The Joy of God: Collected Writings by Sr Mary David with a foreword by Fr Erik Vardan (Bloomsbury, £12.99) This collection of essays, or rather talks, reveals a very interesting character. The author Sr Mary David had a late vocation. American born she was educated there, attending Loyola University and the University of Virginia, before crossing…

The Bible Tells Me So…Why defending Scripture has made us unable to read it by Peter Ennis (Hodder & Stoughton, €14.99) This book, by an American academic and evangelical, is one which will interest a wide audience. Through many years of both teaching and preaching, he came to face a problem. The further he studies the…

Dom Eugene Boylan: Trappist Monk, Scientist & Writer by Thomas J. Morrissey SJn (Messenger Publications, €19.95) This is an important biography of Dom Eugene Boylan, the well-known abbot of Mount St Joseph, the Cistercian Abbey at Roscrea. He was the author of two once widely read books, This Tremendous Lover and Difficulties in Mental Prayer, which…

The Victorians: The Titans Who Forged Modern Britain by Jacob Rees-Mogg (W.H. Allen, €20.00) At the time of writing the futures of Brexit and the British Conservative party are still unsettled. But whatever happens we can expect the author of this book to have some role in it. Jacob Rees-Mogg is being spoken of by some…

An Urban Sketcher’s Galway by Róisín Curé (Currach Books, €22.99) My wife and I often go down to Galway by train to have lunch, then a walk in Salthill by the sea, rounded off with a browse in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop – truly the best in Ireland. The city, in our experience has changed dramatically since…

Smyllie’s Ireland: Protestants, independence, and the man who ran the Irish Times by Caleb Wood Richardson (Indiana University Press, $85 hb / $35 Pb and e-book) Ian
 d’Alton   This book is a new take on an old subject. Using as a peg the larger-than-life editor of the Irish Times in the 1930s, 40s and early…

The Great Famine in Kinsale by Catherine Flanagan (Four Courts Press, €9.95) Catherine Flanagan gives us an account of the Great Famine in Kinsale and its hinterland. At the outset she describes the social and economic conditions in the area before the famine. The lower classes – cottiers and labourers – made up 80% of the…

Mainly About Books by the books editor   The other week in the course of a visit to Sligo, we spent part of a morning in Drumcliffe churchyard. We had been there before – what poetry lover in Ireland does not want to see the beautifully located grave of W.B. Yeats? The church – which…

Treasure at the Bottom of my Garden by Judy Roblin (Matador, £8.99) Judy Roblin is a retired social worker now living in Wales. Her writings in The Tablet will be familiar to some. She has made for herself a poustinia in a shed-like hut at the end of her garden. To this little ‘desert’ she retired…

Jacobites: A New History of the ‘45 Rebellion by Jacqueline Riding (Bloomsbury, £25.00) John
 Bruton   I have greatly enjoyed reading this new history of the 1745 Rebellion. It appears at a very appropriate time. I read it during my recent visit to Scotland, during which I was at Glenfinnan, where Prince Charles Edward first raised the…