Slimming for the Beach

The Par­lour Review is a con­cept radio show The idea is that each week a dif­fer­ent artist joins Mar­ian Kelly to dis­cuss their recent work, their influ­ences and the arts in gen­eral in their area. To date she has been joined by John Mori­arty, Judith Mok, Tom Math­ews, Michael O Lough­lin, Declan Meade, Robert Shaw, Dolores Lyne and Jesse Jones.

She is joined tomor­row, Decem­ber 5, by Robert Downes, the well-known jour­nal­ist and for­mer RTÉ for­eign cor­re­spon­dent in Iraq. When I had a TV, he always impressed me by his appar­ent actual knowl­edge of Iraq, and it appears his new book bears that out.

In Search of Iraq, pub­lished by New Island Books was launched by Vin­cent Browne on the 14th of November.

In his inter­view with Mar­ian Kelly on Par­lour Review he will dis­cuss his near-death expe­ri­ence on his way out of Iraq after the coali­tion forces attacked in 2003, his opin­ion on the issue of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Iraqi peo­ple in the media, and the changes he has wit­nessed in Iraq over the last few years. I’m par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in hear­ing about Mohammed Dar­wish, Sunni Mus­lim aca­d­e­mic and Joyce scholar, with whom Downes struck up a close friend­ship in which Downes was at least once asked to read from Ulysses in a Dublin accent!

It’s not often I plug a radio show (dis­claimer: I may be on the series myself soon) but I think this one is worth a listen.

It’s only avail­able in Dublin, I’m afraid, on FM 103.2 Anna Livia, but you may be able to lis­ten to a stream­ing ver­sion live on the web by fol­low­ing these instruc­tions at the bot­tom of the page. The Par­lour Review goes out at 1pm each Tuesday.

In Search of Iraq

Anna Livia FM