HeyJaredFrank McNally
- Indexed articles, last 90 days
- 39
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- Sep 30, 2026
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- Jul 7, 2026
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Postcards from the Edge â Frank McNally on Samuel Beckettâs newly published German Diaries (opens the original)
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Ninety years ago this week, a young Samuel Beckett sailed out of Cobh, Co Cork, for a six-month tour of Nazi Germany, which he would record in a personal diary. It was a red-eye flight, 1936 style. The tender that took passengers from the pier to the liner SS Washington was due to depart soon after 4am. âHeavy night ahead in Cobh,â Beckett predicted in his entry for September 28th, after a day touring Cork. He fortified himself accordingly: â1 Beamish, 3 Guinness.â But he slept poorly in
Shunning victory: Frank McNally on 146 years of the âboycottâ (opens the original)
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Part of the reason why âboycottâ entered the English language in 1880, it seems, is because âostraciseâ â which had been doing the same job already â was too hard for most people to say. So, at least, claim the memoirs of James Redpath (1833â1891), a campaigning US journalist of the time, who recalled it being the subject of a conversation he had over dinner in the home of a Mayo priest one night in late September of that year. Fr John OâMalley had been regaling him with the fate
The Foggy Dew: Frank McNally on the Rising balladâs confused origins and contested lyrics (opens the original)
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The Foggy Dew has become the classic ballad of Easter 1916, an obligatory inclusion in such commemorations as the RTà centenary concert. And according to persistent legend, it was inspired not primarily by the Rising itself but by a sitting of the first Dáil. The legendâs earliest known appearance in print was in a 1979 collection of Songs of the County Down, which said that while attending a Dáil session in 1919, the balladeer: â ... was moved by the number of members whose names were an
Hecht off â Frank McNally on the testing testimony of a brilliant newspaper man (opens the original)
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One of these days, I may have to write a column headed Testament of a Reporter, in homage to the original by New York-born journalist and author Ben Hecht (1894-1964). Or maybe not. Because although Hecht was a mere youngster of 47 when he wrote that poetic resumé of the things he had witnessed in his press career, he set the bar a bit high for those who followed. Here are a just a few of the columnâs opening lines: âI saw Jack Dempsey knocked out of the ring in Atlantic City and come back
Strong words: Americaâs âgreatest diaristâ whose many dislikes included the Irish (opens the original)
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Professionally, he was a lawyer and he helped run a relief agency for sick and wounded soldiers during the American Civil War. But insofar as George Templeton Strong (1820â1875) is remembered today, it is as a diarist: âthe greatest diaristâ, as one United States history magazine has called him. He was a man of âStrongâ opinions, in more ways than one. And modelling himself on Samuel Pepys, he recorded these almost daily for 40 years, from the age of 15. Like Pepys (whose diary lasted
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