In the week since our last issue the world has been marking the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. This has evoked many articles, and a Hollywood film, Parkland, about the immediate aftermath of the crime. We all of us remember where we were when we heard the…
Peter Costello
Music work rich in scholarship
This new reference work, like the Dictionary of Irish Biography, fills a long perceived need, for it covers not only all aspects of music, composition and performance in Ireland, it deals with traditional classical and modern composers. Nor in a country where Handel’s Messiah had its first performance, is sacred music neglected, but it is…
A critque of imperialism
Irish involvement with Africa is all too often seen though the work of missionaries, especially in Nigeria and Kenya. But this reissue of a book by the late Wicklow novelist Gerald Hanley, better known for The Year of the Lion and Gilligan’s Last Elephant, deals with a very different area and very different kind of…
Perspectives on Parnell
Parnell Reconsidered, edited by Pauric Travers and Donal McCartney (UCD Press, €28.00 / £24.00)
Relics of saintly lives
Holy Bones and Holy Dust: How Relics Shape the History of Medieval Europe Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs
Gypsy Lore
The World of Books The recent incident involving two fair-haired Roma children being taken into protection by the Garda has raised concerns about the arbitrary intervention of the State in some circumstances. It also revealed, which is of just as much concern, that folklore about Roma, or Romany, or Gypsies, is rife in Ireland. Merely changing the…
An exploration of St Matthew
Gathered in My Name: Praying with St Matthew by Albert McNally (Shanaway Press, €14.00 / £12.00)
Dublin down the years
The South Circular Road Dublin on the eve of the First World War by Catherine Scuffil (Four Courts Press / Maynooth Studies in Local History, €8.95/£7.95) A Portrait of Dublin in Maps by Muiris de Buitléir (Gill & Macmillan, €29.99 / £26.99)
The spirit of place
Consolations of the Forest: Alone in cabin in the middle Taiga, by Sylvain Tesson (Allen Lane, €18.99 / £16.99) Tóchar: Walking Ireland’s ancient pilgrim paths, by Darach MacDonald (New Island Books, €14.99 / £12.99)
The faithful few
The Archbishops, Bishops and Priests who served in the Archdiocese of Dublin in the Eighteenth Century, by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €24.00/£22.00)