Christopher Moriarty Europe’s Atlantic Fringe: Exploring the west coasts of Portugal, Spain and Ireland by Michael Fewer (Ashfield Press, €25) Michael Fewer combines scholarship with readability in an impressive number of books about Ireland, Irish people and Irish architecture.  In his latest work he widens the range by the addition of two countries, Portugal and…

The World of Books There are many people who see the Church of the Middle Ages as being an institution not only at the peak of its sanctity, but also as a model from which modern society can learn. I suspect that this view, especially in Ireland, owes much to the views of Chesterton and…

Valerie Roche A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura by Eileen Markey (Nation Books, $US 26.99 / £21.00) It is difficult in this era of global communications to imagine what it must have been like for Sr Maura Clarke to leave behind the familiar, stable life in the convent in Ossining, New York and…

Women Writing War: Ireland 1880 – 1922 edited by Tina O’Toole, Gillian McIntosh, Muireann Ó Cinnéide (University College Dublin Press, €30) This is a collection of essays about war written from a feminist perspective. In the opening essay Diane Urquhart focuses on Anna Parnell, an archetypal feminist firebrand. Born in 1852, Anna was a sister…

Frank Litton Dorothy Day: The world will be saved by beauty, an intimate portrait of my grandmother by Kate Hennessy (Scribner, $27.99) Thérèse by Dorothy Day, foreword by Robert Ellsberg (Christian Classics, Ave Maria Press, £12.99) Cardinal Spellman (1889-1967) and Dorothy Day (1897-1980) were both important figures in the history of north American Catholicism in…

The Art of John Piper, by David Fraser Jenkins and Hugh Fowler-Wright foreword by Luke Piper (Unicorn and The Portland Gallery, £45.00) John Piper is, I suspect, a name unfamiliar to many readers, but he is certainly among the finest artists of the 20th Century in these islands, and moreover one of the few artists…

Good Seed, Fertile Soil: Religious Vocations in Limerick: Biographical Dictionary: I West Limerick by J.M. Feheney (Iverus Publications, €25; copies from the author at jmfeheny@iol.ie, or The Bookstore, Newcastle West) This biographical dictionary features short profiles of almost 1,000 deceased members of the clergy and religious congregations from the 24 parishes in West Limerick.  The…

John Wyse Jackson Molly Keane: A Life by Sally Phipps (Virago, £20) The writer Molly Keane was born in 1904 in Co. Kildare, a daughter of Moira O’Neill, the poet of the Glens of Antrim.  She grew up in a horsey, Protestant family near Ferns, Co. Wexford, in an 18th-Century house that was burned in…

The world of books The present controversy over state prosecutions for blasphemy has raised once again unresolved issues concerning our libel laws, issues which really need to be settled once and for all. On the matter of blasphemy, the law has nothing to do with the Christian Churches, but is rather an attempt to mollify…

In the century since the events on the plateau near the village of Fatima a multitude of books have been published dealing with the apparitions, and the coming century will undoubtedly bring many more. But many of these books merely provide summaries and comments, rather than new information. Many of the commentaries are couched in…