The Great Dreamer: The Life and Mission of St Francis Xavier by Brendan Comerford (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £11.95) St Francis Xavier is among the most celebrated of the original body of Jesuits. He has been the subject of many biographies and devotional books in the past – the author mentions some of them on…
The other day to a female associate of mine (which is modern speak for my wife) who remarked to me that she had a clear recollection of a prayer used in her Dublin convent school in the early 1950s, she thinks about 1953, which the diocese had asked to be used in both schools and…
Miniature Masterpieces: Cultural identity, artistic expression and a century of Irish stamps, by Stephen Ferguson (National Print Museum, €12.00; also available from the GPO Archives & Museum) The first Irish stamps of the Free State were standard British stamps, adorned with King George’s head, over-printed for Irish use temporarily in the new domain. But soon…
Michael Healy 1873-1941: A Túr Gloine’s Stained Glass Pioneer, by David Caron (Four Courts Press, €55.00 / £50.00) Back in October 1906, Robert Elliot in his pioneering book Art and Ireland lamented that so many churches in Ireland seemed to prefer to fill the windows of their churches with stained glass imported ready made from…
A Nation is Born: Ireland in Colour 1923-1938, edited by Michael B. Barry and John O’Byrne (Gill books, €26.99 / £25.99) The title of this book is a complete misnomer. But then that is the sort of thing that happens when a complex subject is popularised for Christmastime consumption. Ireland in 1923 did not see…
Every year it has been customary on these books pages to recall aspects of the accounts of the Nativity given in two of the Gospels. Each year, surprisingly enough, there always seems something new to say. This is as true this year as in all those earlier years; all 2,000 or so of them going…
A new deal on the State files annual release This year the reports on the State files’ annual release, which has become very much a fixture of the turnover between Christmas and the New Year, will take a different form as it appears in the pages of the papers and in other media. Rather than…
Thomas McCarthy Theo Dorgan’s Once Was A Boy (Dedalus Press, Dublin) is a memoir of childhood told through poems, many of them written in highly effective tercets. The book is a singular act of recovery, like the best memoir, of a near-inaccessible past through precise description and a child’s heightened awareness. This is a wonderful…
The Universe Provides: Finding Miracles and Inspiration in Unexpected Places, by Eddie Gilmore (Darton, Longman & Todd, £9.99) At the beginning of December and the coming of the Christmas season, Eddie Gilmore had only been a couple of weeks in Ireland. He came here to work at An Síol, the L’Arche residence down in Callan…
Lift Up Their Hearts: Visiting Older People, Guidelines and Resources, by Mary Threadgold RSC (Messenger Publications, €6.95) This little booklet presents the essence of the experience of many years that Sr Mary Threadgold has worked with patients of all kinds, especially the elderly. It falls into two parts, the first dealing with the skills to…