There has been renewed talk lately about fixing the date of Easter, rather than continuing with it as a moveable feast. This is the sort of idea that the appeals to both the tidy minded and the sort of person who believes that Sunday trading is good for the economy, however damaging yet another day…

The Hurley Maker’s Son: A Memoir by Patrick Deeley (Doubleday Ireland, €17.99) J. Anthony Gaughan Patrick Deeley was born in a small farm near Loughrea, Co. Galway, in 1953.  He was educated locally and attended St Patrick’s Teacher Training College in Drumcondra in Dublin.  Subsequently he served as a principal in a primary school in Ballyfermot.…

My First Holy Communion Keepsake Journal created by Avril O’Reilly (Lulu, available through Amazon, ISBN 978-1326480103 (girls), 978-1326542863 (boys), €20.00) With a “Special Record of first Holy Communion” Avril O’Reilly has had a delightful notion. She has prepared a keepsake of first Communion for girls. “This book,” she explains, “is designed to keep all the Communion…

Dear Pope Francis: The Pope Answers Letters from Children Around the World by Pope Francis in conversation with Antonio Spadaro SJ (Messenger Publications / Jesuits in Ireland, €14.99) It is not unusual for recent Popes to be associated with books for children. We had, for instance, a rather charming book about Pope Benedict’s cat – cats…

I Follow St Patrick by Oliver St John Gogarty Oliver St John Gogarty, poet and surgeon, was a close associate of Arthur Griffith in Sinn Féin. He was appointed a senator in the first Senate of the Irish Free State. His memorable book, I Follow St Patrick, is an evocation of Ireland’s national saint through the places in…

Come and See for Yourself: Dublin’s Sacred Spaces edited by Dublin Interfaith Forum (Free of charge) Dublin is an increasingly multicultural city in which faiths new to Ireland are now to be found. The Interfaith Forum of Dublin City Council has just published a little pamphlet (free at your local public library) on Dublin’s sacred spaces. In…

Recap: Inside Ireland’s Financial Crisis by Kevin Cardiff (The Liffey Press, €19.95) Every person in Ireland was affected in one way or another by the banking and financial services meltdown in 2008-2011. Kevin Cardiff, general secretary of the Department of Finance since 2010, was a key figure in the group charged with dealing with this grave…

Into Extra Time: Living through the final stages of cancer and jottings along the way by Michael Paul Gallagher SJ (Darton, Longman & Todd/Messenger Publications, £9.99/€12.99) Anthony Redmond When the well-known Jesuit writer, lecturer and theologian, Fr Michael Paul Gallagher, was told in January of last year that he had cancer he began to write this book…

Years of Turbulence: the Irish Revolution and its Aftermath ed. by Diarmaid Ferriter and Susannah Riordan (UCD Press, €40.00) Joe Carroll As the centenary of the Easter Rising approaches, historians have been busy tapping newly revealed sources and archives for new angles on this landmark event and its aftermath up to the end of the Civil War…

The recent deaths of Umberto Eco and Harper Lee throw into contrast the modern literatures of Europe and the United States in an interesting way. Umberto Eco (84) made his name overnight as a novelist with the publications in 1980 of The Name of the Rose, a sort of medieval Sherlock Holmes tale, which carried…