Thomas O'Dwyer became a journalist after 12-years as a Royal Air Force officer. He was an analyst for the Beirut-based Arab Press Service, then chief editor of The Cyprus Mail in Nicosia. Reuters hired him as bureau chief of their first office in Cyprus. He worked as a Reuters correspondent across the Middle East and lived two years in Bahrain and Dubai. He covered the Lebanese war, terrorism and hijackings, and the Iran-Iraq tanker war. The Jerusalem Post hired him as foreign editor and gave him a personal column. He covered the Kuwait war, the first Palestinian uprising, and the Holy Land pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II. He has been a columnist with the International Herald Tribune and has written freelance for The Guardian, the Economist Intelligence Unit and openDemocracy magazine. He has also broadcast reports for Ireland's RTÉ radio. Email: thomas [at] odwyer.com
Website: http://www.thomasodwyer.com/
by Thomas O’Dwyer In the new Apple TV series, The Foundation, based on the novels of Isaac Asimov, two mathematicians, an old man and a young woman, wrestle with the concept of psychohistory and what it means for the future of the Imperial Galaxy. Psychohistory combines history, sociology, and mathematical models to predict the future…
by Thomas O’Dwyer Before we can save the planet, we need to expose and stop the willful planet killers. They’re not difficult to identify – it’s the usual science-hating suspects and their followers. Shortly after the United Nations released its shocking scientific report on climate change last week, one of my acquaintances who has a…
by Thomas O’Dwyer 1066 And All That, a sly rewrite of the history of England, was published in 1930 and became a perennial bestseller. Its subtitle was A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates. Written by W. C. Sellar…
by Thomas O’Dwyer Truth may be the first casualty of war or, nowadays, of politics, but few of us would have thought of using a map to look for lies. But thanks to Google Maps and other geographic meddlers, there may now be fewer lies in a Donald Trump speech than on the face of…
by Thomas O’Dwyer Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough, A flask of wine, a book of verse—and Thou Beside me singing in the wilderness— And Wilderness is Paradise enow. [Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam] On second thoughts, Omar, forget the loaf and thou. Just leave the flask. “You can trust me with your…
by Thomas O’Dwyer Complicated international agreements on managing the planet’s many human and natural resources may seem essentially modern, a consequence of the interdependence between nations that has been growing since the 19th century. Such accords are as necessary as sewage pipes that underpin healthy societies and just as boring. However, we possess copies of…
by Thomas O’Dwyer When you think you’ve heard all the nonsense or hype about the digital noise that is drowning out real life around us, along comes someone who spends $69 million to buy a piece of digital miasma. “A fool and his money are soon parted.” That’s a lot of money or a lot…
by Thomas O’Dwyer For some time, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro has been slyly replacing Dame Iris Murdoch as the author to whom I most regularly return. His enchanting and disturbing new novel, Klara and the Sun, his first since winning the 2017 Nobel Prize, is unlikely to diminish this trend. I wrote in a previous column:…
by Thomas O’Dwyer “Trust the science; follow the scientists” has become a familiar refrain during our past year of living dangerously. It is the admonition of world health organisations to shifty politicians; it is good advice for all whose lives have been battered into disruption by Covid-19. But another insidious pandemic has been creeping up…
by Thomas O’Dwyer At one point midway on our path in life, I came around and found myself searching through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost. How hard it is to say what that wood was, a wilderness savage, brute, harsh, and wild. Only to think of it renews my fear. The…
by Thomas O’Dwyer On 9 October 1990, President George H.W. Bush held a news conference about Iraqi-occupied Kuwait as the US was building an international coalition to liberate the emirate. He said: “I am very much concerned, not just about the physical dismantling but about some of the tales of brutality. It’s just unbelievable, some…
by Thomas O’Dwyer A British government decision to build a road tunnel near the prehistoric site of Stonehenge in the south of England has stirred up a hornets’ nest of protest, certain to grow louder and noisier when construction work begins. Archaeologists and environmentalists are among those leading the growing resistance to the 3-km Stonehenge…
by Thomas O’Dwyer “I just love the smell of an old book,” the American tourist drawled as she paid for a purchase in Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. After she left, the curmudgeonly owner, George Whitman, growled to no one in particular, “I wish people would stop talking about smelling fucking books. They’re for…
by Thomas O’Dwyer The Nobel Prize season is almost upon us and writers who cover the events are poised as usual to see if the awards ride in on any juicy scandals. In particular, we’re watching you, Peace and Literature. This pandemic year’s winners will have no glitter to adorn their prizes, no lavish dinners,…
by Thomas O’Dwyer A statue of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John MacDonald, has become the latest lump of kitsch concrete to hit the ground after protesters pulled it from a plinth in Montreal and cheered as the head broke off and bounced across the pavement. (MacDonald was linked to vicious policies that killed and…
by Thomas O’Dwyer A book subtitled A Novel of the Plague might appear opportunistic at this time. But in Maggie O’Farrell’s new and much-praised Hamnet, the only opportunity the author seems to be taking advantage of is our ignorance of the life of William Shakespeare. “Miraculous,” The Guardian wrote, “a beautiful imagination of the short…
by Thomas O’Dwyer Our world (made of atoms) is crammed with paradoxes. Particles act like waves, waves like particles And your cat can be dead and alive at the same time. Just step through your looking glass and welcome to the quantum world. “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you haven’t understood quantum mechanics,” the…
by Thomas O’Dwyer After suffering the injury of pandemic isolation for most of the year, the pride of Dublin city had insult added in May when a national treasure, Bewley’s Café, announced that its doors would be closed not just for the lockdown, but forever. Public outrage rippled out of the city and across the…
by Thomas O’Dwyer It seemed like a good idea. What better time than a pandemic lockdown to tackle again a feat that no human has so far accomplished and yet which seems to require nothing more than a comfortable chair, fingers that can turn pages, and a slice of uninterrupted time. It was another perfect…
by Thomas O’Dwyer With most of the planet under curfew, now might be a good time to ask, where’s my freedom of choice suddenly gone? Who (or what) determined, in some detail, how billions of us should act and behave for the foreseeable future? A troublesome ancient duo has returned – free will and its…