IN A (professional) lifetime spent in and out of prisons, visits to Maghaberry and the Maze were among the strangest I made.

1. WHEN did you think about a career in writing and what were your first steps into it? I came to it by accident, when a friend cajoled me into joining a writing group in 2014, when I was 47.

WHEN best-selling author Brian McGilloway last spoke to The Irish News, in early March 2020, Covid had just hit the headlines and lockdown had put paid to planned launch events for his acclaimed standalone novel The Last Crossing.

RENOWNED English novelist John Le Carré died an Irishman after he took citizenship before his death in December last year.

ON MARCH 7 1921, the Protests and Appeals Committee of the Irish Football Association (IFA) met to schedule the replay of an Irish Cup semi-final tie between Dublin-based club Shelbourne and Lurgan-based club Glenavon.

HE'S the TV bushcraft expert who's travelled to some of the wildest regions of the planet, from the tropical lushness of the Amazon rainforest to the chilly wilds of the Arctic – but Ray Mears says his favourite place to ramble is still his home place, Britain.

"IT WAS a work of art.

"SHANNON McNulty was born to give me a break from another book I was writing," explains Co Down crime author Gerard Brennan of how his new heroine was 'birthed' as a stress buster while working on his acclaimed 2018 novel Disorder.