Since 1858, when the first miracles were recorded, the Church has judged only a very small number of cures as truly miraculous – to date some 69. The Church can be as sceptical at times as any Zola. The most recent recognition was in 2013 of the curing of Mrs Danila Castelli, suffering from a…

Hopeful Hopkins, essays by Desmond Egan (The Goldsmith Press, €20.00) Noel
 Barber
 SJ   In these essays, Desmond Egan sets himself a clear goal: to correct the image of Fr Gerard Manley Hopkins as a “sick and self-lacerating person” and to present “the energetic, witty and hope filled” person that existed alongside the “physically frail, hypersensitive, nervous…

The Poet’s Chair: Writings from the Ireland Chair of Poetry (UCD Press, €20.00 each volume) The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust was established in 1998 jointly by Queen’s University Belfast, TCD, UCD, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Every three years a distinguished poet is selected to hold the Chair as…

A Little Book of Ledwidge: A Selection of Poems and Letters of Francis Ledwidge compiled by John Quinn, with an assessment by Seamus Heaney (Veritas, €9.99) India to Ithaca by Paula Lahiff (€10.00; €12.50 including postage, contact paulalahiff@gmail.com) Santiago Sketches by David McLoghlin (Salmon Poetry, €12.00) In Ireland the role of the poet has been respected since prehistoric…

Love’s Doorway to Life: An Alternative Biography of Patrick Kavanagh boxed set of three discs, scripted and narrated by Úna Agnew and Art Agnew (Éist Audio Productions; www.eist.ie, €25.00) These days, with perhaps fewer young people reading books, this three-disc set may well be the ideal modern way of presenting a great poet. The creators are…

The World of Books – By the books editor   For a man holding what many still see as the most powerful position in the world, President Trump has an uncanny instinct to express in the brutal language of the bar and locker-room the opinions of some of the most uninformed people in the United…

Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia by Natasha O’Hear & Anthony O’Hear (Oxford University Press, £12.99) The other week a false alarm over an incoming ballistic missile (presumably from North Korea and armed with a nuclear warhead) scared the inhabitants of Hawaii witless. Fleeing the beach in minutes, they…

Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem by Tim Shipman (William Collins, £25) Peter
 Hegarty   This year will test Theresa May. She must somehow get a good deal for Britain, the weaker negotiating partner, in talks with an increasingly assertive EU. In an impeccably-sourced account of her premiership Tim Shipman, the political editor of the Sunday…

Artists: Their Lives and Works foreword by Ross King (Dorling Kindersley  £25.00) Michael
 Collins   We admire the work of artists and are in awe of their magnificent creations. Their deftness with pencil, charcoal and paintbrush capture a moment and turn it into a timeless masterpiece. In this book the editors have produced an elegant volume which…

Imagining Alternative Irelands in 1912: Cultural Discourse in the Periodical Press Brian Ward (Four Courts Press, €50) Felix
 M.
 Larkin   Historians should always be conscious of the importance of contingency in shaping events. As the distinguished American historian David McCullough, biographer of John Adams and Harry Truman, says: “Nothing ever had to happen the way it happened.…