JEAN KENNEDY SMITH: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obit of Jean Kennedy Smith, the last of the Kennedy siblings, went online yesterday at the Guardian, you can link to it here. It should appear in the paper paper soon.

I had written it a few years ago for stock, and there was little to change. I added some details and clarified the Northern Irish peace process a bit, but basically it was as written. I would have liked to have spent more time on her childhood, and the aura of privilege which she enjoyed, but with the space I had, the issues more important to our British audience were paramount. I'm not sure her bit part in Michael Collins was as important as it seems to be the way I wrote it, but it was a nice bit of trivia to include.I did think the Barack O'Bama endorsement was a great way to conclude, especially with the references to John Hume.

BELFAST, BOXING & EAMONN MAGEE: MY MEDIUM/LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS ESSAY

Last November I was commissioned by the London Review Of Books to write a long essay on The Lost Soul Of Eamonn Magee, a biography of the Belfast boxer. As I filed the piece, the book was joint winner of the William Hill prize for sports book of the year, which I thought might get it into print quickly. As it happened, I got the proofs of the story, very nicely edited, in March. But it got bumped from its scheduled publication then, and when I checked on it four months later, was told it was now out of date, and with summer holidays at the paper about to begin, it was killed.

The story itself is certainly not out of date: whether you consider it about Magee himself, about boxing in general, or about Northern Ireland and the society and culture in which Magee grew up. So the essay is now up at Medium, you can link to it here. Read it and if you like it, please give it a clap.

DISNEY & THE GEORGIA ABORTION BOYCOTT: MY FRONT ROW INTERVIEW

Yesterday I appeared on BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme, talking with John Wilson about the Disney announcement they would not engage in production in Georgia if their newly-passed abortion ban came into effect. You can link to it here. Front Row booked me to speak without knowing my personal connection with Bob Iger, the Disney CEO, but that was both a good hook and something we did not linger on. You may recall last year there was some talk of Bob's running for president.

John and I had to cut the talk short because the previous interview had gone long, so I was rushing, and made a couple of verbal slips (New Jersey, not New York, was the second state pitching for business) and I didn't get to mention that Black Panther and the new Avengers movie were both filmed in Georgia. Judges in two states (Iowa, a state judge and Utah a federal judge) have struck down the bills passed by legislatures, while it has not passed in either Florida or Texas, the state where the original Roe v Wade case was brought.

But one important point we didn't get to was the possible knock -on effect in the Uniter Kingdom, specifically in Northern Ireland. Game Of Thrones was filmed there, as is Line Of Duty among others, but if the petitions against working in US states trying to limit abortion in the face of the national law, someone will eventually notice that Northern Ireland already does the same thing in this country, and their abortion ban is in some ways even stricter than Georgia's.