Dublin’s Industrial Heritage: From Sandymount to Crumlin Road, by Rob Goodbody (Wordwell in association with Dublin City Council, supported by the Heritage Council, €17.99) The Victorian novelist George Moore, himself a landed gentleman from Mayo, deprecated Dublin as an industrial city. Aside from a few streets and the nice houses of his artistic friends, the…
Granny Bridget’s Fairy Tales, by Felicity Dempsey (Atlantic Papers Press, €14.89; contact info@atlanticpaperspress.com) Here is a children’s book which will be welcomed by many parents. As many parents and grandparents are well aware it is difficult to wean young people away from the mass-produced pabulum which fills the internet at all hours. Felicity Dempsey is…
Diplomats in Dublin by Kees van Hoek (The Talbot Press, December 1943) Recently a relative in New York sent me a slightly battered copy of this book, which is not only of great immediate interest as evidence of just how much Ireland has changed since the “Emergency”, but suggests as well a topic for…
Mystical Crooner: The Lives of Leonard Cohen, by Aubrey Malone (Wisdom Twins Books / Lulu.com, £15.99) This book by our film critic provides an engaging overview of the complicated career of the Canadian poet, novelist and singer, “a charismatic Jew from Montreal’s French Quarter”. These contending identities provide much of the tension of…
Ireland’s Curious Places: 100 fascinating, lesser-known treasures to discover, by Michael Fewer (Gill Books, €16.99 / £14.99) Irish Fairy Forts: Portals to the Past, by Jo Kerrigan and Richard Mills (O’Brien Books, €19.99 / £17.99) What with the effects of climate change and the rising objections to mass tourism around the world, it is…
Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo, newly translated from the French with an introduction by John Sturrock (Penguin Classics, €13.99) After its formal reopening at the end of last year, Notre Dame cathedral in Paris this summer returned, after those dark years of closure, to its place as the most popular tourist attraction in…
Driven by the Monsoons: Through the Indian Ocean and the Seas of China, by Barry Cunliffe (Oxford University Press, £30.00 / € 42.00) Barry Cunliffe, now Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Oxford University, is one of the most distinguished archaeologists of his generation. He is known not just as an excavator, but also as…
The Secret Life of Cows Rosamund Young, with a foreword by Alan Bennett Faber and Faber. £9.99 / €11.99 The Wisdom of Sheep and Other Animals Rosamund Young Faber and Faber, £7.99 / €9.50 Here in Ireland we are well aware of the importance of cattle to our history – is not the Gaelic…
Cold Porridge, Broken Promises and a Missing Dog: Notes from Nursing Home Advocacy Tony Carroll Scribe Consulting Services, €20.00 / £18.99; widely available on line and through shops It is something of a surprise that this deeply felt and engaging book had to be self-published, rather than appear from under one of the well known imprints.…
Paradise Lost: A Biography Alan Jacobs Princeton University Press, £20.00 / €22.99 He may be known to some readers as the author of a most interesting and arresting book, The Years of Our Lord 1943, in which he examines through the writings of a set of writers – C. S. Lewis, W. H Auden, Jacques…