The completion and inauguration of a cathedral is a rare event in modern Europe. Yesterday the Pope was in Barcelona to inaugurate the cathedral of the Holy Family on the centenary of the death of its architect Antoni Gaudi. These two books provide two contrasting biographies for readers. Peter Stanford, a well known British Catholic…
Some weeks ago, a weekend paper carried a large notice of an art auction due to be held on May 25 in Dublin. One of the pictures caught my wife’s eye: it was a familiar yet different image, a version in water colour of the large oil painting ‘Mass in a Connemara Cottage’ by Aloysius…
In his brief life Donal Walsh came to the attention of the nation through an appearance on The Saturday Night Show. Donal was, as he said himself, a sports mad Kerry boy, who was struck by cancer, not once but twice, the second time mortally. He was quite a normal boy, so one is not…
Michael Collins will be a familiar figure to readers. For many years he was an important commentator for international television services on events and personalities in Rome. He brings all that experience to bear in this new biography of Pope Leo XIV. This is the second biography of the Pope to come to hand recently,…
Brendan McManus will be known to readers for his writings on the Camino and for the trilogy of books that make up the Mess series of books, dealing with the spiritual state of the world today. These have all been widely read. But here is a very different book. It appeals to stillness and to…
The centenary of Sir David Attenborough has been marked with tributes around the globe, wherever indeed his various full-colour television series on the natural world since 1979 have been shown. These have done a great deal to arouse in many people a passionate interest in the world around us. The tributes were certainly well deserved.…
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…