The World of Books by the books editor   The literary commemoration of the Great War takes many curious forms these days. But none can be more curious than the recent suggestion by Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, that a  new renaissance of war poetry should be encouraged among modern soldiers. He had in…

Over the 160 years since the world first heard of Bernadette Soubirous’s visionary experiences of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a grotto outside the town of Lourdes much has been has been written about the events of the summer of 1858 by both sceptics and believers. These events have also, however, given rise to two…

Novels are but one way of exploring the dimension of a subject. Many still prefer non-fiction accounts of such a phenomenon as Lourdes. For this anniversary no distinctive new books have been published in either English or French. But this seems scarcely to matter for some excellent books are still available, new, second hand or…

Since 1858, when the first miracles were recorded, the Church has judged only a very small number of cures as truly miraculous – to date some 69. The Church can be as sceptical at times as any Zola. The most recent recognition was in 2013 of the curing of Mrs Danila Castelli, suffering from a…

The Poet’s Chair: Writings from the Ireland Chair of Poetry (UCD Press, €20.00 each volume) The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust was established in 1998 jointly by Queen’s University Belfast, TCD, UCD, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Every three years a distinguished poet is selected to hold the Chair as…

A Little Book of Ledwidge: A Selection of Poems and Letters of Francis Ledwidge compiled by John Quinn, with an assessment by Seamus Heaney (Veritas, €9.99) India to Ithaca by Paula Lahiff (€10.00; €12.50 including postage, contact paulalahiff@gmail.com) Santiago Sketches by David McLoghlin (Salmon Poetry, €12.00) In Ireland the role of the poet has been respected since prehistoric…

The World of Books – By the books editor   For a man holding what many still see as the most powerful position in the world, President Trump has an uncanny instinct to express in the brutal language of the bar and locker-room the opinions of some of the most uninformed people in the United…

Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia by Natasha O’Hear & Anthony O’Hear (Oxford University Press, £12.99) The other week a false alarm over an incoming ballistic missile (presumably from North Korea and armed with a nuclear warhead) scared the inhabitants of Hawaii witless. Fleeing the beach in minutes, they…

The World of Books by the Books Editor   At this time of the year many people are thinking about and booking their summer holidays. Not many I suspect, planning that annual stay in the sun- drenched Umbrian region of central Italy, will be considering its connection with Lough Derg and with the medieval shrine…