Fountain of Living Water: Poetry, Prayers and Hymns of the Mystics of the Early Church of the East (Gracewing, £12.99 / €15.50) When many people read the gospels they think they are hearing the words of Jesus himself. But the gospels were written in a Greek dialect; Jesus actually spoke Aramaic. Here in Ireland we…
Gothic: Building Castles in post-Union Ireland, by Judith Hill (Four Courts Press, € 50.00 / £45.00) Castles have an immediate appeal to many people, myself among them. I can still recall as a special moment of my childhood my first visit with my family to Charleville Castle near Tullamore in a now long distant…
The Ox and the Ass of the Manger, by Jules Supervielle, translated from the original French by Sr Elizabeth McGeown (Published at the Carmelite Monastery, Star of the Sea, Seapark, Malahide, €4.99 plus p+p; email rmebodc@gmail.com) This is an unusual little book. Intended perhaps as a Christmas gift, this is a poetic evocation of the nativity…
Ulysses in Limericks, by Tom Matthews (New Island Books, €9.95) The caricatures of Tom Matthews have been a fixture of Irish and British publications for several decades. His talent is of a partial kind. With great economy of line he can deflate those overblown attitudes which are so common these if only in the…
Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, by David Hockney (Thames & Hudson, second revised edition, £30.00 / €34.50PB) In the many articles covering the death of British artist David Hockney a fortnight ago, few made mention of an aspect of his thinking that those interested in the difficulties of art history…
Dazzling Darkness: The Lives and Afterlives of the Christian Mystics, by James Harpur (Hurst Books, £25.00 / €30.00) Though these are for many “the times that try men’s souls” – the phrase of an American patriot of a time long past – interest and concern with the extended tradition of Christian mysticism has not declined in the…
The first encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIV opens with a focused expression of what the pontiff has to say: “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” He…
Biographers are usually so busy investigating other people’s lives, as to pay little attention to their own. However, in this revealing book Anne Chambers recounts some of her experiences as a biographer, providing interesting sidelights on Irish writing and publishing. As an account of a long career by a non-fiction writer, it is a rare…
The completion and inauguration of a cathedral is a rare event in modern Europe. Yesterday the Pope was in Barcelona to inaugurate the cathedral of the Holy Family on the centenary of the death of its architect Antoni Gaudi. These two books provide two contrasting biographies for readers. Peter Stanford, a well known British Catholic…
Some weeks ago, a weekend paper carried a large notice of an art auction due to be held on May 25 in Dublin. One of the pictures caught my wife’s eye: it was a familiar yet different image, a version in water colour of the large oil painting ‘Mass in a Connemara Cottage’ by Aloysius…