The Captain and the Saint: The Story of St Oliver Plunkett, by Fintan Tracey (Published by Fintan Tracey, Drogheda, €10.00 plus €2.50 postage, direct from fintansfineart@gmail.com) Next year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of St Oliver Plunkett. This little book by Drogheda-based artist Fintan Tracey is the first small droplet of what will…
Some Occasional Writings 2003-2024, by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €25.00 / £21.50) Reviews and occasional writings are exactly that, articles written to meet a specific occasion. And yet since the 18th century such pieces have provided some of the finest and most entertaining writing available. I relish and reread such collections as Graham…
Keeping the Faith, by Alf McCreary (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) This is a sombre and sobering book, one dealing with the Northern situation that could have driven a saint to despair, but it is also a book that carries a final message to never despair, however appalling and inhuman the situation. Alf McCreary tells…
The Yeats Sisters and Irish Design: Making, Identities & Legacies An exhibition in the Long Room of the Old Library, Trinity College, Dublin Currently mounted in the Long Room of the Library at Trinity College is an exhibition on the life and work of the Yeats Sisters, which draws on the immense collection of…
The Hell Fire Club, Dublin’s Dance with the Devil, by Maurice Curtis (The Old Dublin Press, €20.00 hb) Sléithe Séadchomartha Bhaile Átha Cliath, Sharon Greene & Noel Jackman, designed by Sara Nyland, An Siopa Leabah, 6 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, D02 VH98; free of charge (but packing and postage extra) When I was a…
Araby House: James Joyce and all the neighbours on North Richmond Street, Dublin 1820-1998, by Michael Quinn (The James Joyce Centre, 35 North Great George’s Street, Dublin, €15.00) The month of June has in recent decades become dedicated to Mr James Joyce. But there are odd overlooked aspects of Joycean Dublin. Many Joycean writers…
The circumstances of the recovery in Dublin of a lost painting by Michelangelo Caravaggio on the walls of the dining room of the Jesuit residence in Leeson Street, a picture which is now hung with pride in the National Gallery on Merrion Square for all to see, has given the painter a special appeal to…
Tales from the Tower: A Personal History of the James Joyce Tower & Museum by its Curators by Vivien Igoe & Robert Nicholson, edited by Breandán Ó Broin, introduction by Vincent Bowne (Martello Publishing, €15.95 / £14.99) This little book is produced by the Friends of the Joyce Tower Society and co-funded by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown…
Mam an’ Me: Living a Life Time in a Day by Kieran J. Coote, with a foreword by Dr Marie Murray and an afterword by Áine Lawlor (Red Stripe Press, €12.99 / £11.00) The very striking cover on this book is a piece of art by Steve O’Neill, evocative of what happens with the onset and…
As I write this the Republic of India, the world’s largest democracy, is voting in a general election of a most complicated kind, with polling across the states in an extended series of ballots. This is the largest election in the world. By the time this article appears in print, unless something cataclysmic happens, and…