Crumbs from the Pastor’s Table: Reflection on the Catholic Lectionary – Three Year Cycle, by ‘Fr Francis’ (Scholastic Publications, available through Amazon.ie, €20.53 + €3.99 postage.) We have lived to see the end of the great days of sermons. In the Central Catholic Library, on Dublin’s Merrion Square, there is one wall in the…
This has been the week that people of Irish culture, wherever they are in the world, celebrate St Patrick’s Day. Our government ministers have sped around the world to capitals where they think Ireland can achieve better things. Otherwise, it has become, especially at home, a sort of carnival, with Mock Bishops surrounded by red-bearded…
Love, War, and Diplomacy: The discovery of the Amarna Letters & the Bronze Age world they revealed, by Eric H. Cline (Princeton University Press, £30.00 / €39.95) Prof. Eric H. Cline is a leading North American archaeologist of Middle Eastern archaeology. He is the author of a previous widely admired book 1177 B. C.: The Year…
The Complete Francis of Assisi: His Life, The Complete Writings, and The Little Flowers, by Paul Sabatier and others (Paraclete Press, €38.50) Currently the remains of St Francis of Assisi are on display in the Italian hilltop town where he died on October 3, 1226, some 800 years ago. They are on view until March…
Easter in Disguise: The 2026 Lent Book, by Liz Dodd (Bloomsbury, £10.99 / €12.99) This is an unusual book, partly because of the experiences of the author, partly by what she tries to pass on to her readers from those experiences. Author Liz Dodd was born in Oxford. She took a degree in theology…
Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia, by Penelope Chetwode (Eland Publishing, £14.99 / €17.50) This is the time of the year when we find so many people we wish to contact or speak to have “gone to Spain”. Indeed, the whole Irish people seems to have lost their hearts to Spain. But their Spain is as…
Take a Priest Like You: A Long Journey Home, by Michael Barrington (MJB Imprints, £15. 82 through Amazon) Today author Michael Barrington lives with his French wife in a small town in California up in the hills east of San Francisco. This is quite a contrast to the Britain he was born and bred in,…
The Irish Annals, by Daniel P. Mc Carthy (Four Courts Press, €35.00 / £31.50) This is a new paperback edition at a cheaper price of a volume that will be, for many engaged in the task of deciphering what we think we know about early Christian and medieval Ireland, an essential vade mecum. The author…
A Place Where Ireland is Invisible, by James Harpur, woodcuts by Paul Ó Colmáin (The Eblana Press, €35.00 postage included, Ireland / €45.00 post included, worldwide) The allusion in the title is to the banishment of Columcille to Scotland: he had to go to a place from which the coast of his beloved Ireland could…
Pre-Famine fever epidemics: A case study of the Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin, by Ciarán McCabe (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €12.95 / £10.99) Molly Malone is a much-disputed Dublin character. Though she may well have been a songwriter’s invention, her death from a “fever” was one which certainly carried…