Culture | Books, Music, Theatre, Film & The Arts

Sir Roger Casement was executed by the United Kingdom for treason during World War I

The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement - the new book extracted

Pioneering human rights campaigner, patriot, romantic, traitor, LGBTQ+ martyr: this is the story of Roger Casement, one of the 20th century's most complex and compelling …

Books • 14 Jul

Sunday Miscellany: A Café Called Dorice, by Oliver Sears

On a family friend, Josef Cukier, stranded in London at the outbreak of WW2, and his plan to rescue his wife and two daughters, Jews …

Sunday Miscellany • 18 Jun

Myles Dungan on the struggle that shaped Irish history

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe everyone lived 'off the land' in one way or another. In Ireland, however, almost everyone lived 'on the land' as …

Books • 20 May

Gerald Boland, as pictured on the cover of Stephen Kelly's new biography

Book Of The Week: David McCullagh on the life of Gerald Boland

'Gerald Boland is a significant figure in Irish history who has been neglected too long'. RTÉ's David McCullagh reviews a new biography of a noteworthy …

Books • 08 May

Ellen McWilliams: 'Resting Places is a book about the madness of history and the fear of it, the need to outrun it.'

Ellen McWilliams on a 'broken prayer for a most painful history'

Academic and author Ellen McWilliams introduces her new book Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution.

Books • 21 Jan

ISDL demonstrators gather at Liverpool's Pier Head in August 1920 for the arrival of Archbishop Daniel Mannix. (Photo: Firmin/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

David McCullagh on a story of Irish Nationalism in Britain

After the Decade of Centenaries - ten years of intensively studying the events of a century ago - is there a single new thing to …

Books • 16 Jan

Death in Irish Prehistory by Gabriel Cooney - read an extract

This is a book about life and death over 8,500 years in Ireland.

Books • 11 Nov 23

Five short stories by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) will feature on RTÉ Culture

Early Lady Gregory short stories to feature on RTÉ Culture

Over the coming weeks, RTÉ Culture will present a series of five early short stories by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932)

Irish Writers • 08 Nov 23

What did we learn from the Decade of Centenaries?

We have come to the end of a serious interrogation of the years of our so-called revolutionary period. How did we do?

In Conversation • 19 Oct 23

Maggie Doherty (L) and her mother Catherine Doherty (R)

A Dark Night in Foxford - RTÉ Documentary on One

One of the last atrocities of the Irish Civil War left an indelible mark on the life of one young woman from Co. Mayo. Hidden …

Crime • 03 Sep 23

A quartet of flappers take to the dancefloor (Image: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)

The dawn of the flapper - Ireland's Jazz Age revisited

We present an extract from A Year of Glory and Gold: 1932, Ireland's Jazz Age, the new book from bestselling social historian Kevin C. Kearns.

Books • 19 Aug 23

Moore Hall in Co. Mayo, homestead of the Moore family

The Irish Merchant of Alicante: Michael Gerard's historical epic

Author Michael Gerard introduces his new novel The Irish Merchant of Alicante, the tale of a family who helped to shape the complex history of …

Books • 06 Aug 23

(L to R) Alan, Paul and David Tilson on summer holidays in Oldcastle, 1949 (Pic: Tilson family)

David McCullagh on a tale of church and state in 1950s Ireland

In December 1941, Ernest Tilson was desperate to get married. His girlfriend, Mary Barnes, was pregnant, and given the social mores of the time, a …

Books • 05 Jul 23

Casualties of Conflict - untold stories of Glasnevin's war dead

Casualties of Conflict explores the lives and deaths of over 300 men, women and children buried in Glasnevin Cemetery who died due to the War …

History • 29 Jun 23

Martin Luther King: David McCullagh on MLK's life and legacy

Sometimes our veneration for heroic figures can do them an injustice, stripping them of their humanity, the halos we choose to fix on them obscuring …

Books • 03 Jun 23

Musician Carol Keogh is the latest contributor to the Bring Your Own Hammer project

Hammer time - Carol Keogh on making music from history

Bring Your Own Hammer is a project in which historians and composers collaborate to create new and original song cycles based on historical sources.

Music • 17 May 23

Sunday Miscellany: Teddy's Irish Bards, by Daniel Mulhall

On the energetic President Theodore Roosevelt's Irish cultural interests

Sunday Miscellany • 02 May 23

'Whatever view is taken of Liam Lynch, there is no doubt that he was a significant figure in the revolutionary period'

To declare a Republic - David McCullagh on the life of Liam Lynch

Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the anti-Treaty IRA during the Civil War, is seen by some as a Republican icon, an uncompromising defender of …

Books • 06 Apr 23

Daniel Ayiotis, Director of the Military Archives and author of The Military Archives: A History

The Military Archives: A History - an extract from the new book

Daniel Ayiotis skilfully explores how the Military Archives developed out of the vision almost a century ago of a handful of far-sighted military and civilians.

Books • 17 Feb 23