Honor's there, 'Oh, people
will
– trust me. And that's just in the libel courts.'
Sorcha goes, 'Did you read the speech I delivered in '98? I sent it to you. I just happened to find it on an old laptop the other day.'
Honor's there, 'It must have gone into my junk folder. Best place for it as well.'
She's quite nasty with drink on her. Takes after her grandmother.
Sorcha goes, 'I can send it to you again if you want. Or I have an MP3 of it on my phone. Ross, will you send it to her? Or better still, play it over the Bluetooth?'
Honor's there, 'Don't bother. I've heard you listening to it in the bathroom when you're psyching yourself up to talk at residents association meetings.'
Sorcha's like, 'Well, people still talk about it – to this day.'
'
Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road,
' Honor goes, doing – in fairness – a pretty spot-on impersonation of her old dear. '
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go.
'
Sorcha's like, 'I was quoting from a song that was huge at the time, Honor.'
And Honor's there, 'Yeah – and it was
so
focking lame.'
Seriously, she's a bad, bad drunk.
I can tell that Sorcha's feelings are hurt because she goes quiet then. She literally says nothing between Foxrock Church and the bottom of Trees Road in Merrion.
There's very little we can do except sit there smiling and hope we don't get mentioned ourselves
—
Ross
Then she goes, 'At least my year as head girl meant something. As Sister Austrebertha said – and I'm paraphrasing here – there is an amazing, amazing contentment that comes from knowing you made a difference.'
Honor's like, 'Er,
I
made a difference?'
And that's when Sorcha ends up losing it with her.
She goes, 'You closed down the school magazine, you turned the girls in your year against each other and you made a fortune off their backs from the annual skiing trip.'
Honor goes, 'Well, no one can say it was boring.'
Sorcha goes, 'You've undermined democracy, taken the concept of civility out of politics and used what was once considered a respected office to grift for yourself. You're actually no better than
him
.'
Honor's like, 'Who?'
Sorcha's there, 'You know I've made a vow never to say his actual name out loud.'
Honor's like, 'Trump?'
And Sorcha's there, 'Yes –
him
.'
I actually thought she was talking about my old man – which says a lot.
'And now,' Sorcha goes, 'you're about to use your position to settle old scores against your fellow students.'
'And teachers,' Honor goes. 'One or two of
them
have it coming to them as well.'
Sorcha's like, 'Well, I'm not going to let you do it.'
Honor's there, 'What are you going to do about it?'
I'm like, 'She's right, Sorcha. There's very little we can do except sit there smiling and hope we don't get mentioned ourselves. We're not going to get mentioned, are we, Honor?'
What happened to free speech?
—
Honor
Sorcha goes, 'Oh, there's something we can do, all right,' and in that moment she suddenly pulls on the steering wheel, mounts the kerb and slams on the brake.
Honor's like, 'Oh my God, she's totally lost it. Dad, she needs to be
on
something – she's going through the change and it's not fun for any of us.'
Sorcha says nothing in response. Instead, she kills the engine, opens her door and gets out – then she slams it closed and centrally locks the cor.
Honor's like, 'What the fock are you doing?'
But she knows. I mean,
I
know and I'm famously slow on the uptake.
She tries the door handle and she's there, 'Let me out of here – now!'
But Sorcha goes, 'No, Honor, I'm afraid I can't do that.'
Honor's like, 'I'm going to miss my graduation!'
Sorcha's there, 'Yes, Honor, that's the intention. I love Mount Anville and everything it stands for far too much to allow you to drag its name through the mud.'
Honor's there, 'What happened to free speech?'
And Sorcha goes, 'It's only for those who use it responsibly.'
Honor turns on
me
then?
She's like, 'Do something, you dick!'
But I'm there, 'I can't – she's locked it from the outside.'
She looks at Sorcha through the window and in a chilling voice goes, 'I'm going to get you back for this.'
