Kilcullen Diary

The Bönickhausen Tower doesn't have the same ring to it as the Eiffel Tower, but the best known symbol of Paris could well have been just that, if its builder's family hadn't added the name of their local mountains to...

On This Day: The president of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was overthrown on the 23rd of December 1989 after more than two decades as head of a state widely regarded as a dictatorship. Produced by Brian Byrne for...

This memoir is in my series In Those Days, written many years ago following the death of my mother, Monica Byrne. It's about a painting of her, created by the renowned Irish artist Sean O'Sullivan. Produced by Brian...

To most of my generation, Julia Buckley was a somewhat forbidding figure, as we grew up in Kilcullen. To go in to buy a stamp, or a savings certificate, from 'Miss Buckley' was something of an adventure. As did most...

Charity Muthani is the ‘face’ of Maintain Hope, an Irish-based charity supporting disadvantaged children in Kenya. She is a living example to those who support the organisation of what can happen when their money or...

'Mother' is one of my short stories. This was written while I contemplated the future of humankind as we push our planet inevitably to being uninhabitable. Produced by Brian Byrne for Kilcullen Diary.

Sometimes, no matter how badly you think of yourself as a person, no matter how much guilt keeps you in nightmares, there's someone out there to bring you through to a second chance. This podcast is in my series of...

This podcast is one of a series of my short stories. It was written some time after a visit to the Chateau Cloux in Amboise, in the Loire region of France. The chateau is where the artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci...

When The Book of Kildare was recently published as part of the celebrations of Brigid 1500, it marked the end of five years of work by artist and calligrapher Josephine Hardiman. It was also something which, after a...

If you run the statistics, Kilcullen's canine pets are probably depositing over 74,000 kilos of poo every year, writes Brian Byrne. And if you walk around the town, actual empirical evidence shows not all of it is...

Over the last three years Newbridge singer-songwriter Joan Healy has moved from her first public performances as a busker outside the Whitewater Shopping Centre to now arranging her own gigs. Some of her songs have been...

Alex Konieczka is an Irish-based environmental activist and the founder of Understory, which uses workshops and talks in communities, schools and other groups to encourage others to make a positive impact on the...

Back in the mid-1970s, people still hitched in Ireland. And those of us fortunate to be in cars frequently gave people lifts. For both parties it was something of a gamble. Of easy conversation, or not. Of possible...

Team Ireland for the 2023 UK Transplant & Dialysis Games taking place on the last weekend in July in Coventry, England, gathered in Kilcullen Community Centre for the official launch of their campaign. They were...

A century and a half before the movie Jurassic Park brought dinosaurs into their trendy blockbuster modern space, a woman born in poor circumstances in Dorset, England, was to become one of the foremost experts on many...