Parnell’s Other Island: Charles Stewart Parnell’s life and times in late Victorian Britain, by Alan F. Parkinson (Eastwood Books, €25.00 / £21.50) The title of this book echoes that of George Bernard Shaw’s 1904 play John Bull’s Other Island, but with the conceit inverted. Whereas Shaw was referring to Ireland, Parnell’s other island was…
It is becoming ever more challenging to find priests to fill vacancies in parishes, the Bishop of Achonry and Elphin, Dr Kevin Doran, has said. He is urging parishes to build up administrative and lay support to ease the workload of priests who often have to minister to several parishes at once. Speaking to Shannonside…
How is Catholicism to remain relevant in an increasingly secular society? That is the question which the French priest-writer Jean Sulivan (1913-1980) grappled with in his writings, and it lies at the heart of this study of Sulivan by the distinguished Franco-Irish scholar, Eamon Maher. Jean Sulivan was the pseudonym of Joseph Lemarchand, a native…
Seán Lemass, The Lost Memoir: The autobiography of Ireland’s most admired Taoiseach, edited by Ronan McGreevy (Eriu / Bonnier, £22.00 / £20.00) The title of this book is misleading. It is neither a memoir nor an autobiography of Seán Lemass, but rather the edited transcripts of taped interviews that Lemass gave to businessman Dermot…
Made in America: The dark history that led to Donald Trump, by Edward Stourton. (Torva /Transworld Penguin, £20.00 / €28.00) My country, ’tis of thee / Sweet land of liberty / Of thee I sing” – the anthem of which these are the opening words has been a staple of American popular culture since…
Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and its Maker, by Zachery Leader (Harvard University Press, £29.95 / €34.50) Richard Ellmann was the author of what is regarded as the definitive biography of James Joyce, published in 1959. In Ellmann’s Joyce, Zachary Leader explores not only how Ellmann went about composing that biography but…
The Taoiseach: a century of political leadership, edited by Iain Dale (Swift Press, €23.99 / £20.00) This collection of essays about the sixteen men who have led Irish governments has the subtitle: “a century of political leadership”. The essays, however, demonstrate that leadership qualities were in short supply in independent Ireland. Of the sixteen,…
A different kind of power: a memoir, by Jacinda Ardern (Macmillan, £25 / €19.99) Jacinda Ardern was aged 37 when she became the fortieth prime minister of New Zealand in 2017, the youngest person to hold that office since 1856. She was the third woman to fill the role. This memoir traces her humble…
Dillon Rediscovered: The newspaperman who befriended kings, presidents and oil tycoons, by Kevin Rafter (Martello Publishing, €20/ £16.99) Emile Joseph Dillon, born in Dublin in 1854, seemed from his early youth to be destined to become a Roman Catholic priest. He was the only surviving son of modest, pious parents living close to the quays…
Letter from America On the last Sunday in February, I attended Mass at the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia. I was visiting that city to attend the 2025 national meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies. The cathedral is sumptuously decorated, and inevitably that distracted me from my prayers. Among…