The World of Books Si Newhouse died the other day, and as the American millionaire owner of some high-profile titles such as Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, he was something of a celebrity, a celebrity however with a dubious reputation. The name of André Schiffrin [pictured] may not be so familiar to many,…
Grave Matters: Death and Dying in Dublin from 1500 to the Present by Lisa Marie Griffith & Ciarán Wallace (Four Courts Press, €24.95) Peter Costello One of the stranger experiences of my childhood was a visit to the vaults of old St Michan’s where it was then possible not only to see the coffins of the…
Czech Architectural Cubism by Zdenék Lukeš and Ester Havlová (Jaroslav Fregner Gallery, Prague, €10.00; on sale at IAA) The Irish Architectural Archive is currently running an exhibition, “Czech Architectural Cubism”, which should not be missed by anyone interested about how architecture, including indeed church architecture, might have developed in Ireland in the 1920s. Czechs…
Irish people, as we all know, have a great grá for local legends, indeed any kind of local lore. In the poetry of W. B. Yeats, Queen Maeve, though supposedly buried on the frowning peak of Knocknarea, might be still a living person. Yeats deep interiorisation of old traditions of a locality is not unique.…
In the middle decades of the last century the National Geographic – then a magazine well worth reading – carried in the back pages a section of small ads for, among other things, elite schools. A feature of these were the ads for Military Academies. These were nothing to do with the US Army. They…
What Does It All Mean? A Guide to Being More Faithful, Hopeful and Loving By Richard Leonard SJ (Paulist Press/ Alban Books £17.99) If Catholicism is what Catholics believe, then sometimes these days it is not what the Church purports to teach. Take for instance the question of angels. These days many Catholics believe that…
The Nuns of Saint’ Ambrogio: The True Story of a Covent Scandal By Hubert Wolf (Oxford University Press, £20.00) When the Church these days is besieged by scandal many seem to think that in previous generations things were different. They were certainly different, but in the sense of being far worse, as this book, by…
I have been a reader of books of travel and exploration since I was 10 or so – by which I mean real explorers and not the self-advertising egomaniacs so common today. Books by giants of science and endeavour, such as Marco Polo, Livingstone, Sir Richard Burton, Humboldt, Waterton (an old Stonyhurst boy) and others,…
Ireland’s nuns have not been getting much respect of late, for reason that painful headlines make only too clear. But in all this controversy some things are lost sight of. Critics seem to think that the Church took over institutions that ought to have been run by the state; but the truth is that if…
The release of Dunkirk has been the focus for mixed reviews and divided opinions. Christopher Nolan’s movie with its clean-shaven, well-washed, un-muddied British soldiers retreating with their weapons still in hand, though loved by critics, has been derided by veterans of WWII as a travesty. To see Dunkirk merely as an “heroic retreat” is to…