The Phantom Diner series is sponsored by Urban Valet Cleaners. A shillelagh, or Blackthorn stick, is an Irish club typically made from the Blackthorn tree. With a Blackthorn in hand a gentleman could ...

On July 23 a 19th-century Irish shillelagh or faction fighting stick went under the hammer at Fonsie Mealy's Chatsworth Summer Sale. The stick was 105cm long and mounted with an engraved plaque ...

A BLACKTHORN walking stick once owned by James Craig has sold for £10,000 at an auction in Belfast. The sale at a Belfast auction house on Tuesday went for a fifth of the total paid for a stick ...

A WALKING stick owned by Northern Ireland's first prime minister, James Craig, is expected to be sold for up to £5,000 when it goes up for auction in Belfast next week. Craig, who led the Ulster ...

To those who like to muse that traditional music is caught in an ever-decreasing spiral of self-regard, this collection from classically-trained New York clarinettist Andy Lamy will halt that hoary ...

Dick Strawbridge, 61, grew up in Ulster, Ireland, where men traditionally use blackthorn sticks, and revealed at one point during his career he relied on a stick passed down through his family ...

There is a good crop of sloes in my neck of the woods this autumn. Sloes are, of course, the fruits of the Blackthorn that dense spiny shrub with a common name that refers to both its dark bark and ...