The Music Quiz: How many Grammy Awards has Beyoncé won to date?
In an unusual announcement, who is set to produce and star in the next film by outré Japanese director Takashi Miike?
Charlie XCX
Ellie Goulding
Lily Allen
Florence Welch
Sophia Regina Allison is known professionally as...?
Nicki Minaj
Soccer Mommy
Queen Latifah
Shania Twain
Which music legend duets with Barbra Streisand on The Very Thought of You, off Streisand's latest studio album?
Rod Stewart
Bob Dylan
Sting
James Taylor
Irish band The Would Be's have named one of their songs on their new album, HindZeitgeist, after which famous film director?
Stanley Kubrick
Pedro Almodóvar
Luis Buñuel
Alfred Hitchcock
What time did The Monkees board the Last Train to Clarkesville back in '66?
2.30
4.30
5.30
8.30
Who's the Greek philosopher namechecked in Taylor Swift's So High School?
Plato
Aristotle
Socrates
Pythagoras
Fiona Apple does covers duty on which song from new tribute album Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young Vol 1?
Old Man
Long May You Run
Heart of Gold
Harvest
According to the title of the latest book by Irish music industry journalist Eamonn Forde, what was the year the record industry lost control?
1997
1998
1999
2000
What is the first line of Olivia Rodrigo's Drivers Licence (2021)?
I just got my driver's license
I got my driver's license today
I got my driver's license yesterday
I got my driver's license last week
To date, how many Grammy Awards has Beyoncé taken home?
27
32
35
41
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The Irish Sun
5 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Inside Beyonce & Jay Z's relationship rollercoaster – from ‘Becky' cheat rumours to Diddy controversy & THAT lift drama
FROM 'Becky with the good hair' rumours to Diddy controversies, Beyoncé and Jay-Z have faced plenty of challenges throughout their 25-year relationship. Despite the ups and downs, the power couple has appeared to remain strong, focusing on creating a positive impact for their three children – Blue Ivy Carter, 13, and twins Rumi and Sir Carter, seven. 11 Beyonce set her for her Cowboy Carter tour Credit: Rex 11 Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Blue Ivy Carter at the 60th Grammy Awards Credit: Getty Images - Getty 11 Sean "Diddy" Combs and Jay-Z at Diddy's birthday party Credit: Getty This weekend, The global icon is set to perform a two-hour, 45-minute spectacular in support of her Grammy-winning album, bringing her two daughters along for the journey. However, her journey hasn't been without its share of public storms. READ MORE ON BEYONCE From dodging the Diddy controversy to her sister Here, we delve into the drama and resilience that has defined their extraordinary 25 years together. 2000 - 2004 : Dating The pair first met in 2000 at the MTV Spring Break Festival in Cancun, Mexico, when Beyoncé was 18 and Jay-Z was 30. Jay-Z later rapped about their meeting and sitting together on a flight back to New York in his 2018 track 713. Most read in Celebrity Jay-Z and Beyonce's $3billion net worth 'could take a big hit' after rape claims, lawyer says She said: "We were on the phone for a year and a half, and that foundation is so important for a relationship. 'Just to have someone who you just like is so important, and someone [who] is honest." Although Beyoncé has clarified she was not underage when they met, rumours about their age gap have persisted. Ignoring the speculation, the couple released Crazy in Love in 2003. While Beyoncé had already featured on Jay-Z's 03 Bonnie & Clyde, it was It was then in 2004, the couple made their red carpet debut at the VMAs. 2008 - 2012 : Marriage & child This was the year Beyoncé and Jay-Z finally tied the knot. At 26 and 38, the couple exchanged vows in an 'intimate' ceremony that remains shrouded in secrecy. 11 Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Blue Ivy Carter at the Grammy Awards in 2018 Credit: Getty It is believed the wedding took place in a Manhattan penthouse. 'There was no rush - no one expected me to run off and get married,' Beyoncé later shared with Seventeen about her wedding day. 'I really don't believe that you will love the same thing when you're 20 as you do at 30. So that was my rule: Before the age of 25, I would never get married. 'I feel like you have to get to know yourself, know what you want, spend some time by yourself, and be proud of who you are before you can share that with someone else.' The Carters then went on to welcome their first child, Blue Ivy Carter, 7 January 2012. 2014: 'Billion dollars on an elevator' fight At this point, Beyoncé found herself embroiled in one of the most dramatic public controversies of her life. Her sister, Solange Knowles, was caught on video attacking Jay-Z in an elevator at the 2014 Met Gala afterparty. The altercation occurred while Beyoncé was also present in the elevator. Security footage At one point, Beyoncé was seen standing between the two. The video quickly went viral, sparking widespread speculation. At the end of the day, families have problems, and we're no different. We love each other, and above all, we are family Joint statement Though never confirmed, many believed the fight stemmed from cheating rumours surrounding the couple at the time. On May 15, 2014, the trio issued a joint statement addressing the incident. "As a result of the public release of the elevator security footage from Monday, May 5th, there has been a great deal of speculation about what triggered the unfortunate incident. 