Arts and Culture

Derek Hill prefers his west of Ireland landscapes, but spends most of his time painting portraits.

Gordon Lamber, Chairman and Managing Director of Irish Biscuits, is a lover of art. His collection of modern works is regarded by many as the best in Ireland. How intimately is it connected with his work and life? How closely does it chart his development, or reflect his ambition?

The hereditary peer who opposes the hereditary system, the pacifist who has sought out wars and revolutions, he has written a book about his experiences as a wartime pilot.

James White has been director of the National Gallery of Ireland for fifteen years. His successor is to be appointed this autumn. If the right person is to be appointed to do the right job, he and those who choose him will need to know about some of the things that went wrong in the past.

He looked a bit like the man in the Marlboro cigarette ads, only younger. Tall and gangly, with the lope of a cowboy. I knew him for 16 years and most of the time he had a moustache; once, for half a day, he had half a moustache.

Welcome to the season W of Bing Crosby and Golden Greats. The old groaner's back, too with A Christmas Sing with Bing. Among the many others whose golden achievements are celebrated in collections of their best, or best-known, are two nearly as old as Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. The recent hits of David Essex and Neil Diamond, of Wings and the Commodores, are featured in seasonal collections, too.

This is an unnecessary book. It has been. ghosted by Max Caulfield and appears to be based on edited trannscripts of taped conversations with, or monologues by, James Galway during and. after .convalescence following his reecent smash-up. Whoever Max Caulfield is, he has not managed to achieve the first requirement of a ghost-writer, which is to.get inside his subject. The reesult brings little credit to either him or Galway.

Nine thousand years of Irish art and architecture are trapped between the glossy pages of the latest pre-Christmas coffee table extravaganza published by Thames and Hudson. Three able Irish scholars have been pressed into service. Was it necessary?

Terez Nelson, the woman who brought Martha Graham's style of dance to Dublin, is now 48, and she's been dancing since she was ten years old. She started to perform in classical ballet when she was 16 and began studyying with Graham in New York in the late 1940s. She moved to Ireland. in 1968 and now funs one of Dublin's three contemporary dance companies, as well as giving classes in the technique.

This Year is the centenary of the birth of the Anglo-Irish artist, William Orpen. A major exhibition of his works is now at the National Gallery of Ireland