Frederic William Burton: For the Love of Art Exhibition curated by Marie Bourke, with essays by Patrick Duffy and others, edited by Claire Crowley (National Gallery of Ireland, €15.95) Thanks to RTÉ we know that ‘The Meeting on the Turret Stairs’ is Ireland’s favourite painting. Yet experience tells us, too, that many who admire it are…
Mors Britannica: Lifestyle & Death-Style in Britain Today by Douglas J. Davies (Oxford University Press, £30.00) Death: The Graveside Companion edited by Joanna Ebenstein (Thames & Hudson, £29.95) Halloween, or rather the Eve of All Saints, has passed once again, and again with perhaps less religious observance than in past centuries. Halloween seems to date only from…
EARLY PERIOD The long line of biographical investigations of Martin Luther’s life, opinions, and teachings began with the memoir written by his friend and fellow reformer Philip Melanchthon. Indeed what is thought of as ‘Lutheran theology’ also began with Melanchthon, for though Luther was a powerful preacher, and a man of strong opinions, he was not…
Forgiveness Remembers: A Journey into the heart of God by Paul Farren & Robert Miller, forewords by Bishop Richard Chartres and the late Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor (Instant Apostle, £6.99) This is a small book with a big – and important – message. Paul Farren is Administrator of St Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry, and his friend…
Padre Pio: Irish Encounters with the Saint by Colm Keane (Capel Island Press, €14.99) Author Colm Keane will be familiar to many from his earlier books exploring aspects of life, death, and spirituality. They have proved to be both very popular and, in the eyes of some, controversial. In his new book he explores the life…
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…