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Irish Times
35 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Lorde on weight loss and body image: ‘It's this evil little rite of passage for a lot of women'
There is a note of sadness in Lorde 's voice as she thinks back to her last visit to Ireland . 'I was deep in the weeds,' she says. 'I was about a week post break-up of my long-term relationship and I was really stuck. I had sort of just come off my birth control. I was having this crazy kind of hormonal swing.' This was August 2023, and Lorde – aka the songwriter and pop star Ella Yelich-O'Connor – was headlining the All Together Now festival in Waterford. On a gorgeous blue-skied evening, her performance was typically confident and cathartic, as she moved, quicksilver-fast, between hits such as Team and Green Light, the effervescent 2017 banger that she wrote with Taylor Swift's producer Jack Antonoff . [ Lorde at All Together Now: Knockout performance underscores singer's star power Opens in new window ] Behind the scenes, though, she was reeling. She had split from her partner of nearly a decade, the Australian record executive Justin Warren, and was also working through the emotional aftershock of a brief eating disorder – subjects that she addresses frankly and viscerally on her brilliantly propulsive new album, Virgin. 'This record is a byproduct of an insane personal quest of the last couple of years,' she says. Lorde has never held back as a songwriter: her debut single, Royals, for example, from 2013, took aim at the music industry's history of prioritising commerce over art. Still, even by her own highly confessional standards, the honesty with which she talks about body image on Virgin is striking. 'I cover up all the mirrors … make a meal I won't eat,' she sings on the single What Was That, a bittersweet disco onslaught that blends euphoria and emotional torment. READ MORE Smiling softly, she explains that working on the album was part of the process of making herself whole again – and of reflecting on her issues around her weight. 'It was actually really hard for me to accept. I almost still can't accept it. I'm lucky in that it wasn't very long,' she says. 'It could definitely have been a lot worse. For me, any kind of restriction of who I am supposed to be just does not work. It completely blocked my creativity and cut me off from a life force. 'It took me quite a long time to realise that was happening. It's also like this evil little rite of passage for a lot of women. I don't think it's a unique experience I had. It felt algorithmically predestined or something.' Yelich-O'Connor was a 16-year-old kid from the Auckland suburbs when Royals became a global number one; the follow-up album, Pure Heroine, went on to sell more than five million copies. Her megastardom endures: tickets for her first stand-alone Dublin show, at the RDS this November, sold out in a heartbeat. That journey – a rollercoaster with no emergency brake – has left scars. Virgin is, in part, a reckoning with that painful transformation from everyday teenager to international chart-topper. 'You form totally differently when people are looking at you from a young age,' she says. 'I still dream probably once a month that a man is taking a photo of me with a long-lens camera. It's deep in my subconscious that someone might be looking at me and capturing something that I'm [not ready] for them to see.' But she was ready to show a vulnerable side last year when she and Charli XCX , her friend and fellow star, collaborated on a remix of Charli's song Girl, So Confusing. The crowning moment in Charli's 'Brat summer', the track was also a red-letter moment for Lorde, in that it flung the veil off a period of immense turmoil. Girl, So Confusing, which thrillingly combines Charli's Day-Glo mosh-pit energy with Lorde's elevated goth vibes, had its origins in a low-key rift between these close acquaintances. Lorde was going through her issues, and Charli was aware of a growing distance between the two. She wondered if she had said or done something. It was, as Charli sang, 'so confusing'. On the remix, which confirmed internet speculation about the identity of the 'girl' in the lyrics, Lorde sets her straight, singing, 'for the last couple years I've been at war in my body. I tried to starve myself thinner, and then I gained all the weight back. I was trapped in the hatred.' 'It felt super scary and vulnerable for me to be expressing on that level,' Lorde says about the song, which she joined Charli XCX on stage to sing at Coachella earlier this year. 'But I had been working on Virgin for a good while at that point and was trying to make this statement about femininity that was uncompromising and very truthful.' [ Charli XCX at Malahide Castle review: High flying pop star brings Brat to Dublin but never quite achieves lift-off Opens in new window ] Lorde talks about embracing 'discomfort' as a tool for personal growth. That was point of Girl, So Confusing and the two singles she has released from Virgin, What Was That and Man of the Year, the latter a stark unpacking of her 2023 break-up. 