July 14, 1936. The far-right propagandist Lucien Rebatet is disgusted to see German anti-fascist refugees ('monstrous families of Berlin yids') joining in the celebrations. Sentenced to death in 1946 but serving just six years in jail, Rebatet became, postwar, an eminent film and music critic.

Sam Neill, according to donaldclarke@bsky.social, 'one of the great gentlemen', the breadth of whose work was extraordinary, was born in Co Tyrone in 1947 as Nigel John Dermot Neill. In 1952 his family moved to New Zealand. drb.ie/article/a-hy... 1/3

In 2024, Sam's brother Michael, a retired professor of English from the University of Auckland, wrote an intriguing essay for the DRB on 'Anglo-Irish' identity, complete with a vivid reminiscence of his time at the Aravon prep school in Bray, Co Wicklow. 2/3

'All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence … the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be …’ - AH. Finding enemies, stoking grievances, then and now. drb.ie/blog/for-the...

AN Wilson shared a cleaner with a neighbour, a successful children's book publisher. The cleaner was always trying to push the work of another client, a lovely man who wrote stories for children but had never been published. But the publisher ignored her: what would a cleaner know about books? 1/2

Increasingly frustrated, the cleaner borrowed a manuscript from the aspirant writer's desk and plonked it down prominently on the publisher's, only to find it later in the bin. 'I wouldn't mind, she told Wilson later, but Mr Adams's book about rabbits is really good. 2/2

Avishai Margalit: 'Berlin had a special knack for making those engaged in conversation with him wiser than they usually were.' The collection ('Understanding Humanity with Isaiah Berlin', ed Johnny Lyons, Cambridge U P) helps us indirectly to understand today's clash between liberalism and populism.

The Irish Wolfhound was chosen as an emblem for the Abbey Theatre and a mascot for the Irish Volunteers. But in fact the dog we know as the wolfhound is far from ancient and far from ‘pure’. Perhaps then it is not an unsuitable symbol for the Irish ‘race’. David Blake Knox: drb.ie/article/a-ca...

Educated readers with only a glancing knowledge of the novels feel they can intuit what 'Jamesian' denotes: a prolix prose style, tortuous conversations, and a cast of usually wealthy and sometimes effete individuals gathered in well-appointed drawing rooms. Shane Barry: drb.ie/article/word...

Tháinig a lá. Our co-founder (2007), and until last year joint editor, at Books Upstairs in D'Olier Street, Dublin in front of a display of his newly published 'The Dark Side of France: Thirteen Chapters in the History of the French Far Right'. You'd have to say that he doesn't look hugely pleased.

Autumn leaves ahead: September's Dublin Review of Books will feature a poem from Vona Groarke; Conor McCarthy on Stefan Collini; Wolfgang Streeck on Europe’s future; Simon Blackburn on philosopher Bernard Williams; Martin Tyrrell's rereading of 'Catcher in the Rye' and Emer Nolan on James Joyce.

These guys couldn't possibly have been thinking of Faber and Albertus, could they? (It's close enough, but not quite.) booksupstairs.ie/product/ten-...

The Irish Times has published an extract from 'Salt Wind, Rising Water', John S Doyle's account of planting a wood in adverse climatic conditions in north Sligo. Doyle is of course a voice of 'It Says in the Papers' but before that the founder and editor of the wonderful 'In Dublin' magazine.

'Loss, like distance, gives permission for romance. In a better-ordered Verona, Romeo and Juliet would have grown up to be just another couple at dinner.' - Adam Gopnik, 'Paris to the Moon'

Being European for Cees Nooteboom (1933-2026) began when he was only a few days old, when certain Latin formulae were said over his bald skull as he was received into the Roman Catholic church, 'a very European institution despite its universalist pretensions'. drb.ie/article/the-...

Czesław Miłosz: 'My allergy to everything that smacks of the "national" and an almost physical disgust for people who transmit such signals have weighed heavily on my destiny.' drb.ie/article/the-...

Zweig and Roth in Ostend, 1936. The vigorously anti-Nazi Roth had the good fortune to die of natural causes – or, if you prefer, of the inevitable results of his alcoholism – in Parisian exile in May 1939, just a little over a year before the arrival there of the Germans. drb.ie/article/the-...

'The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world.' - Alexander von Humboldt. How Europe was experienced by five great writers of the 20th and 21st centuries: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Czesław Miłosz, Milan Kundera and Cees Nooteboom. drb.ie/article/the-...

'It was a day ... when larks rose on long thin strings of singing and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels … ' from 'Scotland' by Alastair Reid.

‘You are neither beautiful nor wealthy, nor, for anything I can see, in any way attractive; God in his infinite goodness has caused you to grow at least six inches higher than you should grow, and if you are not to be a Maypole of Derision you must see to it that you are a Beacon of Godliness.’ 1/2

One can't assume on the basis of an absence of documentary evidence that individual lives were unremarkable. Of course, many of those who lived in obscurity were women. As Rhoda says in 'The Waves', ‘silence closes over our transient passage’. Ruby Eastwood on early Woolf: drb.ie/article/virg...

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born, wrote Cicero, is to remain always a child. The late 20th century saw the fall of both Homo Sovieticus in Russia and, a little less noticed in the wider world, Homo Catholicus in Ireland. Maurice Earls from Issue 121: drb.ie/article/the-...

In the 2024 parliamentary elections, its support was geographically uneven: strong in the northeast and on the Mediterranean coast, generally weak in cities and in western France. Dark blue and black: far right; light blue: Gaullist; yellow: centrist; red: the left. drb.ie/blog/for-the... 2/2

The French far right, in spite of its steady progress over 20 years, still has a big problem in its lack of appeal to voters in large urban centres. In the second round of the 2017 presidential election, Macron beat Le Pen in every one of the twenty most populous cities. drb.ie/blog/for-the... 1/2

The search for peace highlights the opportunistic side of Haughey’s politics. When in opposition he ‘categorically rejected’ the Anglo-Irish Agreement and expelled Mary Harney from the party when she supported it in the Dáil. Later, as taoiseach, he sought to make it work. drb.ie/article/the-...

Sumy is surprisingly lively on a wartime Sunday evening. A busker is singing in English in the central park. On the way back I pass a café called Be Happy, as distant booms reverberate from the northern front. Rosemary Jenkinson on her fifth trip to embattled Ukraine. drb.ie/blog/spring-... 2/2

'When asked why I’ve come, I say the Ukraine-Russian war is the biggest since the Second World War and it’s natural I should support them. My grandfather was an air raid warden during the Belfast Blitz and used to watch for German bombers from the roof of the Ulster Bank.' drb.ie/blog/spring-... 1/2

Vilfredo Pareto's A-B-C: Trump and the tech bros (B), have joined with the people (C), to overthrow the established elite (A). But C will never rule. Indeed, they are more likely to be worse off. Political scientist Michael Laver on 'the catch', as one elite replaces another. drb.ie/blog/elites-...

Are we seeing a rising and vigorous ‘outsider’ elite mobilising the support of an alienated mass of disadvantaged citizens to depose a waning, tired and increasingly inbred political establishment. Michael Laver on the populist wave: drb.ie/blog/elites-...