Today the Three Kings are an essential part of the story of Christmas time as we tell to ourselves and our children. They have a part as the first givers of Yuletide gifts. They appear in parish and school plays and presentations across Christendom, and even at times in countries not usually thought of as…
Revelations on the state of Ireland from the State Files Peter Costello and Helen Litton Peter Costello is the Books Editor of The Irish Catholic and the author of many books about Irish culture. Helen Litton is a historian who has written two biographies and a popular series of books on Irish history. The role…
Christmas being a time when many people get book tokens or an especially generous tip from Auntie Maureen, allows children and young people to feel that special joy of buying books for oneself. These titles are arranged more or less in age order, youngest to oldest. I’m Very Busy, A (Nearly Forgotten) Birthday Book,…
The Christmas Season is by long-established tradition, the season when most books are bought in every civilised centre. The books bought need not themselves be civilised, but they must have some suitable connection with the time of year and the seasonal feelings that it arouses. Books, it is so often said, “make a nice present”.…
J. Anthony Gaughan As a keen follower of Gaelic games, I found Eamonn Sweeney’s The Last Ditch: How One GAA Championship Gave a Sports Writer Back his Life the most interesting book of the year. In the first two chapters Eamonn reveals the challenges – phobias – which he has to overcome in plying his…
The Passing Year: Remembrances, Recollections, Ruminations, by John Quinn (Red Stripe Press, €12.99 / £11.99) Come the end of the year everyone’s memories have a tendency to cast themselves back, not only on the last twelve months, but inevitably on the years before, often taking us back into our childhood, for Christians, Christmas time…
Irish Heritage Studies: The Annual Research Journal of the Office of Public Works, vol. 1, 2025, Edited by Caroline Péguy (Office of Public Works / Gandon Editions, €20.00 an issue) When the Irish Church Act took effect in 1871 there was rejoicing in Cashel. Now at last when Queen Victoria (in the shape of her…
Building Mitchelstown 1779-1830, by David A. Fanning (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €12.95 / £11.95) These days my experience of Mitchelstown is of a place that one passes through on the way to somewhere else more interesting. That this is an unfair estimation is revealed in this pamphlet by David A…
St Edith Stein’s Aesthetic, Beauty and Sanctity: Masterpiece of the Divine Artist by Elizabeth A. Mitchell (Gracewing, £17.99 / €20.50) This book offers an exploration in part of the thinking of Edith Stein. The author, Dr Elizabeth A. Mitchell, who for some time worked in the Vatican Press office as translator, is now a teacher at…
Factory life in Industrial Yarns Ltd Bray, 1958-98, by Kieran Devenish (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €12.95 / £13.50) Back in the early 1960s Dublin Opinion published a satirical cartoon of the then Taoiseach Seán Lemass cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new Irish factory devoted to the…