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 As Valentine’s Day fades away and the world returns to slippery gender normality, many Western men may still have some nagging questions. What did I do wrong this time? What do women want? Are we still on trial here? Older men may mutter that the male half of the young population has…
by Thomas O’Dwyer French President Emmanuel Macron has set a very large cat among the pigeons of global antiquities trading and curating. The cat – catalogue – is a report he commissioned in March 2018 and it’s named The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics. It identifies tens of thousands of cultural artifacts…
by Thomas O’Dwyer A pretty doll in a box at the foot of the bed – what could make a better Christmas morning for a little girl? “Aaw, she’s so pretty.” The doll promised happy days to come – hair to brush and style, outfits to make and match, private chats to be had. Good…
by Thomas O’Dwyer Now that the hundred years have passed, can we wrap up World War I, stick a label on it and dispatch it to the archives of dead history? Otherwise, it’s going to be with us forever. If you are old enough to remember the 1968 events for the 50th anniversary, then you’ve…
by Thomas O’Dwyer When a plane lands at Larnaca in Cyprus, as it rolls past the control tower one can glimpse on a misty horizon the lone pyramid of Stavrovouni mountain. The ugly airport tower then obscures the steep mountain and the ancient monastery on its summit. It could be a metaphor for modernity obliterating…
by Thomas O’Dwyer Drumcliffe churchyard lies in the shadow of a flat-topped mountain, in the western Irish countryside of Sligo county, on the Atlantic coast. There are remains of a round tower and a carved Celtic high cross. It would be the perfect resting place for a country’s greatest poet – especially if the poet…
by Thomas O’Dwyer The career of Kenneth Widmerpool defined an era of British social and cultural life spanning most of the 20th century. He is fictional – a character in Anthony Powell’s 12-volume sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time – but he is as memorable as any historical figure. In the first volume, he…
by Thomas O’Dwyer When Mrs. William Shakespeare died on this August day in 1623, her family and friends believed they would lay her to eternal rest beside her renowned husband. They did not. They did inter an ordinary wife and mother, but the memory of her went out to become a Frankenstein monster, cut up…