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…
By Way of the Heart: Pierre Favre SJ, the First Jesuit Companion, by Brendan Comerford SJ (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £10.95) In any great enterprise the initiating leader needs associates to make the new initiative a success. Among the Jesuits the names of Ignatius Loyola himself and Francis Xavier are well known. Less well…
Creat claims, as by now we are all too well aware, are being made for the future of AI – the internet development of artificial intelligence which it is said is about to transform, not just the world, but the cosmos. Though there are Jeremiahs who are filling the airwaves with their doubts about both…
Generous Heart: A Daily Prayer Book, by Donal Neary SJ (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £11.95) Opening this book on its arrival on my desk, brought back to my mind the memory of my Jesuit mentors, seizing a quarter hour or so to pace about the corridors or grounds of Gonzaga College, to read their…
Dublin’s Women Street Traders, 1882-1932: “Civic Evil” and civil disobedience, by Susan Marie Martin (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €11.65 / £10.25) The street traders of inner Dublin were affectionately known as “Shawlies” from their custom of wrapping themselves up against the dank weather in large black woollen shawls. They…
After Newman: A Eulogy for Anglo-Catholics 1845-1965, by Aidan Nichols OP (Gracewing, £20.00 / €22.99) Near our house, off Clyde Road, there used to be a convent of Anglican Nuns. They belonged to the Community of St Mary the Virgin, founded at Wantage in England in 1848. When my wife and I were young…
Leo XIV: The New Pope and Catholic Reform, by Christopher R. Altieri (Bloomsbury Continuum, £20.00 / €19.99) This book is among the very first to try to encompass what the advent of Leo XIV means in general terms. You can be sure many more will follow, but as author Altieri, a born-American with decades of…