Mainly About Books by the Books Editor While the country continues to struggle with the effects of the pandemic, the outcome of which is still unclear in its development, some are turning their thoughts to thinking about what needs to be done, especially in the Dublin region where the disease has been most dangerous. Planning…
Gerard Byrne is a Dublin-based artist with a studio in Ranelagh. A leading figure in the Irish art world, for some time he has been painting streetscapes in the Rathmines and Pembroke areas, which have already attracted a lot of attention. I met him at work recently, painting the oldest house in Wellington Place in…
Holistic Healing: A Christian Approach by Pat Collins CM (Columba Books, €16.99) This book is only partly about healing. As with all medical matters health in mind, body and spirit begins not in curing but preventing. Living a whole life in a healthy way is the essence of the matter. And, Fr Collins [pictured below] suggests,…
You Have the Words of Eternal Life by Martin Hogan (Messenger Publications, €14.95/£13.95) In these daily reflections for the liturgical year to come, Martin Hogan, who worked as a co-parish priest on the North side of Dublin, provides reflections on the Gospels of the day that arise directly out of the life and needs of the…
Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon by Eric H. Cline (Princeton University Press, £30.00/$35.00) ‘Armageddon’ is a word that puts the fear of God in many people today. It is all very well having fears about the end of the world, the now fashionable ‘End Times’, when one is 12 –…
In a Harbour Green: Celebrating Benedict Kiely by George O’Brien (Irish Academic Press, €19.95) In the hurry and bustle of modern Irish literature, Ben Kiely belongs seemingly to another world. This may well be because he was one of that generation of writers whose normal route to writing was though journalism and broadcasting. The broad rich…
Mainly About Books by the Books Editor The slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ has rightly swept the world, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that it protests about the condition of racial harmony – or lack of it – in the United States today. Like so many movements of the moment, it reflects an…
As an occasional continuation of our series ‘Lockdown Reading’. This week we are publishing an appreciation of an important book once very well known, but now neglected… Realizations: Newman’s own selections of his sermons edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl, with a preface by Muriel Spark (Liturgical Press, 2009 [originally published 1964]) Teresa Whitington These 13 sermons…
Sacred Space: The Prayerbook 2021 (Messenger Publications, €12.95/£15.49) The cover of the new edition of this always popular book shows a lighthouse at dusk, and out at sea a barely visible sailing ship in the distance. There came into my mind at once those lines from Newman, “lead, kindly light, amidst th’encircling gloom…”, which is…
Summer outings (No.6 in a six-part series) This book, edited from Tim White’s Irish diaries, was published in 1959, the year after the compilation of his separately published Arthurian novels appeared in one volume, The Once and Future King. This book became a major best seller here and in the Americas. It provided the source…