RHA exhibition at the National Gallery, Room 21 at the National Gallery until October 22. Curated by Kate McBride and others from both the RHA and the NGI. The limited exhibition at the National Gallery is one of some special interest concerning the advancement of women artists in modern Ireland. The Royal Irish Academy during…
The Philosophers’ Daughters, edited by Peter Vardy (Darton, Longman and Todd, £12.99/ €15.50) Peter Vardy was vice-principal of Heythrop College, University of London, and now runs the largest conferences for students of Philosophy and Religious Studies in Britain. In this thought-provoking book he has gathered a number of questions posed by his two young daughters, Petra…
‘Irish Explorers of the Jordan Rift Valley and the Euphrates Valley in the 1830s: Scientific Adventure and Imperialism’, in George Moore: Dublin, Paris, Hollywood, by Haim Goren, edited by Conor Montague and Adrian Frazier (Irish Academic Press, €26.99 pb/ €44.99 hb) I was recently given this book as a present from someone who knew…
More Book Reviews 1896-2023 by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €24.00/ £21.00) J. Anthony Gaughan is one of our regular reviewers and has been for many years. This is the second and concluding collection of his book reviews of all over the years since 1975. Many of these reviews appeared in these pages, but by no…
The Contemporary Woman: Can she really have it all, by Michele Guinness (Hodder, £10.99/ €12.99) Author Michele Guinness is one of the Guinness clan, the Anglo-Irish brewing family of longstanding fame, but only by marriage. Back in 1999 she wrote a widely selling family history called The Guinness Spirit, which many found both entertaining and…
The Douai Martyrs, by Gerard Skinner (Gracewing Publishing, £14.99/ €17.99) Gerard Skinner, who once studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and later at the Venerable English College in Rome. He is the author of many books, including the valuable Newman the Priest. Here, however, he turns to a theme which should perhaps…
Shaping the Assembly: How our buildings form us in worship, ed. by Thomas O’Loughlin (Messenger Publications, €25.00/£23.23) Thomas O’Loughlin is a distinguished scholar who has taught at several institutions in England, retiring as a professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham. This book brings into focus several of his long standing concerns. It is a…
Spectral Mansions: The Making of a Dublin Tenement, 1800-1914, by Timothy Murtagh (Four Courts Press for Dublin City Council with aid from the Heritage Council, €30.00/ £26.00) To those familiar only with the ever-rebuilding Dublin of today, there is in this book a strangely prophetic cartoon from a Dublin comic paper of July 1914, captioned…
The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State, by Anna M. Grzymała-Busse (Princeton University Press, €98.00/ £84.00; also in paperback) They read the roots of the European state in a positive way, and as an endorsement, so to speak, of Augustinian City of God. But that is not quite what the author had in…
The significance of the date, for those not perhaps as steeped in national lore as others, is that it marks the birth of Arthur Griffith in 1871. He died, as many more will remember, on August 12, 1922, of sudden heart failure; to be closely followed 10 days later by the death in action of…