The Legacy of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Independent Ireland, 1922-1949 by Martin O’Donoghue (Liverpool University Press, £80.00).   Felix M. Larkin   Conor Cruise O’Brien, the grandson of a long-time Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) MP, was once discussing the 1916 Rising and its aftermath with his father-in-law, Seán McEntee, a 1916 veteran and foundation…

The World of Books Back in the 1950s, when such a case was less common, an Irish poet was teaching a course on modern Ireland literature in a US university. He chose James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) as the text for the semester. By the time he was…

St Columbanus: Selected writings compiled by Alexander O’Hara, introduction by Fr Sean McDonagh (Veritas, €9.99 / £7.25)   Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe edited by Alexander O’Hara (Oxford University Press, £68.00)   Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus: Sanctity and Community in the Seventh Century by Alexander O’Hara (Oxford University Press,…

Utopia: The History of an Idea by Gregory Claeys (Thames & Hudson, £9.99) Looking at the cover of this brief but well-informed and penetrating history of the utopian ideal, I was engaged by the cover. This shows the flying city of Laputa from a Victorian edition of Gulliver’s Travels, a book much concerned with ideas…

My American Journey, by Douglas Hyde edited by L. Mac Mathúna, B. Ó Conchubhair, N. Comer, C. Ó Seireadáin & M. Nic An Bhaird (UCD Press, €50.00)   Felix 
M.
 Larkin   Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), long an almost forgotten figure in Irish history, is at last beginning to receive the scholarly attention that he undoubtedly…

Moment in Time: A Legacy of Photographs. Works from the Bank of America Collection. Curated by Anne Hodge and Sarah McAuliffe  National Gallery of Ireland, Rooms 6-10 | Beit Wing, until March 22, 2020 Moment in Time: A collection of Photographs (Museum of Photographic Arts, €45.00) Continuing the National Gallery’s new involvement in the arts…

Ciphers of Transcendence: Essays in Philosophy of Religion in Honour of Patrick Masterson Fran O’Rourke (Irish Academic Press, €35)   This is a well-deserved Festschrift. Patrick Masterson was a loyal and valued staff member of University College Dublin for 30 years. Beginning in 1963 he was an assistant lecturer in the philosophy department and in…

From the Underground Church to Freedom by Tomáš Halík (Notre Dame Press, $US35.00 / £39.50)   Frank 
Litton   The 1950s were grim in Czechoslovakia. The promise of liberation had not delivered. The state acquiesced in a foreign-based orthodoxy which it imposed with brutality. Censorship stifled thought. It was into this Communist dominated world that…

The Diary of Elizabeth Dillon: A Gateway to the Otherness of the Past edited with an introduction by Brendan O’Cathaoir (Currach Books, €34.99)   Frank
 Callanan   This delightful book is considerable editorial feat. The diaries of Elizabeth Dillon are copious running to 38 journals, and have been rendered down by the editor without any…

Homo Lapsus: Sin Evolution and the God who is Love by Niamh Middleton(Deep River Books, $US14.99; available through Amazon UK, £11.53)   Fr 
Joseph 
McCann
 CM   Darwin’s evolution poses the most powerful challenge to belief in God and Creation and Salvation.  Evolution explains human existence as a scientifically determined process, so there is no…