The Beauty of God’s Presence in the Fathers of the Church.

Looking at the Middle East as “the cradle of Christianity”

A selection for summer reading

For the serious political buff this is the read of the summer. Whether Hilary Clinton will run for the White House remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma. This book recounts her experiences as American Secretary of State, dealing directly with the foreign affairs of the United States. This is one of the most sensitive…

For those still absorbed in the current of Irish politics Pat Leahy’s book about the inner tensions of the present coalition will make an absorbing read, as riveting as his account of Fianna Fail in Government as the economy collapsed. Not exactly escapist reading, but necessary perhaps. 

In 1956 Boris Pasternak, who had a recognised place in modern Russian literature as a poet, but was not otherwise widely known, passed to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the Marxist publisher in Milan, the manuscript of a novel on which he had been working for many years, and which it had proved impossible to publish within the…

An entertaining collection of dishes, many suited to outdoor cooking, which will enliven the summer season. Not all Asia cooking is red hot curry or over chillied Thai food. Many cultures provide subtle flavour food, largely distinguished by its use of fresh fish and vegetables. While trailing round the roads of Asia by motorcycle may…

This is the seventh and final instalment in the continuing story of Martha Long’s heroine. All have been most successful, but this book has a striking twist to its tale. Learning her childhood abuser is dying, the girl hopes she can witness his last pains and delight in them. But the experience turns out not…

This is a debut novel, but one which has been widely praised for its atmospheric treatment of the theme. The Dutch interiors, so familiar from paintings, here become the setting in the house and in the miniature doll’s house version of it, the setting for a playing out of the injunction of St Luke that…

This is a ‘reimagining’ of  the Jane Austen novel, the second in a series. This may seem a strange sort of project, but the result, with the abbey now set in the Scottish Borders, a far cry from the genteel settings of Jane Austen’s original. But this novel too is great fun, which indeed is…