'But the most important thing is that our family has worked through it," they said in a statement to the "Jay and Solange each assume their share of responsibility for what has occurred. They both acknowledge their role in this private matter that has played out in the public. 11 Beyonce, Jay-Z and Solange Knowles were seen leaving the Met Gala After Party after elevator incident Credit: Splash 11 Beyonce and Jay Z recreating their elevator incident in an attempt to put a positive spin on it Credit: Splash News 'They both have apologised to each other, and we have moved forward as a united family." The statement continued: "The reports of Solange being intoxicated or displaying erratic behavior throughout that evening are simply false. 'At the end of the day, families have problems, and we're no different. We love each other, and above all, we are family. "We've put this behind us and hope everyone else will do the same." 2016: Beyonce releases Lemonade, confirming a 'Becky' In April 2016, Beyoncé released her groundbreaking album Lemonade, which many fans believe essentially confirms that Jay-Z cheated on her. She opens with the lyric: ' The album appeared to finally settle the speculation surrounding the infamous Met Gala elevator incident. I think that everybody at one time or another has been betrayed and lied to Tina Knowles Fans were further intrigued when Beyoncé mentioned 'Becky with the good hair,' a phrase that quickly became a cultural talking point. Speaking about the album, Beyoncé's mother, Tina Knowles Lawson, said: 'It could be about anyone's marriage. 'I think that everybody at one time or another has been betrayed and lied to and it's about the pain and it's about the healing process and it's about, 'How do you get past that and move on.'' 2017: The twins are born & Jay Z talks marriage On February 1, 2017, Beyoncé and Jay-Z announced they were expecting twins with a heartfelt post alongside Beyoncé's iconic pregnancy reveal, and they were later born in mid-June that same year. 11 Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and their children reading books Credit: BackGrid 11 Beyoncé holding her twins But it was later that year that got people talking as Jay-Z openly admitted to his infidelity during an interview with The Reflecting on the challenges they faced, he said: 'You know, most people walk away, and like divorce rate is like 50 percent or something 'cause most people can't see themselves. "The hardest thing is seeing pain on someone's face that you caused, and then have to deal with yourself. "So, you know, most people don't want to do that. You don't want to look inside yourself." 2024-2025: Embroiled in Sean 'Diddy' Combs drama In Decemeber 2024 Jay Z and Sean 'Diddy' Combs were accused of The unnamed woman, claimed that she had been handed a glass of something that made her feel 'woozy' and recall lying down in a bedroom, in which she got raped. However, in February this year, the case was dismissed, according to a legal filing submitted in New York. At the time Jay Z denied the accusations via a post on social media, in which he wrote: 'My lawyer received a blackmail attempt, called a demand letter, from a 'lawyer' named Tony Buzbee. My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims Jay Z statement What he had calculated was the nature of these allegations and the public scrutiny would make me want to settle. 'No sir, it had the opposite effect! It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion. So no, I will not give you ONE RED PENNY!!' He continued: 'My only heartbreak is for my family. 11 Beyoncé, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, and Jay-Z at an event Credit: Getty 11 Jay-Z and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs at a CD release party Credit: Getty "My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people.' A man accused Sean 'Diddy' Combs of sexual assault and humiliated him at a 2015 party while Beyonce and Jay Z were present. However, in April 2025 the accuser, Joseph Manzaro, filed an amendment to his lawsuit in Florida and removed the couple's name from his lawsuit. 11 Beyoncé performing onstage in 2023 Credit: Getty
Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
Eileen Walsh: Women actors ‘are like avocados. You're nearly ready, nearly ready - then you're ripe, then you've gone off'
What is the longest period of time you have sat in a venue watching a piece of theatre? Three hours? Four? Maybe six for some rare double or triple bill? Well, from 4pm on Saturday, June 14th to 4pm the following day, actor Eileen Walsh will be spending 24 hours on stage at the Cork Opera House , in a one-off performance of The Second Woman. This is an Irish premiere of the show, running during Cork Midsummer Festival , and a co-production with the Cork Opera House. It was originally created in 2017 by Australians Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, and has been performed in various cities around the world, including Sydney, New York and London. The show is described as 'a durational theatre experience', which sounds about right if you are a member of the audience, but how will the person holding everything together on stage for 24 hours manage to endure in this truly epic role? 