From Memory to Understanding: A Study of the Christian Brothers in Ireland 1922-1970, by Tom O’Donoghue (Gracewing, UK, 2026) This is an important book on the long history of the Christian Brothers. It attempts to tell the whole story about their creation, spread and effects here in Ireland and indeed abroad, from their foundation…
Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, by Rowan Williams (Bloomsbury Continuum, £20.00 / €24.00) This is an important book. It throws light on a central political problem of our time: how to find a balance between belonging and autonomy. We need belonging because we need a narrative that to give shape to our lives, we…
National Heritage Week is coming up at the end of the month, running from Friday, August 15 to Sunday, August 23. Actually, the events run for nine days, so it is a sort of Irish week with ‘a tilly for the cat’. National Heritage Week is now in its 26th year. According to the organisers,…
Passage to America: the story of Ulster’s emigrants Taking ship: Essays in transatlantic migration from Ulster, edited by Sophie Cooper, Patrick Fitzgerald and William Roulston (Ulster Historical Foundation, £11.99 / €13.99) Felix M. Larkin *** An Post has recently marked the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence with a stamp featuring a portrait…
Temple of God: An Unbroken Vision of the Virgin Mary, by Theo Andreou (Gracewing, £15.99 / €18.99) It can be hard for the rising generation to imagine just how cut off the Ireland of their grandparents and great-grandparents was from the worldwide expressions of Christianity. That all changed, thankfully, with the Second Vatican Council. The…
Freedom of Speech in the Press in Times of Conflict: Historical Perspectives from Ireland and Europe, ed. by Richard C. Allen, Felix M. Larkin, Oliver O’Hanlon and Aoife Whelan; Studies in Franco-Irish Relations, volume 26 (Peter Lang AG, £40.00 / €49. 40) This is a collection of essays about a most important subject; the freedom of…
Remembering Peasants: a Personal History of a Vanished World, by Patrick Joyce (Penguin £25.00 / €29.99; also available in paperback) Often in writing reviews a relevant passage in the Gospels will come to mind. This time from John 4:38 (in the familiar words of the Douay-Rheims version), where Jesus tells the disciples: “I have sent you…
The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival, at Newbridge, Co. Kildare, will be opened tomorrow evening (Friday, July 24) at 7.30pm in the theatre of Newbridge College by His Excellency David Gill, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany. As Hopkins is one of the most important literary figures in late Victorian times, the festival has…
The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam, by G. W. Bowersock (Oxford University Press, £45.50 / €38.00) We all talk carelessly about “Muslim countries “, which is a way of rewriting the past, and forgetting that places like the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Yemen were not always Muslim. They were, before…
Ernest Hemingway: Flawed Genius, by Aubrey Malone (Fonthill, £ 25.00 / €29.00). The film critic of The Irish Catholic, Aubrey Malone is also steeped in the American literature of the 20th century, dominated by such names as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway – the latter three authors winning the Nobel Prize for…
Peter Costello