NANicholas Allen

1. Article · Sep 19, 2026 · Nicholas Allen

   Sensation by Colin Graham: A compact, echoing and suggestive memoir (opens the original)

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   There is a moment in Colin Graham’s memoir, Sensation, when I found myself looking in the mirror of shared memory. Graham is trying on the uniform of his new school, pins scratching, the collar too tight, the angles of childhood straitened by conformities that soon become habits. I remember the moment as I remember much of the rest of the book’s first phases; growing up in east Belfast, the “melancholy menace”, the morning bus, the milk rounds, Graham with his father, I with my uncle. Th

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2. Article · Aug 15, 2026 · Nicholas Allen

   Seamus Heaney and Catholicism: An astute account of religion’s afterlife in poet’s work (opens the original)

   Excerpt · Neutral tone · English

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   The question of religious feeling in Irish art, particularly in relation to the North, has been so long politically fraught that its consideration has become more often the byproduct of other considerations. Gary Wade’s Seamus Heaney and Catholicism will be a lasting answer to any future inquiry, providing an astute and comprehensive account of the afterlife of Catholic imagery in Heaney’s poetry, long after his spiritual belief wandered elsewhere. The book’s essential term is radiance, th

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