'I've done 72 hours in labour,' Walsh says matter-of-factly, as she looks through the lunch menu at Dublin's College Green Hotel. 'You stay awake when you have to.' READ MORE The place is busy and noisy, and there is a particularly loud group sitting in the banquette behind me. As we start talking, I fret a little that my recorder won't pick up Walsh's voice amid the general din of cutlery and lunchtime clamour. But later, when I play back the recording, every word of hers is in there, perfectly clear. Of course it is; it's the voice of an actor, trained to enunciate and carry; to cut through all the noise. Walsh is in an orange singlet and black trouser suit, her dark hair in a ponytail. I know what age she is (48, I've done my research) but if I didn't, I couldn't tell by looking at her enviable chameleon face. The question of age is relevant because this theme is woven through The Second Woman, and her character of Virginia. 'Her age is never mentioned,' Walsh says. 'But it's very much about age and ageing, and about how men see us women.' Walsh has been acting for all of her adult life; in theatre, film and TV. Some of her recent appearances were opposite her old friend Cillian Murphy in the adaptation of Claire Keegan's novella, Small Things Like These ; and in Chris O'Dowd's streaming series Small Town, Big Story . The question is, how is she going to prepare for her latest, and longest, performance? 'I don't know if you can prepare for it, because it is all such an unknown,' she says. 'Part of the preparing for it is a bit like letting go, and trusting in the process. Even if you had done it before, it is an unknown because it would be 100 new situations and 100 new people.' Eileen Walsh: Being a mother is so difficult because you are being constantly pulled. Photograph Nick Bradshaw Walsh will not be alone on stage. Her character Virginia plays the same scene 100 times, each lasting seven minutes, each with a different male character, all called Marty, 100 Martys in total. In Cork, as in other cities where the show has been performed, the Martys are mostly amateurs, with some professionals in the mix. Will there be anyone famous? 'I think there are surprises,' Walsh says cautiously. 'I think it will be a mix of people I have worked with before, and who are interested in the theme of the project. But I don't know, and I won't know until I see them on stage on the night – if there are any. The last thing I want is to spend 24 hours wondering if Liam Neeson is coming.' Or indeed, Cillian Murphy. Or Chris O'Dowd. The core of the lines spoken by each character in each scene stays the same, but the scene itself has the possibility of opening in various different ways. The male character, by improvising, can choose what kind of relationship he wants to have with Virginia. None will have rehearsed with Walsh, so until each scene starts, she will have no idea which back story the person playing opposite her will choose. 'The opening of the scene is a window of opportunity for them to say something along the lines of 'As your brother,' if they don't want any romantic interaction. Or, 'As your dad,' or, 'As your friend.' So they can set their own parameters if they want to. Essentially it is all about relationships.' Stage directions allow for various kinds of action, and little pieces of physical exercise and respite for the actor. 'There's an opportunity to have a dance, there's an opportunity to have a drink, there's an opportunity to sit or to eat. You get an opportunity to sit down briefly, but other than that you are on the go. It's very physical. Then there is an opportunity at the end of each scene for the participant to choose to end the interaction in a positive or negative way. As much as my character is having a monumental breakdown, the men remain main characters in their lives all the time.' Walsh does the scene seven times, with some minutes at the end of each hour to reset the stage again. 'The props might have been moved, the drink might have been spilt. You stay on stage the whole time while that is happening, and then every few hours there's a comfort break, to have a pee, or fix make-up.' In The Second Woman Eileen Walsh plays the same scene 100 times, each lasting seven minutes, each with a different male character, all called Marty, 100 Martys in total. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw When the show was performed in London at the Young Vic in 2023, Walsh queued for three hours to watch a three-hour slot. 'We had to wait for people coming out to be able to buy tickets,' she explains. Walsh had no idea that two years later, she herself would be playing this extraordinary role. How do you rehearse for such a role? 'The rehearsal process is two weeks, and by day two you are working with four actors in turn. They will give me a flavour of what to do if someone freezes on the night, or if they are going on too long.' These actors won't be appearing in the performance; they will be trying to work through some of the different possible variations of the same seven-minute scene. But no element of preparation will come close to replicating what the actual night of performance will bring. Both Breckon and Randall will be coming over to Cork from Australia for the rehearsals, and to see her 24-hour performance. The Second Woman will be Cork-born Walsh's first major stage role in Ireland since returning from Britain last October. She lived there for some 30 years, first with husband Stuart McCaffer, and then as a family with their children, Tippi and Ethel. It's impossible to see acting as a life choice in Ireland now. How do you get a mortgage? Have kids? I don't know how young actors do it — Eileen Walsh 'Tippi is 19 and was born in Edinburgh.' (She's named for Tippi Hedren, now 95, who famously appeared in Hitchcock's The Birds; mother of Melanie Griffith, grandmother of Dakota Johnson.) 