By the Books Editor Into Iraq by Michael Palin (Hutchinson-Heinemann/€19.99/ £16.99) Having abandoned the Python squadron, Michael Palin has created a new strand to his life making travel documentaries. In his new book, which deals with a long-intended journey through Iraq, he admits to feeling the effects of what we can kindly call his mature years, but…
The Death of Jesus: Midrash in the Shadow of the Holocaust by Peter Keenan (Columba Books, €12.99/£10.99) This book is a continuation of the researches that Peter Keenan began to issue through the same publisher in 2021. In a review in these pages back then I felt that despite the deployment of much new information…
Doing Christianity: How religion is about what you do, not what you believe by Paul Higginson (Columba Books, €12.99 / £10.99) As a book for Eastertide, or indeed any time of the year, Paul Higginson’s book is much more interesting. It seems to me to derive more certainly from the precepts and actions of Jesus…
The news the other day from the Office of Public Works, that some vandal had scrawled the word ‘fraud’ across the standing stone on the Hill of Tara was dismaying. There is a programme underway to increase the visitor interest in the place, which decades ago lost out in popularity to Newgrange and the other…
Gan Focal/Frugal Speech poems by Gabriel Fitzmaurice, illustrated with paintings by Brenda Fitzmaurice (Arlen House, €15.00/£13.50) Gabriel Fitzmaurice published his first book of poetry back in 1981, and he then combined his own writing with translations of other poets from the Irish. Eventually he was challenged to write himself in Irish. He published a bilingual collection…
Hand in hand with the preservation of the ancient ‘rainforest’ woods and the creation of new stretches of proper woodslands (not the poisonous pine forest that pass for forestry in Ireland – goes the promotions of schemes for the reintroduction of Ireland’s ‘lost beasts’. But the manner in which eagles and others are poisoned by…
Lights for the Path by John Sullivan (Veritas, €24.99/£22.20) John Sullivan was formerly Professor of Christian Education at Liverpool Hope University, of which he is now an emeritus professor. Hope University is a unique institution, formed out of three Victorian teachers’ training colleges in an ecumenical union which now prospers as a developing third level…
The Spiritual Journey of St Patrick by Aidan J. Larkin SSC, with a foreword by Archbishop Eamon Martin (Messenger Publication, €14.95/£12.95) Tomorrow all the world that is Irish will mark St Patrick’s Day, mostly in ebullient hoolies it has to be said, rather than calm and settled consideration. Well, that is the way of the…
The Book of the Skelligs, edited by John Crowley and John Sheehan, photography by Valerie O’Sullivan (Cork University Press, €49/£43.90) The Great Lighthouses of Ireland, by David Hare (Gill Books, €27.99/£24.99) The filming in the recent past of two episodes of the continuing Star Wars franchise has transformed the world-wide perception of the…
“Who founded Skellig monastery?” remains a moot question, as the lawyers say. The relevant contributors to this book have to admit that though the name of St Fíonán is associated with the early centuries of Skellig’s human history, who truly founded the monastery is an obscure issue. But it may be that light on this…