Books over the centuries have taken many forms. Indeed some kinds of books do not have to have any narrative to be most revealing. I came across one of these a little while ago in an Oxfam shop, a green cloth-bound item for which I see I paid 39 cents. The title page revealed that…

The Bethany We Know: Exploring Relationship in the Company of Jesus by Penny Roker RSM (Veritas, £12.99)

C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography by George M. Marsden (Princeton University Press, £16.95)

Naturama: Open Your Eyes to the Wonders of Irish Nature by Michael Fewer, with illustrations by Melissa Doran (Gill Books, €22.99)

Passwords to Paradise: How Languages Have Re-invented World Religions by Nicholas Ostler (Bloomsbury, £20.00)

The Republic photographed by Seamus Murphy (Allen Lane, €32.00)

With our recent concentration on the local events in Ireland in 1916 most Irish people have overlooked the centenary of some of the events in the Great War itself.  The recent commemorations of both the Battle of Jutland and the Battle of Verdun, both to be counted with the first day of the Somme (a…