Letter from America 1946-2004, by Alistair Cooke (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, €14.99pb / £25.00 hb) Here is a most enthralling book that echoes the great days of radio, when a human voice, albeit of a great journalist, could engage people with current affairs in a way that our snippy-snappy media does not in our…
Here is a book which will interest and delight those many viewers who have followed the career of one of the country’s leading broadcasters. Miriam O’Callaghan was born on January 6 at Cornelscourt, Co. Dublin. Her father was a civil servant, her mother was a teacher. Miriam attended St Brigid’s, the local national school in which…
There are two parts in this book. The first part is a history of the Newell family. The second is a collection of short stories written by Máirtín Ó Tnúthail, one of the most distinguished members of that family, under the nomme de plume ‘Dermot L. Martyn’. These were written in the decades after World…
Our history is full of untold and almost unknown lives. Twenty-five years ago, while researching a book on the Royal Irish Constabulary, I first got to know something about Tom Hughes (b. February 1, 1891). He was one of the constables in Listowel barracks in June 1920 when the British government declared Munster to be…
The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, by Fergal Keane (William Collins, £10.99) Fergal Keane was born in London on January 6, 1961. His father, Eamon, was a professional actor, and his mother also “trod the boards”. He is a nephew of John B. Keane, the playwright. In his…
Kings, Druids and Traitors: Once Upon a Time in Ireland, by William Collins, (Doon Press, from Amazon.ie, €15.27 pb / €24.88 hb, ebook is €4.35) This is a darkly glowing saga, akin to the medieval dramas now so well-known from film and television in The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. The author…
From Bullets to Ballots: Politics and Electioneering in Post-Civil War Kerry, 1923-33, by Owen O’Shea (University College Dublin Press, €30.00 / £24.99) This is an account of how Kerry people emerged from the horrors of the Civil War, or as the author pithily puts it – how they settled their political differences by ballots…
From Crown to Harp: How the Anglo-Irish Treaty was Undone, 1921 – 1949, by David McCullagh (Gill Books, €26.99 / £25.99) This is an account of the three decades in Ireland which followed the War of Independence. Those years featured a number of remarkable Irish persons. Not least among them was Alfred O’Rahilly, an…
Listowel Food Fair: Tríoche Bliain ag Fás (Thirty Years a-Growing) 1995-2025, edited by James Deenihan and Annette McElligot (Listowel Food Fair, €20 + €4.00 p&p; email James Deenihan: info@listowelfoodfair.ie; copies locally from Woulfe’s Bookshop, 7 Church Street, Listowel) The Listowel Food Fair was established in 1995 by a committee headed by Jimmy Deenihan. However, much…
Unbeatable: Father Tom Jones: Handball Supremo, by Tom Looney (Red Stripe Press, €14.99) Tom Jones was born in Tralee, Co. Kerry, on December 23, 1868. In his early years, he attended the local Christian Brothers school and the local Dominican Classical school. As he intended to study for the priesthood in the diocese of Kerry,…