The Story of Us: Independent Ireland and 1926 Census, Edited by Orlaith McBride and John Gibney (Irish Academic Press, €24.99 / £22.99) This book, prepared to accompany the release of the forms from the Irish Free State Census in 1926, is surely misnamed. What in fact is the communal collective of the title intended to…
Daily Wisdom – Léann an Lae: Irish Proverbs and Sayings for Each Day of the Year, by John Quinn (Red Stripe Press, €14.99 / £17.50) Author John Quinn died on New Years Day at the age of 84. This book was originally published some six years ago by the now defunct Veritas Publication, whose disappearance was a…
The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland, edited by Gladys Daniel and Andrew Holmes (Oxford University Press, £137.50 / €130.00) Readers who are not dismayed by the suggested price of this academic book will find that it provides a wider view of Ireland in contrast to the letter box view provided by the Census of 1926.…
Mount Jerome: Dublin’s Victorian Cemetery, by Maurice Curtis (The Old Dublin Press, €24.95 / £21.99) Cemeteries have a peculiar fascination for my imagination. But they have their perils. I can still recall the great difficulty of navigating between the plots to reach the grave of the poet and economist George Russell (“AE”), when a…
I held the pen and God did the Writing, by John Tado (Cocoon Press, €10.00 / £ 8.99) The author of this little volume of poems, his second, is a Cork man who began late in life writing what he sees as the poems of a “Catholic poet”. Very much a local man, the…
No Church is an Island: 175 Years of St John the Evangelist, Sandymount, Dublin, by Alyson Gavin Lysaght & Shabnam Vasisht (€20.00; to purchase contact the church office at sandynount@dublin.anglican.org) This is a book which those who already have Dr Ian Milne’s history of St Bartholomew’s, Clyde Road, will like to have, as it fills out more…
From the Earth to the Moons and Around It, by Jules Verne (Aladdin Books / Simon & Schuster, €16.50 / £14.50; many other editions also available) The successful voyage around the moon by the crew of Artemis II brought to my mind this pioneering novel by Jules Verne, who is rightly described as the “inventor of…
The big event in Ireland in recent days has been the release by the National Archives of the online version of the digitalised forms filled in by every household in the country on April 18, 1926 forming the first census since 1911, a census which now presents us with a picture of the then Irish…
William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy, by Alice Insley, Anne Hodge and Christina Morin (National Gallery of Ireland / Tate Gallery, €40.00 / £35.00) Exhibition organised by NGI in collaboration with the Tate Gallery, London, curated by Alice Insley and Anne Hodge. Runs to July 19, 2026; Rooms 6-10. Tickets online from €0 – €16. …
Exhibition in The Long Room, Trinity College Library, open now, continuing to June 30, 2026. For details, visit visittrinity.ie/book-of-kells-experience. Entrance charge. Booking essential; visit tcd.ie/visitors/. Character is Better than Wealth: The Enduring Legacy of Michael Davitt’ is the broad title of an exhibition currently on display in the Long Room of Trinity College Library. Drawing on…