Ryan Murdock

1 week ago | ryanmurdock.com | Ryan Murdock

I have given up on Canada. We’re leaving Berlin next year for Japan, and I’ve accepted that it’s probably permanent. I never gave my future much conscious thought. I went abroad for curiosity — to see the world beyond the 4,500 person town I grew up in — and to find my subject as a writer. If I thought about it at all, I guess I thought of myself as an expat. Someone living outside their native country — ex patria — for my work. I’ve lived in 16 different apartments in 8 cities and 4 countries.

1 month ago | ryanmurdock.com | Ryan Murdock

Clair Wills was in her twenties when she learned she had a cousin she’d never met. It wasn’t as though their families drifted apart. She’d never been told of this person’s existence. It was shrouded in shame and secrecy, and she wanted to understand why. She pieced the story together from forgotten anecdotes, dim memories and institutional archives spanning four generations of her own family, and the history of Ireland from the 1890s to the 1980s.

1 month ago | ryanmurdock.com | Ryan Murdock

What would you do if someone you knew your entire life — your mother — suddenly revealed that she’d been a spy? Deborah Lawrenson turned her story into a novel. The tangled web of espionage she weaves in The Secretary is fiction, but the background to the story is authentic, drawn in part from a seemingly innocent diary her mother wrote in 1958 while working at the British Embassy in Moscow. It’s an exciting high stakes thriller with insightful social commentary and a vivid sense of place.

2 months ago | theshiftnews.com | Kevin Cassar |Ryan Murdock

Keith Pace, Maria and Desideria Grixti pleaded guilty to having insulted and threatened physical violence against three ONE journalists. They admitted to breaching public order and swearing in public after the entire country watched aghast as the three of them brazenly threatened reporters with violence using vulgar and offensive language.

2 months ago | theshiftnews.com | Ryan Murdock

Alex Cutajar was given another handpicked  government job in 2024, serving as an advisor to the CEO of the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) to manage a national campaign on health and safety in construction sites. According to his contract, seen by The Shift, Cutajar was paid thousands for the direct order. It is not known whether the campaign was eventually implemented. No competitive tender was issued for the job.