Hugh Linehan

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Hugh Linehan

Taking us from the Renaissance Florence of Leonardo da Vinci via the songwriting chemistry of Lennon and McCartney to the Florida launch pad of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Helen Lewis’s new book, The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers, sets out to unravel the mystery of what we mean when we call someone a genius and asks whether the modern idea of genius as a class of special people is distorting our view of the world.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Hugh Linehan

The phrase “third rail” was originally coined to describe the electrified line that runs alongside train tracks, deadly to the touch. In politics and public discourse, it has come to signify any subject deemed too dangerous, too radioactive, too fraught to approach. And while journalism in a liberal democracy is, in theory, about touching all the rails – especially the live ones – theory and practice often diverge.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Hugh Linehan

In the complicated, often contradictory patchwork of European politics, language matters. So when a government dresses up repression in the finery of democracy, invoking concepts like “transparency” and “public interest”, we should be suspicious. Hungary’s newly proposed “On the Transparency of Public Life” Bill, now being rammed through its parliament by prime minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, is a case study in Orwellian doublethink.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Hugh Linehan

Some say there’s no such thing as wokeness. Others accept there might be such a thing but it’s just an abusive right-wing jibe at those who have a sincere commitment to social justice. Others again say wokeness does exist and that it’s a rigidly moralising form of left-wing identity politics. And there are those who believe that the word accurately describes everything irritating in modern life, from cycle lanes to health warnings on wine bottles.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Hugh Linehan

In late 1919 US president Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that would physically and mentally incapacitate him for many months, but which was concealed from the American people by his inner circle. In the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt’s inability to walk was similarly hushed up, as were Dwight Eisenhower’s two heart attacks in office in the 1950s, John F Kennedy’s crippling back pain in the 1960s, and Ronald Reagan‘s symptoms of dementia in the mid-1980s.