J. Anthony Gaughan As a keen follower of Gaelic games, I found Eamonn Sweeney’s The Last Ditch: How One GAA Championship Gave a Sports Writer Back his Life the most interesting book of the year. In the first two chapters Eamonn reveals the challenges – phobias – which he has to overcome in plying his…
The Passing Year: Remembrances, Recollections, Ruminations, by John Quinn (Red Stripe Press, €12.99 / £11.99) Come the end of the year everyone’s memories have a tendency to cast themselves back, not only on the last twelve months, but inevitably on the years before, often taking us back into our childhood, for Christians, Christmas time…
Irish Heritage Studies: The Annual Research Journal of the Office of Public Works, vol. 1, 2025, Edited by Caroline Péguy (Office of Public Works / Gandon Editions, €20.00 an issue) When the Irish Church Act took effect in 1871 there was rejoicing in Cashel. Now at last when Queen Victoria (in the shape of her…
Building Mitchelstown 1779-1830, by David A. Fanning (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €12.95 / £11.95) These days my experience of Mitchelstown is of a place that one passes through on the way to somewhere else more interesting. That this is an unfair estimation is revealed in this pamphlet by David A…
Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings, by Colm Tóibín (Gallery Books, €16.95) Colm Tóibín may not appreciate this recommendation, but his latest collection would be a perfect Christmas present. These thirty-six articles of varying length are the collected writings from his three-year term (January 2022 – 2025) as Laureate for…
St Edith Stein’s Aesthetic, Beauty and Sanctity: Masterpiece of the Divine Artist by Elizabeth A. Mitchell (Gracewing, £17.99 / €20.50) This book offers an exploration in part of the thinking of Edith Stein. The author, Dr Elizabeth A. Mitchell, who for some time worked in the Vatican Press office as translator, is now a teacher at…
Unbeatable: Father Tom Jones: Handball Supremo, by Tom Looney (Red Stripe Press, €14.99) Tom Jones was born in Tralee, Co. Kerry, on December 23, 1868. In his early years, he attended the local Christian Brothers school and the local Dominican Classical school. As he intended to study for the priesthood in the diocese of Kerry,…
The Taoiseach: a century of political leadership, edited by Iain Dale (Swift Press, €23.99 / £20.00) This collection of essays about the sixteen men who have led Irish governments has the subtitle: “a century of political leadership”. The essays, however, demonstrate that leadership qualities were in short supply in independent Ireland. Of the sixteen,…
Factory life in Industrial Yarns Ltd Bray, 1958-98, by Kieran Devenish (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €12.95 / £13.50) Back in the early 1960s Dublin Opinion published a satirical cartoon of the then Taoiseach Seán Lemass cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new Irish factory devoted to the…
Sudden Light, by Enda Wyley (Dedalus Press, €12.50 pb / €20 hb) Enda Wyley, recipient of the prestigious Lawrence O’Shaughnessy 2026 Poetry Prize in the US, has been described as a true poet whose poems are perpetually fresh, utterly scrutinised, marked by vigour and virtuosity, arriving on the page as accomplished things. Her new book,…
Peter Costello