'I had watched The Birds, and thought Tippi was such a lovely name,' Walsh says. 'Ethel was born in London and she is 16. The girls were partly responsible for us moving back. Tippi was really interested in coming back and maybe doing drama school here. And we found a lovely school for Ethel. It kind of made sense.' When I ask if her children will be going to see the show, Walsh says her rehearsal time in Cork coincides with Ethel's Junior Cert. She thus won't be available at home for reassuring in-person hugs with her exam student. 'Being a mother is so difficult because you are being constantly pulled.' Tippi and Ethel have a better understanding and tolerance of parents being temporarily absent for work than most of their peers, having been raised in a household with two creative parents (McCaffer is a sculptor). After being away from Ireland for 30 years, both the paucity of available housing and the cost of it was a deep shock to Walsh when they returned. 'Looking for a rental for two adults and two kids, the costs were eye watering. Not only could we not get in the door for a lot of places, but the costs involved in trying to rent a two-bedroom flat while we were looking for a house were crazy. 'The costs are crippling. Dublin is laughing in the face of London when it comes to housing prices.' They did eventually find somewhere. 'We bought a wreck of a house we are desperately trying to do up.' Walsh wonders aloud how actors in Ireland today, especially in Dublin, are managing to develop a professional career while also finding affordable housing. 'I moved out of home at 17 and it was possible to pay your rent – and also have a great time. It is just not possible any more, and I don't know how younger versions of me are coping now. 'Financially it's having the result of turning acting into a middle-class profession, because what young kids from a working class background can afford to hire rehearsal space and to live within Dublin? It's impossible to see acting as a life choice in Ireland now. How do you get a mortgage? Have kids? I don't know how young actors do it. Besides, of course, moving away from Ireland.' Eileen Walsh: 'I moved out of home at 17 and it was possible to pay your rent and also have a great time ... I don't know how younger versions of me are coping now.' Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Back in 1996, when Walsh was still a student, she was cast in the role of Runt opposite Cillian Murphy as Pig in Enda Walsh's seminal then new play, Disco Pigs. (The two Walshes are not related.) The whole thing was a sensational success for all three of them, and burnished their names brightly. When the film version was cast a few years later, Murphy remained in the role of Pig, while Elaine Cassidy was given the role of Runt. Walsh said at the time she didn't even know the auditions were being held. It's a topic that has come up over and over again in interviews during the intervening years, the What If's around that casting. It's clear that Walsh was deeply hurt. She was 'heartbroken' at the decision to not cast her in this role that she had first brought to life. One can only imagine the strain it put on her friendship with Murphy at the time, for a start. It must also have been difficult for Elaine Cassidy to keep hearing publicly how something that was nothing to do with her had so affected the morale of another fellow actor. 'I feel like I've spoken a lot about that,' Walsh says now. 'It was a lesson for me very early on. And it wasn't the first or the last time I got bad news. And just because the role was yours doesn't mean it stays yours. They are heartbreaking things to learn. Or if someone says they want you for a job and then they change their mind, that's a f***ing killer as well. It's not something that gets better with age. It just burns more, because the opportunities are better, so the burn is greater.' [ From the archive: Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh on 'Disco Pigs': 'It was the ignorance of youth' Opens in new window ] At this point in our conversation, there are a number of other expletives scattered by Walsh, as if this old and sad wound has triggered some kind of latent, but still important, emotion. We talk for a while about how ageing in the acting profession – wherever one is located in the world – frequently works against women in a way it does not against men. 'I think women are constantly being told that for men, acting is a marathon and for women it's a sprint, because you have a short time to make an impact. You're like an avocado,' she says. I ask her to repeat that last word, unsure if I've heard it correctly. 'Avocado,' she says firmly. 