{"id":333690,"date":"2026-03-07T11:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T11:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/333690\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T11:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T11:27:14","slug":"a-portrait-of-the-artist-and-the-sound-of-nature-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/333690\/","title":{"rendered":"A portrait of the artist and the sound of nature \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time and the Forest, Radio 4<\/p>\n

Morning Ireland, RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n

Woman\u2019s Hour, Radio 4<\/p>\n

THIS portrait of the sculptor David Nash opens with the sound of trees \u2013 the ease and creak of living wood, as if they are whispering to us.<\/p>\n

\"Review:<\/a>\"Song<\/a><\/p>\n

A tree is loaded with time, says Nash, and this is a portrait of the artist and his meditation on time and nature; how everything in time is moving and changing.<\/p>\n

In 1977, David Nash moved to Wales, to an old slate mining area, far from the world of his artistic contemporaries, a place of quiet and low visibility.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to his 80th birthday, he takes us on a walk through the woods with him near his adopted homeland of Blaenau Ffestiniog.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not Welsh by blood but the land here lives in me just as I live in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are tongues in trees and limbs in wood \u2013 the artist works to balance nature and human nature.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a beautiful portrait in sound from Falling Tree productions (it had to be) and worth a listen.<\/p>\n

\"GrahamGraham Norton has written six novels (Jane Barlow\/PA) <\/p>\n

We like to keep it local when we read. A survey of more than 300 libraries across the Republic of Ireland found that seven out of the 10 most borrowed books last year were from Irish authors.<\/p>\n

Graham Norton, Sally Rooney and John Boyne are all extremely popular, and top of the Irish writers\u2019 list was Norton\u2019s Frankie.<\/p>\n

The writer Richard Osman was the most borrowed author, but seven out of 10 is not bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hear ourselves, we hear our friends, our family, we recognise situations, places,\u201d Darina Molloy, senior executive librarian at Mayo Libraries, told RT\u00c9\u2019s Morning Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s escapism but escapism to a place we know very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Irish appetite for crime novels seems insatiable \u2013 she cited writers like Jane Casey.<\/p>\n

While the Driver Theory Test Guide has fallen out of the top 10, it is very high up there, she added.<\/p>\n

A Woman\u2019s Hour special, meanwhile, offered a guide to sleep.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare called it \u201cnature\u2019s soft nurse\u201d and the lack of sleep can lay you low.<\/p>\n

This easy chat wasn\u2019t for people suffering from sleep disorders but rather offered reassurance to many of us who faces the challenges, brought on by a new baby or the menopause or just the aging process.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the issue is not actually sleep \u2013 we tend to blame it – but the underlying invisible mental load of life.<\/p>\n

Perhaps ditching the idea that you absolutely must have eight hours a night is a good start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Time and the Forest, Radio 4 Morning Ireland, RT\u00c9 Radio 1 Woman\u2019s Hour, Radio 4 THIS portrait of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153557,61,60,41271,15449,1576,80],"class_list":["post-333690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-graham-norton-show-new-deal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-norton","tag-pa2025","tag-showbiz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}