'I'd come to this realisation as an artist that my personal discomfort is … I'm not going to let my fear stand in the way of making an expression of truth that feels really important to make,' she says. 'It might, I don't know, be helpful for other people to hear. Just doing the scary thing – I was, like, just see what happens if you do it. And [it was] so cool that I had been working on this album and then, kind of unbeknownst to me, Charli had been processing her own uncompromising womanhood, trying to become that sort of woman also. 'It felt like the right moment to test the waters of the direction of some of the subject matter I'd been writing for my own record and [meet] her vulnerability with my own vulnerability. There had to be something on the line for it to really land. It was freaky – but beautiful too. I felt something release in me when the song released.' Testing the waters included talking about her feelings about gender. She told Rolling Stone recently that she is 'in the middle gender-wise' – a point she reiterates in Hammer, her new album's opening track, singing, 'some days I'm a woman/ some days I'm a man'. (In recent public appearances she had been dressing in androgynous grey slacks and tees.) Lorde clarifies that she still identifies as a woman but has always felt a masculine energy within her, something she has historically pushed down, feeling that society would judge her. On Virgin she is learning to embrace it. If men are allowed get in touch with their feminine side, why can't women celebrate their inner masculinity? 'We have these containers, some of which are really helpful and work really well for us, and some of which just don't do the job. And for me, understanding that I am a woman, that's how I identify … I don't see that changing,' she says. 'But there's also something in me that is masculine, and I've always been that way since I was a child. There was a 'bothness' to me. And being okay with that, not being easy to be boxed up, you … It can be a bit uncomfortable to not have the tidiness. But I think that it's worth it for me to be true to myself and see what comes as a result.' Born in 1996, Lorde grew up on Auckland's North Shore, the daughter of a poet mother of Croatian heritage and a civil-engineer father of Irish extraction. When she was six she was identified as a 'gifted child', though her mother vetoed her attending a school for children of exceptional intelligence, fearing it might impact her social development. She was undoubtedly precocious: she was a keen poetry reader before her 10th birthday; at 14 she was editing her mother's master's thesis. Her musical breakthrough was the result of talent, luck and perseverance. A friend of her father's saw her perform at a school talent contest, in which she sang songs by Pixie Lott and Duffy. Impressed by her haunting voice and natural stage presence, he tipped off Universal Records, which paired her with the veteran indie musician Joel Little. Hitting it off immediately, they would work together during weekends or when O'Connor was on school holidays, capturing in music the experiences of being a teenager: the intensity of adolescent friendship, the big dreams, the anxiety about the future. All of those were poured into Royals, an overnight hit that knocked Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball off the top of the US charts and made Lorde, at 16, the youngest woman to have a US number one since Tiffany, with I Think We're Alone Now, in 1987. Virgin is in many ways a continuation of Royals and Pure Heroine, in that it is immediately catchy yet has an aura of mystery. What's new is what Lorde identifies as the record's 'visceral' quality: it feels like a body-horror movie in reverse. The cover image is a blue-tinted X-ray of a pelvis that shows a belt buckle, a trouser zip and, referencing her decision to come off birth control, a contraceptive coil. Her lyrics talk unflinchingly about women's bodies: ovulation, piercings and the cutting of the umbilical cord. It oozes emotional gore, but in a way intended to celebrate rather than shame or stigmatise. 'I felt I didn't have a document, or a piece of art, that expressed to me the visceral, intense, gross ... but also beautiful ... glory … all these elements to being in a female body. I need them all to be present. 