I have written stories on everything from experimental architecture, to medical mysteries, to London Fashion Week. Here are a selection of my culture stories:
For the Guardian, I shot a photo essay and wrote a feature story about how tourism has blighted the city of Amsterdam.
Is Amsterdam really a ‘lawless urban jungle’ at night, as its ombudsman described it?
The @guardian sent me out to capture the scene. Photos and words here https://t.co/QO6YITs2H1 pic.twitter.com/22oeWqz1Xl— Naomi O’Leary (@NaomiOhReally) August 5, 2018
I’m very grateful to her family for sharing with me her memories of Freddie Oversteegen, the Dutch resistance fighter who killed Nazis and rescued Jewish children as a teenager in the occupied Netherlands.
My piece in the @guardian this weekend https://t.co/pYTt9QEU2V— Naomi O’Leary (@NaomiOhReally) September 23, 2018
I reported for AFP about a language born in London’s melting pot and on the rise throughout Britain: Multicultural London English. It includes elements from sources as varied as the Caribbean, West Africa, Britain’s grime hip hop movement and the ex-colonial English of Pakistan.
The deaths of a series of young athletes in their prime revealed how little is known about conditions such as sudden cardiac death, and how to prevent them. I investigated the issue with Reuters’ health and science correspondent Kate Kelland.
Athletes’ sudden cardiac deaths expose big knowledge gaps http://t.co/58LgaiVI via @reuters @kkelland #marathon
— André Picard (@picardonhealth) May 14, 2012
I wrote about how city planners in Dublin threatened to raise historical sites just as they were commemorated in the centenary of the Easter Rising here.
I wrote a story for AFP about a discovery that rewrote Irish history: a bear bone with signs of butchering 2,500 years earlier than humans were thought to have lived on the island. It was published by The Guardian among others.
Human history in Ireland rewritten as scientists get down to bear bones https://t.co/Rzv6l6UQUc
— The Guardian (@guardian) March 21, 2016
In my early years as a journalist I often wrote about travel, the arts and food. Most of this work was for small publications and is no longer online as the links have become obselete. But here is a piece I wrote for the Irish Independent about a young Dublin chef who had found himself working at the best restaurant in the world, Noma of Copenhagen.