Columnists - West Cork People

Celebrating the vibrant flavour of basil

Karen Austin July, 2025

I obviously didn’t consider the basil when I was trying to reduce our vegetable growing this year, as we have a dozen healthy plants all growing like the clappers, enough for a small restaurant not a downsized family! The thing about basil, or any other herb, is that if you don’t […]

Admiring the beauty of the common mallard

WCP Staff July, 2025

This month, branch committee member Mark Loughrey lauds the mallard. There is an old Irish saying that goes: ‘An rud is annamh is iontach’. It means ‘what is seldom is wonderful’. This is certainly true in the bird world. The elusive penduline tit that was spotted in Macroom a few […]

Sprats in trouble

Dr Jeremy A. Dorman July, 2025

When I was young, I often sat alone by the beacon at Wood Point, looked out across Courtmacsherry Bay, and day-dreamed. The sea then seemed infinite and clean, unspoiled by Man. One day, I would sail away, over the horizon; (I never did). But now, if I can even find […]

Surnames of Co. Cork

Eugene Daly July, 2025

In his ‘Special Report on Surnames in Ireland’, Robert E. Matheson published a list of the 27 commonest surnames in Co. Cork, based on their incidence in the index of births for 1890. This is a great source of genealogy, as is Diarmuid Ó Murchadha’s authoritative ‘Family Names of County […]

Persia to Iran: Mystique turned menace? (Part I)

Kieran Doyle July, 2025

Iran is headline news right now. By the time this article goes to print, the incessant bombing of Tehran and its ten million occupants, by Israel, could be over, or have boiled into a war of greater dimensions. Both the USA and Israel see Iran as an evil country that […]

Columnists

Accompanying one’s ‘self’

Leo Muckley June, 2025

Therapy can be an invitation to be in relationship with one’s ‘self’, with others and with the world from a place of compassion. One of the most powerful ways this shift can occur is through the cultivation of self-compassion. Not a self-indulgence, as some might mis-label it, but a courageous, […]

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