Beautiful Thoughts for Beautiful Minds by John Scally (Currach Press, €14.99) For a long time I have valued collections of poems, short stories and essays as the best kind of bedside books. They provide just enough to allow the old brain to run down and come to rest, and to allow me to drift away into…
A Flavour of Kylemore Abbey by the Sisters of the Community (Columba Books, €24.99) When this book came to hand, I turned over the pages to see what made this cook book different from all the others that flood the market. My attention was immediately taken by a recipe for Frangipane Mince Pies, the last one in the…
Living With The Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples by Neil MacGregor (Allen Lane, £30) Patrick Claffey Neil MacGregor, the distinguished British art historian and museum director, is currently the creator of the Humboldt Forum, a new centre for world culture in Berlin. Many will have seen exhibitions or read his books, including A History of the World…
From Partition to Brexit: The Irish Government and Northern Ireland by Donnacha ó Beacháin (Manchester University Press, £75.00 hb / £22.99 pb) Peter Hegarty Donnacha Ó Beacháin, Associate Professor of Politics at the School of Law and Government at DCU, begins and ends his book with discussions of the Ulster question’s affronts to democracy. Partition, he tells us, was an…
The World of Books by the books editor This weekend the world will mark, in different ways, the centenary of the armistice that brought the fighting in the Great War, otherwise ‘the war to end all wars’, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 1918. These commemorations of the…
The Liberties by Maurice Curtis (Currach Press, €14.99) The Back of the Hack: Growing Up in the Liberties by Kathleen Clifford (A & A Farmar, €15.00) Some years ago author Maurice Curtis brought out a history of the Liberties, that district of Dublin to the south west that once lay outside the city walls, and where over…
Who Do I Think I Am?: A Memoir by Homan Potterton (Merrion Press, €24.99) The former director of the National Gallery of Ireland, now living in retirement in the France, scored something of a literary success with Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled, his memoir of his years of growth in Anglo-Irish Meath. This was perhaps a feat…
Waterford Merchants and their Families on Distant Shores: Traders in Spain and France from 1600 to 1800 by Liam Murphy (Kingdom Books, €24.00) This is an account of the Waterford merchants who emigrated to the port cities of Spain, France and the Spanish Netherlands between 1600 and 1800 as well as the history of…
Peter Hegarty Reporting the Troubles: Journalists tell their stories of the Northern Ireland conflict compiled by Deric Henderson and Ivan Little, with a foreword by Senator George Mitchell (Blackstaff Press) £14.99 / €16.00) Fifty years ago this month RUC constables attacked people peacefully demonstrating for civil rights in Derry. One of them laid into Martin Cowley,…
The Pope who would be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe by David I. Kertzer (Oxford University Press, £25.00) Prof. Kertzer’s earlier books have made a mark. The Pope and Mussolini, for instance, described the settlement that lead to the Lateran Treaty and the accommodation made by the Church with…
Peter Costello