Spartacus
Heroic revolutionary leader or dashing matinee idol? Ask people who Spartacus was and many different answers will emerge. Kirk Douglas starred in the movie. And Spartacus was also a real person - a slave in the days of the Roman Republic who has since become a byword for resistance, revolution and the fight for freedom.
But just how close is the movie to the actual story? What’s its enduring appeal? And who was the real Spartacus anyway?
On the 50th anniversary of the release of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, Steven Benedict, lecturer with the National Film School and historian, Suzanne O’Neill talked about the man and the myth.
BAD BAD BUDGETS
If budgets were works of literature what’s coming down the line next Tuesday would probably be a gothic horror novel of Frankenstein or Dracula-like proportions. But will it be, as advertised, the toughest budget in the history of the State? Can we say, with some justification, ‘we’ve been here before’?
We’ve asked taxation expert Suzanne Kelly and economist Moore McDowell to take a look back at some of the other notable horror budgets in our 90 year history.
ART O’NEILL CHALLENGE
The weather this weekend will give you some idea of the challenge faced by two young Irish chieftains in January, 1592. According to the Annals of the Four Masters it was snowing on the night Art O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell escaped from captivity in Dublin Castle and made their way towards the refuge offered by the Wicklow chieftain Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne, then at war with the English. They had to leave their winter clothes behind and find their way across a 55 kilometre route, 30k in the freezing mountains, with the help of a single guide. Art O’Neill died. When Red Hugh O’Donnell was rescued he was more dead than alive.
And we want you to join us in repeating the whole adventure – other than the prospect of pursuing Elizabethan forces of course. At midnight on the night of 6/7 January next the Second Art O’Neill Challenge sets off from Dublin Castle. For the fit and healthy it will end in Glenmalure about 12-13 hours later. For the rest of us, well who knows.
The man who started it all in 2009 is Olympic and Atlantic Rower Gearoid Towey - he explained what's involved in the Challenge, And historian, Ciaran Brady of UCD told us the story of the epic escape and gave us an of what was happening back in 1592.