Alexander Poots
@alexander_poots
Writer
Ardent hobbyists are often viewed as eccentric. I think they might be the only normal people left. Me for @unherd unherd.com/2025/02/the-se…
Can’t wait to mosey down to Armagh for the @The_JHS Summer School, where I’ll be chatting to @WednesdayErskin about her wonderful novel, THE BENEFACTORS. July 31, 13:30. See you there!
The Uraicecht Becc, or “Small Primer”, the manuscript is almost certainly of Munster origin. The manuscript has references to the monasteries of Cork and of Emly. Below are the Bríatharogaim ‘Ogam words’
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Why is rural Denmark (an objectively expensive, high-waged country) so cheap? What’s going on up there?
‘Criticism of the proposed mine has focused on its potential impact on land and water. Less has been said about the impact it has already had on the people themselves.’ As @alexander_poots discovers in Northern Ireland, not all that glitters is gold 👇 buff.ly/BRZPO2J
“It’s a slow afternoon in Ipswich town centre, and Ibrahim is predicting the end times outside a derelict Debenhams…” Vintage @skulthorp unherd.com/2025/05/inside…
"The once awesome magus has been revealed as a syphilitic old soak, his robes stained sacking, his staff a rolled newspaper." @alexander_poots on what the collapse of legitimacy that is the foundation of the state portends.
I spoke to David Betz about government legitimacy, expectation gaps, and worst-case-scenarios. A pretty bleak one for @unherd unherd.com/2025/04/is-civ…
I spoke to David Betz about government legitimacy, expectation gaps, and worst-case-scenarios. A pretty bleak one for @unherd unherd.com/2025/04/is-civ…
Just finished this from 1975, and oof. Absolutely brutal. It’s maybe understandable that Ian Cochrane’s stock isn’t higher - some of this, I’d suggest, is simply unpalatable to modern readers - but much of the writing is enormously powerful. Anybody else out there read any IC?
Photograph taken at the ruins of Dunluce Castle. Co Antrim. c1880s. (NLI)
March 17 1796 - St Patrick's Day. Dined alone in the Champs Elysées. Sad! Sad!
Europe will not achieve strategic autonomy at the end of US logistics chains. Yet true autonomy will turn Europe from an American vassal to a rival. Either path is fraught with risk, and the moment requires sober statesmanship, not panicked activity: unherd.com/2025/03/rearma…
Santiago Rusiñol's fascination for Mallorca dated from 1899, the year he visited the island to convalesce from poor health, later calling it the 'island of tranquillity.' This painting depicts the garden of Sa Coma in Valdemosa, and dates from 1904.