Tony Mac Mahon, Barney McKenna & Micho Russell in Ennis c 1977

"Tony Mac Mahon, Barney McKenna & Micho Russell. Recorded in Ennis,County Clare around 1977.". Posted on Youtube on the 8th February 2008 by clarebannerman.

The Blue Sofa Project, Lahinch.

"I did this nearly 3 years ago sometime during summer. It was kind of a just do it moment where i had my gear and it was a good day and me and my friend Matt had this Blue Sofa. We decided to set it up on the Prom in Lahinch and asked everyone who walked pass to jump in for a photo with Matt & Sally the dog.. :) We got to meet so many different people in this project. It was brilliant. I'm hoping to do a bigger and better version some time soon." Posted on Youtube on the 10th of November 2010 by DavidOlsthoornPhotog.

Irish Hospice Coffee Morning in Killaloe Library

The recent Killaloe Public Library Irish Hospice Coffee Morning was a huge success. Fifty plus attended the event and enjoyed cakes and scones. We would like to thank everyone for their support.

Lahinch Golf Club, Hidden Links Golf Tours

Video segment from the Hidden Links Golf Guide to Ireland featuring Lahinch Golf Club in County Clare and its historic "Dell" and "Klondyke" holes. Narrated by Renton Laidlaw. Copyright Hidden Links, Inc. Posted on Youtube on the 6th of June 2008 by HiddenLinks.

Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering at Coole Park

The 16th annual Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering runs from September 24th to 26th. The gathering will be opened by the writer’s great-great-grand-daughter, Julia Kennedy, with the novelist Jennifer Johnston giving the opening address. The event takes place at Coole Park, in Gort, Co Galway. Though her home there is long gone, its historic walled garden still has the "autograph tree" where Yeats, Shaw, O’Casey, Synge and George Moore carved their initials, marking Coole Park out as the centre of the Irish Literary Revival in the early 20th century. The gathering kicks off with a visit on Friday 24th to nearby Tulira Castle, home of the playwright Edward Martyn. A guided walk through Coole Park woods on Saturday will be followed by a documentary film about Lady Gregory and Coole Park. On Sunday there will be a visit to Doorus House where Gregory, Martyn and Yeats first met. For further details see http://www.coolepark.ie/events/index.php

The Booker Six

The six shortlisted titles for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction were announced on September 7th.
The six books, selected from the longlist of thirteen, are:
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Room by Emma Donoghue
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
C by Tom McCarthy

Chair of judges Andrew Motion, comments:
"It's been a great privilege and an exciting challenge for us to reduce our longlist of thirteen to this shortlist of six outstandingly good novels. In doing so, we feel sure we've chosen books which demonstrate a rich variety of styles and themes - while in every case providing deep individual pleasures." Australian author Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the prize twice, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. Should he win this year, he would become the only author to have won three times. South African author Damon Galgut has previously been shortlisted for his book The Good Doctor in 2003 and Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice before for his novels Kalooki Nights in 2006 and Who's Sorry Now? in 2002. The winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall and will be broadcast on BBC TV, radio and online. The winner will receive a cheque for £50,000 and worldwide recognition. Last year's winning novel, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, has now sold over half a million copies in the UK alone. The Man Booker Prize App is now free to download from the App Store to an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch. For further information see www.themanbookerprize.com/

Mary MacNamara & Martin Hayes

Mary MacNamara & Martin Hayes from East Clare on concertina & fiddle, RTE, 9th March 1981. Reels: John Naughton's Reel & Tommy Coen's Reel. Posted on Youtube on 2nd January 2009 by k4hx1.

Ireland – Dig It! - Time travel adventure show on RTÉ2

RTÉ 2 Every day at 5pm from Monday 20th to Friday 24th September.

Ireland – Dig It! the time travel adventure show starts on RTÉ2 on Sept 20th. This fast paced series challenges kids both mentally and physically in an exciting, fun-filled voyage through Ireland’s ancient history. The exploits include code-breaking, trading with Vikings, building Stone Age pots, racing through primeval forest and building portal tombs, all tests that take our intrepid competitors on an archaeological roller coaster ride! In each programme three teams of three from all over the country get transported back in time to help the brilliant, but slightly batty, archaeologist Professor Gertrude McNulty who accidentally released Uafás, an evil time bandit, from his ancient prison. The winning teams from four shows join Gertrude in the Grand Final where they will return Uafás to his tomb, trapping him for all eternity! Each episode of the location-based series is set in a different period of Irish history, the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Viking Ireland. The series was filmed in Local Authority Museums around the country – County Museum Dundalk, Cavan County Museum, Waterford Museum of Treasures and Limerick’s Hunt Museum, as well as in the amazing Craggaunowen Heritage Park in County Clare. More info www.rte.ie/irelanddigit

See also Dig It at Clare Museum

A Flutter on the Booker

Emma Donoghue’s Room is the favourite to win the 2010 Booker prize according to bookmaker Paddy Power. Paddy Power would expect a total stake of about €100,000 annually on book related bets, a figure which is growing annually. The presence of controversial or well-known authors on shortlists increases interest. Bets are being placed on such book related issues as unit sales of Peter Andre's biography versus Katie Price's, or sales of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. The bookmaker is offering odds of 4/1 for Seamus Heaney and 11/4 for Sinead Morrissey to win the 2010 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection. According to The Bookseller magazine, spokesperson Ken Robertson recalls that Paddy Power's largest literary loss so far was at the 2005 Man Booker, when the bookie offered unfavourable odds of 8/1 on eventual winner John Banville's The Sea - losing £17,000 in the process. Paddy Power recently opened a book on first week sales of Tony Blair's A Journey, offering 5/2 odds on the units sold being between 27,501 and 30,000 copies or in excess of 30,000 copies. According to Robertson, "over the past week we've noticed that quite a high percentage of [online] punters betting on the Tony Blair book are people who have opened new accounts" i.e. non-traditional gamblers. Paddy Power is currently accepting bets on events as disparate as the next Irish president and the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Stirling Prize for Architecture. The Bookseller reports that up to half a million pounds a year is currently being waged betting on literary prizes in the UK. Graham Hill, a spokesperson for William Hill bookmakers said "It's probably not the same people who bet on the World Cup, but that's the whole point of the exercise. It's people who wouldn't normally have come across it. It does attract an audience we would never normally get to”. More info…

Bord Gáis Energy online book club

Bord Gáis Energy has launched an online book club which aims to deliver something for every reader, whether you are a hopeless romantic, current affairs addict, cookery guru or autobiographical fanatic. Bord Gáis Energy’s support of books and reading now encompasses the Irish Book Awards, Book of the Decade, and the Bord Gáis Energy Book Club on TV3’s Ireland AM and the Readiscover Your Local Library initiative. Featuring a rotating panel of reviewers which includes Bert Wright, administrator of the Irish Book Awards, a celebrity author and a librarian from one of the 369 public libraries around the country, the site features three book reviews each month which are selected to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. September sees David O’Brien of Bishopstown Library reviewing Skippy Dies by Man Booker Prize nominee Paul Murray. Celebrity author Amanda Brunker reviews fellow Irish author Patricia Scanlan’s number one best seller Forgive and Forget while Bert Wright reviews Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. More info at www.bordgaisenergybookclub.ie