Home > The Magazine > Features

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

A swift dip in the sea at Christmas

Old Ireland lives on in a frozen Christmas swim

Fergal Keane

Wednesday, 12th December 2007

Old Ireland lives on in an Ardmore village custom

On Christmas morning the entire village will gather on the beach at the end of the main street. I think the ‘main’ is probably superfluous here. There is really only one street with a series of small roads and paths stacked above it on the hill of Ardmore. If you were to stand at the Storm Wall, just above the beach, you would see a hundred or so hardy folk dressed for a sweltering summer’s day and waiting for the order to charge.

The more obviously hungover, the elderly and sick, and the plain cowardly gather around the table of soup, tea and whiskey organised by the local members of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. The Christmas swim is held to raise funds for the Royal National Lifeboats, a much-loved institution in a place that has known numerous drowning tragedies among its fishing community.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: Fergal Keane | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

A portrait of the artist as a tennis champion

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style patterns

Et tu, Scott? Bush’s press aide turns on his boss

James Forsyth

James Forsyth talks to Scott McClellan, former press secretary to the President, about his new book attacking the Bush administration, its methods and its deceits

The Law Lords are right to resist the government

Lord Lloyd of Berwick

Lord Lloyd of Berwick says that the government’s emergency legislation to overturn their lordships’ ruling on witness anonymity is part of a ‘gradual usurpation’ of our liberties

I was starstuck by David Cameron

Steven Berkoff

In the week of the Spectator Summer Party, Steven Berkoff recalls another of our celebrations at which he sought out the Tory leader and forgave his confusion of Brando and Dean

How to get stabbed: you, too, can be knifed in a public place

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that it helps to be aged between 14 and 30, white and male. Being drunk and argumentative speeds things along. And no public policy seems to dissuade those who do the stabbing

Too close for comfort

Mary Kenny

Mary Kenny on the new book from Eunan O'Halpin

Critical condition

Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans on the perils of being both playwright and critic

Even middle-class children are suffering from neglect

Rachel Johnson

Rachel Johnson says that working mothers, divorce, Polish nannies and an obsession with extra-curricular activities mean that our children are seeingless of their parents than at any time in the last 100 years

God bless America

Margaret MacMillan

Margaret McMillan on the new book by Greg Behrman

Plumed hats, rapiers and heaving bosoms

Gerald Warner

Gerald Warner celebrates the unexpected appearance of one last ‘swashbuckling novel’, and mourns the loss of a genre that taught boys honour, courage and chivalry