Maynooth College reflects on facing Life’s End Perspectives on Dying and Death edited by Jeremy Corley and others, with a foreword by Archbishop Farrell €14.95 /£12.95) This book represents, in my view, an interesting development in the teaching tradition of Maynooth, now of course a much larger and very different institution than it was back…
Disciples of Courage: Ten Christian Lives that Inspire by Brendan Comerford SJ (Messenger Publications, €19.95/£18.95) November has long been a month devoted to recalling the dead and to celebrating their achievements. With the constant pursuit of novelty and celebrity these days, such as Halloween and the commercialisation of the Dia de los Muertos (the Mexican…
by the editors of Sacred Space (Messenger Publications, €7.95/£6.95) The season of Advent begins at the end of next week, so now is the time to acquire this little seasonal volume, from a long familiar source. Through the prayers and meditations readers will be reminded of the synodal journey on which the people of God…
Pondering President Putin’s remarks on Russia’s role in history, I have come to think that some of Putin’s seemingly strange views might possibly be explained by the maps he used as a schoolboy. Like so many educated people around the world, his picture of the world has been seriously distorted by the types of school…
Leinster House: A House with Three Lives An exhibition at the Architectural Archive 45 Merrion Square Until November 25; admission free, 9am-5pm. In recent months anyone going down Kildare Street in central Dublin and passing the noble facade of Leinster House, one of the city’s finest public buildings, will have been able to read the…
Where the Light Fell: A Memoir by Philip Yancey (Hodder and Stoughton, £12.50/£10.99) Considering how influential they are, the forms of faith in the United States are very important, even when not to the taste of Europeans. The tropes of the Episcopalians, the bare style of the Congregationalists, these would be familiar, with echoes of…
The Song of Brigid’s Cloak by Catherine Ann Cullen Illustrated by Katya Swan (Beehive, €14.99/£14.99) There has been great interest in St Brigid of late among historians and writers. Some of these have been in their way controversial; but there is nothing controversial about this little book. It is altogether delightful. Award-winning children’s poet Catherine…
Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley (Hodder & Stoughton, €23.99/£25.00) Dr Lucy Worsley has become very much a fixture on our small screens, with a distinct penchant for dressing up in period costumes, which to some leaves an impression of history as mere fancy dress with a modern accent, rather than the…
Neil Jordan: Works for the Page, by Val Nolan Jr. (Cork University Press, €39.00 / £35.00) Neil Jordan’s career as an artist has been a curious one. He started, as so many writers do, by publishing a slim book with a short-lived and long vanished Irish publisher. But then a period of time working for…
Turner: The Sun is God, Exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland, mounted in association with the Tate Gallery London; runs to 6 February 2023; Beit Wing, Rooms 6-10; tickets €5 (entry free on Wednesdays, 9.15-11.30 am) Curated by Niamh MacNally and David Blayney Brown Many years ago the English painter John Piper remarked that…