Culture File

Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey, nature writer Helen Macdonald, novelist Sin Blaché and investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov share their favourite photographs of themselves, and explore how writers navigate self-presentation—from intimate portraits to author photos and ID cards—in a culture overflowing with selfies and digital identities.

Recorded Live at Borris Festival of Writing And Ideas 2025.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Row Bag: Author and academic, Rachel O'Dwyer brings her favourite luxury "dupe" into the Comfort Zone, where the conversation with Colm Tóibín takes in Bretton Woods, globalised labour and the extinction of the novel as we knew it. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Tortured Poets Department: art writer Orit Gat joins Luke Clancy to wave Colm Tóibín off on a journey out of his comfort zone, and into the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Caravaggio is celebrated this summer in Rome with a once-in-a-lifetime meetup of paintings normally living in museums around the world. Colm Toibin, Orit Gat and Luke Clancy went to see that blockbuster in the Barberini - as well as the many Caravaggios that are permanent Roman residents - and then gathered to imagine what the painter might mean to the 21st century.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Artist, Marianne Keating on her archival voyage into the lives of Irish migrants to the UK; Tadgh O'Sullivan's further encounters with artworks that never were; and harpist, Alannah Thornburgh plays the tunes of the fairy folk.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After Life: Aisling Kelliher joins Luke Clancy to wave Colm Tóibín off on a journey out of his comfort zone, and into the everyday supernatural of Hirokazu Kore-eda's 1998 film about work in an office debriefing the recently departed.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mulholland Drive: Anna Kornbluh ("Immediacy") joins Luke Clancy to wave Colm Tóibín off on a journey out of his comfort zone, and into David Lynch's mysterious, melancholic drift into Hollywood's dream machine/mincer.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.