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Spring 2026
Welcome to the latest issue, which includes John Alderdice on biographies of John Hume and David Trimble, a new poem from Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Stefan Collini on James Bryce’s once great reputation, Quassim Cassam on bullshit, Lynsey Black on Presbyterian piety and promiscuity, Lori Allen on the plight of Palestinians and other strangers, Eoin O’Malley on the enigma of Leo Varadkar, Ruby Eastwood on the young Virginia Woolf, Maurice Earls on the rise, fall and possible revival of Irish Catholicism, our new Rereadings series featuring Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind and more.
The publication of our Spring issue marks the launch of the drb’s new website. Among its features are a more powerful search facility, better archive layout, and improved mobile-friendly viewing on smartphones and tablets. Further enhancements to the website are planned, all with the aim of making the drb an enjoyable online reading experience.
This is the first of four issues coming out this year. Each season will bring a new drb issue offering original, engaging copy on a broad range of themes from the arts and imaginative literature to history, politics and ideas. Blogs will continue to be published between issues, as reflected in the most recent series of blogs published on April 29.
The next issue of the drb is due out in early June and will include Edna Longley on Seamus Heaney, Luke Gibbons on John McGahern, a new poem by James Harpur, and Ruth Harris looking back at her awarding-winning history of the Dreyfus affair, discovering new and fascinating parallels with our times.
Latest Blogs
In This Issue
Unholy Thoughts
A skillful excavation of the ‘Presbyterian archive’ has produced a surprising and captivating history of Presbyterian life in eighteenth century Ulster, a veritable Bridgerton on the Bann. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary records including letters, diaries, newspapers and church court records, this book reveals the personal moments that shaped the rhythms and rituals of Presbyterian family life. The result, says Lynsey Black, is ‘an absolute gem of a book’.
The Leap Takers
Stubbornness and resistance under pressure became Hume's and Trimble's common strengths in withstanding attacks from inside and outside their respective political camps.
Having a Reputation
A new biography of James Bryce, one time Chief Secretary of Ireland and supporter of Irish Home Rule, reveals the astonishingly varied and accomplished life of a long forgotten ‘greatest living Englishman’. This is an outstanding work of intellectual history, writes Stefan Collini, one that can be read with pleasure and profit even by those who may think beforehand that they have little interest in James Bryce.
Virginia Woolf’s juvenilia
‘The Life of Violet’ brings together three interconnected short stories, written by Virginia Woolf at 25, that reveal her beginning to think about something she would return to throughout her career: how to tell the story of a woman’s life.
Palestinians and Other Strangers
Two new studies of the plight of Palestinians and other strangers offer a glimpse of how we might hold on to solidarity as strategy and human principle. Dolefully or otherwise, writes Lori Allen, we have all been looking through our screens at great violence against Palestinians. In the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Isabella Hammad, we are being invited to confront how we are implicated in this as bystanders. Our inability to stop this genocide will be a puzzle for the next hundred years.
Whither Gay Rights?
If there was nothing inevitable about the expansion of liberty for lesbians and gay men and today nothing inevitable about the future maintenance of that liberty, what should be the strategy of the lesbian and gay rights movement?
A Cosmopolitan Poet
Katrina Goldstone pays tribute to her much missed friend and mentor, the poet and scholar Gerald Dawe (1952-2024). By reflecting on his distinctive cosmopolitan sensibility, what his wife, Dorothea Melvin, dubbed ‘his European soul’, we get a surer grasp of Dawe’s enduring passions and preoccupations: his admiration of European poets; his preoccupation with the dark corners of European history, and his many visits to European cities and hinterlands, all of which were distilled and made tangible in his works.
What’s up, Doc?
Leo Varadkar was a paradox, the quintessential Tory Boy who oversaw massive increases in welfare spending. His sudden, unexpected departure from politics only adds to his enigma.
Rereadings 1 - ‘On The Closing of the American Mind’
Welcome to a new series called ‘Rereadings’ in which writers are invited to consider a notable work of their own or of another author. Our first instalment features the reflections of Richard Kraut on Allan Bloom’s ‘The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students’ (1987), a book that caused quite a stir on its publication almost forty years ago.