X-Nico

13 unusual facts about The Irish Times


Against the Head

Against the Head is a weekly rugby magazine programme, broadcast on RTE Two and presented by Joanne Cantwell with regular panellists Shane Byrne, and Irish Times rugby correspondent Gerry Thornley with various other guests throughout the series.

Aventas group

The Irish Times reports that Council for the regulator said that the company had "significantly breached" its solvency ratios in recent months.

Bret Anthony Johnston

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Independent of London and The Irish Times, the collection has received the Southern Reviews Annual Short Fiction Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, the Texas Institute of Letters' Debut Fiction Award, the Christopher Isherwood Prize, the James Michener Fellowship, and was shortlisted for Ireland's Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, "the richest short story prize in the world."

Citroën XM

When reviewing the Citroen C6 in 2006, The Irish Times referred to the marked improvement in the quality of the new vehicle compared to its predecessor: "unlike previous big Citroëns, such as the XM, the C6 has a feel of quality in its fit and finish".

D'Olier Street

From 1895–2006, Irish Times was based in D'Olier Street, leading the paper to be nicknamed The Old Lady of D'Olier Street.

His Way, Our Way

The Irish Times gave a four-star rating to the track "Willow Weep for Me" by The Kills, calling it a "surprisingly stripped-back version".

John Boswell

Irish historian and journalist Jim Duffy, praised Boswell's work in his "Rite and Reason" column in the The Irish Times.

Laurentian Society

There were also some other smaller controversies between the President of the Laurentian Society, Donal O'Sullivan and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, such as one arising in The Irish Times.

Maurice Neligan

After his retirement from surgery Neligan maintained a public profile and contributed a column to the weekly health supplement which comes with The Irish Times.

Notes from a Coma

In 2010, John Waters in The Irish Times described it as "the greatest Irish novel of the decade just ended".

Richard Tillinghast

For twenty years he reviewed new poetry for the New York Times Book Review and has also written frequently for The Irish Times.

Sheela na gig

Weir and Jerman relate a story from The Irish Times (23 September 1977) in which a potentially violent incident involving several men was averted by a woman exposing her genitals to them.

Ultan Quigley

Ultan Quigley is a fictional character to whom are attributed four articles published by The Irish Times in 2008 and some more in 2009.


Aidan Dunne

Currently visual arts critic of The Irish Times, Dunne has written extensively on Irish art, with essays on Michael Mulcahy, Victor Sloan, Patrick Scott, Hughie O'Donoghue, Patrick Swift, and Jennifer Trouton.

Bryan Malessa

In reviewing The Flight (Harper Perennial), set on the Eastern Front (World War II), The Irish Times stated "With this story...Bryan Malessa joins the ranks of Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, Rachel Seiffert and others in taking on the major preoccupations of post-war German literature...and the role of literature in history and memory."

Burning the Bed

It was written by Patrick Chapman, who adapted it from his own short story, which appeared in The Irish Times in 2001.

Claud Cockburn

In 1947, Cockburn moved to Ireland and lived at Ardmore, County Waterford, and continued to contribute to newspapers and journals, including a weekly column for The Irish Times.

Drama school

On 1 August 2008, The Irish Times reported that a RADA graduate, Danielle Ryan, granddaughter of the late Tony Ryan who founded Ryanair, had announced plans to develop an Irish Academy of Dramatic Arts part-funded from a Trust created by her late father, Captain Cathal Ryan.

Enda Scahill

In 2006 Enda released the album "Humdinger" with Paul Brock which was awarded 'Irish Music Album of The Year' by The Irish Times and has been released by Compass Records in Nashville, Tennessee.

Frank Ronan

His novels have won numerous prizes including the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus prize.

Irish general election, 1977

Both The Irish Times and The Irish Press, which was then edited by Tim Pat Coogan, were extremely critical of the government's curtailment of freedom of speech and in particular of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs Conor Cruise O'Brien which was used against the PIRA.

John Rusnak

Panic At The Bank is a book written by Siobhán Creaton and Conor O'Clery, both journalists who followed the story for the Irish newspaper The Irish Times, that details the events which lead up to the fraud and how it was carried out and hidden from the bank's authorities.

Maev Kennedy

Kennedy was born in Dublin and attended University College Dublin (UCD) before joining The Irish Times, where she became the parliamentary sketch writer.

Postal addresses in the Republic of Ireland

On 29 June 2013 The Irish Times reported that the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte, was to bring details to the cabinet meeting of 2 July.

Psychic Readings Live

The Irish Times reported that a viewer phoned the show impersonating Will Smith’s character on the U.S. television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, footage of which was posted on YouTube.

Teens in the Wild

The Irish Times reviewer Kevin Courtney noted the return of Coleman to Irish television screens as "the agony uncle to another group of troubled teenagers, this time six girls with enough collective baggage to sink the Titanic".