'There's something pretty unsparing about how I do it. I believe that is a statement of value. When I was making the album I was, like, 'I don't see women's bodies, I don't see the fullness of a woman's body online…' It feels important to me to show this.' Virgin arrives four years after Lorde's previous LP, Solar Power . A departure from her more zestful pop, the album had a languid, lulling quality that threw much of her audience. It was mesmerising, but there were no bangers. Some fans are still conflicted about it. Lorde adores the record – and believes she is a stronger artist for putting out a project perceived as not having done as well as its predecessors. 'I love that album. I'm so grateful for it. I'm so proud of myself, actually, for making it, because it required a big step off the path or on to another path, maybe,' she says. 'It changed me as an artist. I'd been sort of this like golden child, and I had had this experience of having the first things that I put out being met with such a glowing response in a lot of ways. 'Having a response that was different to that was super, like, informative. It made me realise that you have got to be making work that, no matter what the response is, you just love … 100 per cent, because that response' – public adulation – 'isn't guaranteed, and it can't be what's going to fill you up.' Lorde would like to think that Virgin will be received differently – but she won't be devastated if that's not the case. 'I really remember saying that I wanted ... to feel, no matter what happens tomorrow, this is everything I want. I'm so proud of this. There's nothing I would do differently. I remember saying that to myself and totally feel like that … This could get panned, God forbid, but it could – and I would [still] love it so much.' Solar Power 'taught me a lot. I do love that album. It's beautiful and sweet.' Famous her entire adult existence, Lorde has experienced both the highs and the lows of life in the spotlight. Does she ever feel in competition with other women artists? That's how the industry often works, after all, setting women musicians against each other, making them feel that, for them to thrive, others must fail. 'I was talking to Charli about this, actually. She said, 'Yeah, we all have our fragile eras.' Sometimes you're just in your fragile era, and I think particularly when you're forming a statement, like when I'm making an album but it's early days, and I don't really have any architecture that I'm living underneath, that can absolutely be the moment where the kind of competition – or, sorry, the comparison – can creep up.' Her way of working through those doubts has been to acknowledge that there's a certain sound only she can make: to embrace the pure, heroic Lordeness of who she is and what she does. 'Honestly, the last couple years I've just been on such a mission of trying to really understand what it is that only I can do, because there's just so much value in that, and that really has shifted my mindset away from, like, 'Oh, but I can't do this as well as she can do this.' I'm, like, 'No … you're one of one. You're the number-one expert in the world at doing your thing.' She pauses and smiles again. 'It's helpful.' Virgin is released on Friday, June 27th. Lorde plays the RDS, in Dublin, on Saturday, November 22nd
Irish Times
35 minutes ago
- Irish Times
The Mona Lisa is on the move and staff at the Louvre are not happy
The Mona Lisa is bound for a new part of the Louvre, which if she were alive she would presumably be very happy about, even if no one would be able to tell for sure. Her eyes have been following people around the room for so long that no one has stopped to think it could be the walls she's looking at with that hint of disgust. Maybe she's long fancied a change of scene. Unveiled by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, earlier this year, the plan to give her a room of her own at the Paris museum seems wise on paper, though I fear the comings and goings will seed the kind of confusion that makes perfect heist-plot material and risks bringing Danny Ocean and his crew out of retirement for one last job. As for that hint of disgust, researchers from the University of Amsterdam used emotion-recognition software in 2005 to quantify that the expression of the Mona Lisa, aka the Florentine noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo, nee Gherardini, is 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful, 2 per cent angry, less than 1 per cent neutral and 83 per cent happy. READ MORE [ Potential new names for the Department of Arts: Smacc, Cacs, Scam and – my favourite – DoSac Opens in new window ] I don't have a precise breakdown of how staff at the Louvre feel, but this week's abrupt work stoppage suggests they are not quite 83 per cent happy and are somewhat more than 2 per cent angry. The museum failed to open for several hours on Monday morning because a scheduled staff meeting turned into what one union representative called 'a mass expression of exasperation'. The source of this exasperation isn't complicated. The Louvre is overcrowded, understaffed and crumbling, and workers aren't the only ones to have noticed. Visiting it has become 'a physical