'You're nearly ready, nearly ready – then you're ripe, then you've gone off. That's what you're made to feel like. Do it now, while you're lovely and young and your boobs are still upright, or whatever, While you're taut. And I think that is a total f***ing lie. It might be a marathon for men, but to remain in this business as a woman, it's like a decathlon. You have to f***ing go and go and go and it takes tenaciousness and being stubborn and strident to know your values. 'Men are allowed to feel old and to be seen like a fine wine, whereas I think for women it just takes so much boldness to stay in this profession as you age. And also to play parts where you don't have to always be the f***ing mother or the disappointed wife.' Eileen Walsh as Eileen Furlong in Small Things Like These. Photograph: Enda Bowe In the last year, Walsh has appeared in three significant screen productions: Small Things Like These; Say Nothing , the Disney + adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe's book about the Troubles in Northern Ireland in which she plays Bridie Dolan, the aunt of Dolours and Marian Price who was blinded in a bomb-making accident; and Small Town, Big Story in the role of Catherine, a wheelchair user who is having a steamy affair with a colleague. In Small Things Like These, she co-stars with Oscar-winning Cillian Murphy, three decades on from Disco Pigs. 'A long circle completed,' she says. [ Small Things Like These: Cillian Murphy's performance is fiercely internalised in a film emblematic of a changing Ireland Opens in new window ] Claire Keegan's novella is set in 1985 in Co Wexford, and focuses on what happens when Bill Furlong, a fuel merchant, husband to Eileen Furlong and father of five daughters, discovers what is going on at the local convent, which is also a laundry that serves the town. Murphy – whom she calls Cill – contacted her when she was playing Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller's The Crucible at the National Theatre in London. He asked her to read the script for Small Things, which Enda Walsh had written. 'I know that Cill as producer was very intent on working with people he knows and loves and worked with previously and had kind of relationships with. The whole movie was spotted with friends and long-time collaborators.' After she had read the script, she went to meet director Tim Mielants. She and Murphy 'had to do something similar to a chemistry meet. That meeting was filmed when we worked on some scenes together.' Small Things Like These: Eileen Walsh as Eileen Furlong and Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong. Photograph: Enda Bowe/Lionsgate The two play the married couple in the movie, Bill and Eileen Furlong. 'It's a very tired relationship. They are a long time into the marriage, and they are very used to each other, so it's a no chemistry-chemistry meet, if that makes sense.' Walsh got the part. I remind her of what she has said earlier in the interview about being fed up of playing roles of mothers and disappointed wives, which one could see as a fair description of her role of Eileen Furlong. This role, Walsh makes clear, was very different from any kind of generic cliche of playing a mother or wife. 'Playing Eileen, she wasn't a put-upon wife, but was a mirror of what an awful lot of women were like at that time in Ireland. [ Irish Times readers pick Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These as the best Irish book of the 21st century Opens in new window ] 'Claire Keegan's writing is such a gift to any actor. Claire's story behind everybody is very dark. Nobody gets an easy ride with a Claire Keegan character, and that's a real draw to any actor. She doesn't soft soap anything. For me to play that character, to play Eileen, meant I saw so much of my own mother and the women that I grew up underneath, [women] I grew up looking up to. It was a hard time. They were trying to make money stretch very hard, at a time when dinners would have to be simple and very much planned to the last slice of bread. They were not women spouting rainbows.' As it happens, Walsh's next big upcoming role after the Cork Midsummer Festival will be that of Jocasta, Oedipus's mother, in Marina Carr's new play, The Boy. It will open at the Abbey in the autumn as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. She'll play a mother in this interpretation of a Greek myth, certainly, but again, no ordinary one. Rehearsals start in July. [ From the archive: Eileen Walsh: How I reconcile motherhood with playing Medea Opens in new window ] Meanwhile, back to her modern-day Greek marathon in Cork this month. Due to the length of the show, there are a variety of ticket types the public can avail of. You can buy a ticket for the entire 24 hours, and either stay at the venue for the whole time or leave and return. On return, you may have to queue again and wait for a seat to become free. Other tickets are being sold for scheduled time slots for a number of hours. If you choose to come for the 2am slot, for instance, you'll pay a bit less for your ticket. There will also be some tickets available at the door, although it's likely you'll have to queue. There will be pop-up food and drink venues in the foyer to provide sustenance. The Cork Opera House has a capacity of 1,000 seats. If those seats keep turning over a during the 24 hours, thousands of people will have an opportunity to see this remarkable highlight of Cork Midsummer Festival: truly a night like no other this year in Ireland.
Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
Re-reading my teenage diaries: joy and pain radiates off the pages
I didn't realise it at the time, but I came of age at the very end of an era. As someone who was born in the 1970s, I turned out to be part of the very last generation of habitual letter writers. For centuries, people with the means and the education had left written traces of themselves behind. Some wrote diaries; almost all wrote letters. When I started college in 1993, letters were the only way of keeping in touch with faraway friends. But then, incredibly quickly, everything changed. During my college years I wrote dozens of letters – letters to friends on Erasmus or summers abroad, letters from my own summers in Berlin and Boston. Sometimes I abandoned a letter and left it unfinished, tucked inside a notebook or folder pad, because so much had happened since I started writing it, the letter was out of date. But in the summer of 1997, just after I graduated, I got my first email address. And letters vanished from my life completely. While I was writing those letters, I also kept a diary, documenting my life (or more accurately, my extremely dramatic feelings about my life) in a series of ring-bound notebooks. For decades those unfinished letters and diaries were hidden away in my wardrobe and in a box in my parents' house. Until last summer, when I unearthed them and found myself travelling back in time. My first novel for adults, Our Song, is the story of Tadhg and Laura, who were bandmates in college before their friendship ended acrimoniously when they were 21. Sixteen years later their lives are very different – Tadhg is a massively successful musician, while Laura's just been laid off from her advertising job. But then Tadhg contacts Laura and asks her to finish a song they started writing together in their college days. The novel's narrative moves between the older Tadhg and Laura as they rediscover their old musical and personal chemistry, and the story of their younger, messier selves. And that's where my diaries and letters came in. READ MORE It's a long time, to put it bluntly, since I was 21. If I wanted to accurately capture the feelings of the younger Laura, I needed to remind myself what it felt like to be young and messy and full of big emotions. I needed to remember what it felt like to make stupid romantic choices, to never be honest about my feelings, to have my heart broken. Luckily, I had the perfect means to do just that. [ Anna Carey: 'Today's teenagers are pleasingly similar to my generation' Opens in new window ] When I opened the large cloth-covered notebook that covered the period of my life from 1994 to summer 1997, I thought reading about my college years for the first time in decades might be funny. I knew it would be helpful for the book. I didn't, for one second, predict that it would be so emotionally intense. Back when I wrote my first young adult novels, I had looked at my diaries from my mid-teens and laughed at the melodrama of my little teenage self. That girl from the early 1990s felt like a kid. She felt like another person. But the writer of my college diaries didn't feel like another person. She felt like me. Younger, of course, and much messier and more dramatic, but to my own surprise I didn't feel a massive sense of distance between the person who wrote about her college heartbreaks and the fortysomething reading about them three decades later. And so when I read my way through that notebook and the one that followed, I was reliving the highs and lows of my mid-1990s life. I found myself feeling genuinely angry with people I hadn't thought of in decades, about incidents I had totally forgotten. I found myself emotionally experiencing all of it. My joy and my pain radiated off the page so strongly, it was almost overwhelming, decades later. Anna Carey at Two Pups Cafe in Fairview, Dublin After I told a friend about my weirdly emotional research project, she unearthed the letters I'd written to her back in the day. Then I found the letters she wrote to me, and for weeks we photographed and WhatsApped every page of our 1990s correspondence to each other, both of us weeping with laughter over long-ago misadventures. And it wasn't just letters. In college, to practise her typing, my friend went through a phase of transcribing our conversations on her family computer as we chatted in her house. Miraculously, she found printouts of these transcripts and suddenly there we were, our brilliant, hilarious, stupid young selves, with our in-jokes and personal dramas, talking about gigs and parties and people we forgot about