NewsBank (Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland))

Jamie Ritchie believes a strong performance against Italy and a third-place finish behind the top two sides in the world will seal a positive Six Nations campaign for Scotland.

Paul Townend produced an outstanding Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup ride to win steeplechasing's 'Blue Riband' on Galopin Des Champs at Cheltenham yesterday.

Saturday (Mar 18th)

Bernard Flynn spots Eamonn Heery immediately. "There's the man now," smiles Flynn, lifting himself up from the chair. They have history. But over the next few hours, it turns out not exactly to be the history you were expecting.

ANNA BAWDEN

A fog of qualified excitement spread across the film world last week as murmurs concerning "Quentin Tarantino's final film" emerged. Our old friend Mr A Source told The Hollywood Reporter that the director was prepping a script to shoot this autumn. The loose-lipped insider claimed the film was "set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its centre".

Scroll through the social media feed of great gardeners and florists, and what's noticeable is that wreaths are now no longer just for Christmas. Instead, with a little clever tweaking and some kokedama-style use of moss, they're being used to decorate our homes throughout the year.

GIGS

There's something both ironic and deeply fitting about the fact that Lankum are returning to the fray with an album that reeks of oceans wide, just as they emerge, squinting into the sunlight, from the lockdowns, isolation and silence of the past three years. Having hit the big time with their last album, The Livelong Day, a post-apocalyptic soundscape for our times, the band had no inkling of...

I have box hedges in the front and back garden of my house. Last year, I noticed that they were attacked by the box tree moth caterpillar. The damage was noticeable but the hedges recovered well enough. This year the damage is much worse and other gardens in the area are affected, some hedges being totally stripped of leaves. Is it time to give up on the hedges or can they recover without using...

Giovanni Bellini is the undisputed father of the Venetian Renaissance, not only for the power and beauty of his oeuvre, but for the influence he exerted over subsequent generations. An exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart André in Paris until July 17th shows the evolution of Bellini's style, along with masterpieces by his contemporaries.

It's fair to say that the fragility of life has been weighing heavy on Martin Gore's mind of late. It's prompted not only by his turning the big 6-0 a year ago - a critical milestone for Gore as it brought to the forefront the death of his stepfather at the age of 61 and the death of his biological father aged 68. The pandemic didn't help either. "I live in America, and the death toll is way over

Once it seemed a dying art but inside and out, as we revalue the handmade, the writing is on the wall. Vanessa Power, aka Signs of Power, sees her words writ large.

You have to wait until half way through the fourth episode before you hear from a transgender woman in the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. And even then, she was not asked to speak to the impact of JK Rowling's public statements on her own life or even on the experiences of trans people in general.

Andy Farrell has been patient and consistent in trying to change the Irish rugby psyche that traditionally manifests itself in a deep-rooted suspicion and discomfort when saddled with expectation or favouritism. The mantle of underdog has been a snugger fit in the past.

It was pre-dawn last Monday morning at Dublin Airport. As always, my game plan was to negotiate the passenger security screening with speed and efficiency but had forgotten the lesson that the US special forces preach: no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

You are on the judging panel for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Can you explain what makes it unique and how it has evolved?

Timothy Garton Ash's Homelands is, like Fintan O'Toole's recent bestseller We Don't Know Ourselves, subtitled a "personal history" - in Garton Ash's case, of Europe - and the two authors, each in their own fashion, cover more or less the same era.

'When I die, put me out with the bins." That's what Sally Diamond's father told her, regularly, and so that's what she did. "He was small and frail and eighty-two years old by then, so it was easy to get him into one large garden waste bag." She dragged the bag across the yard to the barn, heaved it into an incinerator, splashed petrol on top and set it alight. Five days later, when her neighbour

The general shock that jolted the GAA world at the news that Liam Kearns had died suddenly last Sunday partly reflected his stature, as a well-known and distinguished football manager, especially at intercounty level.

Saturday

Animals have always been with us, adored, reviled, abused and shamefully exploited. As the earliest fables and cave paintings attest, they occupy a shimmering presence in the human imagination. Today domestic animals take up more space in our homes than ever, while so many wild animals are passing alarmingly into extinction. Running Feet, Sharp Noses: Essays on the Animal World features both the...

Word gets around. Stefan Schwarz, a brilliant Swedish midfielder, once said to me: "I f***ing hate going to that shithole of a ground."

Taking its title from neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks' collection of intriguing case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Dasha Kiper's Travellers to Unimaginable Lands casts a similarly astute and humane eye over the lives of people impacted by neurological illness. Kiper's book focuses on those directly affected by dementia; an ever-growing community now numbering 55 million worldwide....

On a spring evening in 1827, pettish historian Professor Forbes Fawcett-Black II packs his valise to make a journey north to Durham Cathedral. Fawcett-Black has a horror of anywhere north of Oxford - "The north to me," he grumbles, "has always appeared a land of coughing chimneys, blotched babies, vile ale, wet wool, and cloying clouds" - but now he is lured to observe the proposed exhumation of...

'Since they knew what sort of creature I was, they also knew - indeed they trusted - that I would someday relate their lives for them. Why did they want this? Why does anyone?" Margaret Atwood's new short story collection Old Babes in the Woods gives us a portrait of the writer as an observer, record taker, memory keeper, immortaliser. There is the sense in many of the stories of an author...

Toto Wolff has admitted he would not blame Lewis Hamilton for seeking a move away from Mercedes if the sport's once-dominant team fails to reverse its slump. Hamilton's $40million-a-year (€37.5m) contract with the Silver Arrows expires at the end of the season and his future is under the microscope following their poor start to 2023.

GERRY THORNLEY Watching Ireland limber up for their customary Friday Captain's Run, you'd never have thought that they were a day away from a shot at history, namely a first ever Grand Slam in Lansdowne Road, old or new. Adding to the relaxed atmosphere was the presence, perhaps for the first time ever, of their families. A nice touch.

Brexiteers and Irish footballers are the unlikeliest of bedfellows. The United Kingdom's departure from the European Union triggered a blockade on Irish teenagers moving to British clubs while simultaneously, via the Common Travel Area, it created a smooth path for players to cross the water on their 18th birthday.

Outside the station looking lost and a couple arrive eager to be helpful. Pennyhill Park Hotel? ´ "Oh yes," they reply in unison. "The England rugby team stay there. I'd drive you but we're walking" she says.