ordeal', with 'no space to take a break' and 'insufficient' toilet and catering facilities, its director, Laurence des Cars, warned in a memo to France's culture minister, Rachida Dati, in January. Even its architecture is conspiring against it. The glass-and-steel pyramid entrance, completed in 1989, creates a 'very inhospitable' greenhouse effect on hot days, while some areas suffer temperature variations that endanger the preservation of the artworks. And parts of the building are 'no longer watertight'. Soon after Le Parisien newspaper published this leaked memo about the leaky Louvre, Macron sprang into announcement mode, emptying the Salle des États – the room where the Mona Lisa currently resides – to reveal a renovation and expansion project dubbed its Nouvelle Renaissance. [ You might think it's Your Friends & Neighbors, but And Just Like That... is the only true aspirational show on TV Opens in new window ] The €800 million vision includes the addition of underground rooms, the construction of a new entrance near the river Seine and the relocation of Leonardo da Vinci 's masterpiece to a dedicated room accessible via an add-on to the main ticket. I saw the Mona Lisa in January 2005. A few months later it was moved to a different spot and placed in a sealed enclosure made of bulletproof glass. This was unconnected to my visit. What I remember about that trip to the Louvre is that Paris was freezing, so my expression by the time we reached the painting was likely 83 per cent relief just to be indoors. Another 10 per cent was probably fatigue from contemplating what felt like the majority of the Louvre's 33,000 less-famous artworks along the way, and 7 per cent was weirdly prescient regret that proper smartphones hadn't been invented yet. The great thing about the Mona Lisa is that it's small enough for a selfie. I'm confident I could have fitted my big Irish head and the whole portrait into one frame. I'm not now in the habit of taking selfies beside paintings, but a significant number of the near nine million people who visit the Louvre each year like to try. It doesn't necessarily lessen their appreciation of 16th-century art. They might not have had any to start with. And if you're paying €22 in, or €30 from 2026 if you're a non-EU visitor, it is perhaps not entirely daft to want a record of your 'ordeal'. As for those who snap only the painting, they may have concluded that the Mona Lisa's smile is enigmatic mainly because she is so tiny and far away. If they use their phones' zoom function, they can get a closer look. So don't blame the customers, blame the infrastructure, and adjust your expectations accordingly, because unless the Louvre's daily visitor cap is tightened, congestion and frustration seem inevitable for a while yet: the glaring flaw in Macron's ambitious plan for a roomier museum is that it will take up to 10 years to complete. My advice for anyone keen to absorb some Leonardo genius in the meantime is to choose Milan. Book well in advance and see The Last Supper instead . It beats the elbow-sharpening and neck-craning required to glimpse the Mona Lisa through a sea of screens – or, if you're my height, a selection of armpits that elicit at least 9 per cent disgust.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Event guide: Olivia Rodrigo, Van Morrison, and the other best things to do in Ireland this week
Event of the week Olivia Rodrigo Tuesday, June 24th, Marlay Park, Dublin, 4pm, €119/€89.90 (sold out), Olivia Rodrigo 's debut single, Drivers License, shattered one streaming record after another when it was released in 2021. Her life, she said at the time, 'shifted in an instant'. Rodrigo's combination of lyrically insightful piano ballads and streamlined pop-punk has helped to make her one of today's biggest stars. This open-air Dublin gig is the singer's second stop in the city on her Guts world tour, which is about to segue into a summer of outdoor dates that include Hyde Park in London and the pyramid-stage headline slot on the final day of this year's Glastonbury Festival, on Sunday, June 29th. Fans can expect a 20-song set featuring hits such as Good 4 U, Traitor, Bad Idea Right?, Happier, Enough for You, Drivers License and Brutal. Support comes from the excellent English singer-songwriter Beabadoobee and the rising Irish band Florence Road. Gigs Ani DiFranco Sunday, June 22nd, NCH, Dublin, 8pm, €55/€45, Ani DiFranco By the age of nine Ani DiFranco was busking and playing cover versions of Beatles songs at bars and cafes in Buffalo, New York. Within a few years she was writing songs – and by the age of 15, when her mother moved to rural Connecticut, she was legally living as an emancipated minor. Since then DiFranco has lived by her own rules. In 1989 she founded the independent label Righteous Babe Records and developed a singular creative output that blends opinion, discourse, and