THE screen adaption of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is widely tipped to win several Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards Ceremony in LA. The movie’s success follows hotly on the heels of Cillian Murphy’s Oscar for Best Actor in Oppenheimer (2024) and Kenneth Branagh’s Golden Statute for Belfast (2021). Irish writers and actors have excelled at the Academy Awards in recent years.

I WAS but a wee wean, contentedly watching The Wombles when Gerry Conlon was arrested in November 1974 at his Belfast home