decades ago. It made me laugh until I cried and then suddenly to my surprise I was crying not with laughter, but at the sheer intensity of this contact with my own youth. It's a strange thing, going back in time. And sometimes you realise the story you've told yourself about that period could have been a very different one. Reading my diaries and letters, I could clearly see the narrative I created for myself at the time, one that I internalised and that still affected how I saw my younger days. But decades later, I saw that I could have chosen to tell a very different story. My younger self made decisions that, at the time, I refused to see were decisions. I put up with situations that were making me angry and miserable when I could have just walked away. Early on in college a boy told me he wasn't in love with me any more. At the time it was the most blunt, hurtful thing anyone had ever said to me, one that hung over me for months. Unsurprisingly, I remembered that all too well. But I had no memory of the fact, documented in my diary almost as an aside, that he told me it was because he didn't think I had ever really been in love with him. And looking back, I realised he had been right (on that point, at least). But when I was young and hurting, I didn't see it that way, or I didn't care, because what mattered was that he had rejected me. After writing that detail in my diary I forgot about it. How would the next year of my life have been different if I hadn't forgotten the part I'd played in that relationship's end? If I'd framed the incident as one in which I wasn't totally passive? It made me wonder what stories I'm telling myself about my life now. That's a lot to get from a 31-year-old notebook from Miss Selfridge. [ How I turned my book The Making of Mollie into a play – with a little help from some young innovators Opens in new window ] The French writer Henry de Montherlant famously wrote that 'happiness writes in white ink on a white page' and so it's not surprising that most of my diary entries were full of angst. In summer 1997 I went to Boston and fell in love with an American man (Gen Z might disapprove of age-gap relationships but they have nothing on my generation; my friend unearthed a letter to a mutual pal in which she wrote that 'Anna has two jobs and a Texan lover who's 25 '. Bear in mind I turned 22 towards the end of that summer so this was hardly a problematic gap). I was very, very happy and in a healthy romantic relationship for the first time in my life, and I hardly wrote in my diary all summer, apart from a few breathless lines marvelling over my magical good luck. It was the American boy who set up my first email address for me, and when I tearfully returned to Dublin we corresponded not via letters but emails, all of which vanished into the digital ether long ago. I didn't know it, but that was the beginning of the end for me and letters. My diary writing continued, but it also petered out after I got together with my now-husband back in 2001. My diary thrived on drama, and a happy, settled relationship is not very dramatic. Anna Carey and her husband-to-be Patrick Freyne on stage with their band El Diablo circa 2000. But then, to my surprise, both diary writing and letters returned to my life. About 10 years ago I got a 'one line a day' five-year diary, a dated journal in which you write a single sentence about each day. It wasn't like my old diary, where I poured out my soul, but it was a written record of my day to day life – something I wished I'd done more back in the '90s, instead of spending my summer in Berlin writing very little about my magical experiences in an amazing city at an incredible time in its history but a lot about my stupid boy-related angst. Letters returned in an unexpected form. At the height of lockdown in 2020, the New Yorker magazine writer Rachel Syme started a pen pal exchange, and I signed up. I've been corresponding with my Brooklyn pen pal Erin for five years now; we hit it off from the first letter, and I love that there are now written records of our lives and thoughts and feelings on each side of the Atlantic. When I was writing my new book, I wrote to Erin about its progress, sharing the highs and the lows. It makes me happy knowing that somewhere in Brooklyn is a series of postcards and letters telling the story of how I wrote Our Song. For a book that couldn't have been written without handwritten journals and letters, it feels just right. I think my younger self would approve. Our Song is published by Hachette Ireland. Anna Carey will be talking to Sinéad Moriarty as part of the Dalkey Book Festival on June 14th.