manifesto. In other words? Pay attention. Van Morrison Monday, June 23rd, and Tuesday, June 24th, Europa Hotel, Belfast, 6pm, £331 (sold out) Rumour on Cypress Avenue has it that Van Morrison is back in the game. With his recent album Remembering Now – his 47th studio work – gathering plaudits, and his 80th birthday on the horizon – it's on August 31st – there is an expectation that the prolific songwriter and performer will revisit his classic-era recordings for these two homecoming shows. The atmosphere is more that of a softly lit nightclub than of a sweaty venue, however: the ticket price includes a three-course gala dinner, plus birthday cake. With new music that references the romantic lyricism of his 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, Morrison appears to have emerged from a post-Covid fugue into, if not the mystic, then a latter-day phase of serenity. Gang of Four Thursday, June 26th, and Friday, June 27th, Button Factory, Dublin, 8pm, €40, After the deaths of their bandmates Andy Gill, in 2020, and Dave Allen, this year, Gang of Four's two remaining original members, Jon King and Hugo Burnham, soldier on. The band – augmented by the American musicians Gail Greenwood and Ted Leo – originally formed in Leeds in 1976, and they visit Dublin as part of their Long Goodbye tour. The shows will feature two sets: a track-by-track rundown of the band's punk/avant-garde 1979 debut album, Entertainment!, and a best-of selection of fan favourites. READ MORE Stage Wreckquiem From Thursday, June 26th, until Saturday, July 5th, Lime Tree, Limerick, 8pm, €28/€25, Pat Shortt Is it really a problem if you own eight copies of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Not if you're the owner of Dessie's Discs, a beloved if somewhat ramshackle second-hand-record shop that comes under threat of closure when redevelopment plans circle around it. At the heart of this new play by the award-winning playwright Mike Finn is the worth of community spirit, underdog tenacity and the obsessive nature of committed music fans. Pat Shortt, Patrick Ryan, Sade Malone and Joan Sheehy star. Andrew Flynn directs. In conversation Frank Skinner Friday, June 27th, Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy, Co Derry, 7.30pm, £22.50 (sold out), You might not have associated one of Britain's best-known comedians with literature, but for the past five years Frank Skinner's acclaimed Poetry Podcast (now in its 10th series) has featured discussions on and explorations of a wide variety of his favourite poems and poets (including Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney). Skinner is in conversation with the poet and critic Scott McKendry. Classical West Cork Chamber Music Festival From Friday, June 27th, until Sunday, July 6th, Bantry, Co Cork, various venues, times and prices, Rachel Podger With more classical performances than you can shake a violin bow at, this year's West Cork Chamber Music Festival once again presents a blend of prestige concerts, emerging musicians, sidebar events and interesting fringe shows. Highlights include Barry Douglas playing Schubert's Piano Sonata in A Minor (Saturday, June 28th, Bantry House, 7.30pm, €50/€40/€30), Meliora Quartet (Monday, June 30th, Amar's Cafe, Schull, 2.30pm, free) and the violinist Rachel Podger (Sunday, July 6th, St Brendan's Church, Bantry, 11am, €22/€16). Literature/arts Hinterland Festival From Thursday, June 26th, until Sunday, June 29th, Kells, Co Meath, various venues, times and prices, Heritage-town festivals don't come any sharper than Hinterland, which since 2013 has been bringing multidisciplinary artists and creatives to its base in Kells, Co Meath, for a four-day event that features history, literature, television, religion, memoir, music, futurism and current affairs. Must-see events include Lara Marlowe talking about How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying, her book with Lieut Yulia Mykytenko , the young commander of a Ukrainian drone unit; John Creedon on his acclaimed memoir, This Boy's Heart; John Banville discussing his latest crime novel, The Drowning; and the music journalist Simon Price talking about his love of The Cure. Still running Liam Gillick Until Saturday, June 28th, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, free, Mean Time Production Cycle, 2025 The latest exhibition by the British artist Liam Gillick, a 2002 Turner Prize nominee (and, with Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, one of the Young British Artists movement), features colourfully vivid work exploring forms of production in a postindustrial landscape. Book it this week Monty Franklin, Sugar Club, Dublin, September 17th, Clonakilty International Guitar Festival, Clonakilty, Co Cork, September 17th-21st, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Vicar Street, Dublin, October 7th, Caribou, Vicar Street, Dublin, December 10th,
