Máire Ní Aogáin According to a saying attributed to Jim Larkin, “Christ is crucified every day on the streets of Dublin”.  This little book transfers this metaphor to the DART stations, linking these to the Stations of the Cross. The bilingual text draws on literature from each language to provide contemporary context for the Stations…

Joe Carroll Irish troops have been involved in United Nations peacekeeping missions for 60 years at a cost of 86 lives. It is an honourable record and the author,  a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Defence Forces, has played his part. In his new book  he writes about the Irish role in these missions and …

Rebuilding Confirmation by Christopher Wesley (Maria Press, $US 10.95PRP) This important little book is subtitled: ‘Because we need more than another graduation’. This will arouse echoes in the mind of pastors and parents, for there is certainly a great confusion it seems among Catholics about what Confirmation is. Rites of passage are very important, and Irish…

Felix M. Larkin The Fourth Estate: Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland By Mark O’Brien (Manchester University , £80) This book is about “the conditions under which journalism was practised” in Ireland in the 20th Century, with a focus on “how centres of power related to journalists” – to quote the author, Mark O’Brien, lecturer in journalism history…

The Hopkins Festival will be opened tomorrow by the British Ambassador, H.E. Robin Barnett in Newbridge College Theatre, Co. Kildare (at 7.30pm). Directed by poet Desmond Egan, who founded it 30 years ago, it celebrates the life and work of the Jesuit poet Gerald Manley Hopkins, now recognised as one of the great literary figures…

Independents in Irish Party Democracy by Liam Weeks (Manchester University Press, £80) Michael O’Leary once dismissed them as “local lunatics”, but UCC political scientist Liam Weeks takes a more favourable view of our independent TDs, in a thorough and well-informed book. He begins in Kerry on count night in February 2016 when independents and brothers Michael…

Writing recently about the Dublin connections of the romance of Tristan and Isolde I had no room to mention that one of the paintings decorating the frieze of the foyer of the City Hall is of Tristan asking for the hand of Isolde (who stands nearby) on behalf of King Mark of Cornwall. Also standing…

In the hallway of Clongowes Wood Castle there stands a white marble statue of St Ignatius Loyola. To the mind of at least one small boy it had a pale ghostly appearance, little suggesting a living person, and certainly not the vivid vitality of Ignatius himself. In his book Brendan Comerford aims to reveal the…

The pledge of the Ulster Covenant to resist Home Rule by all means was signed by 5,360 Monaghan men, which was about 60% of the Protestant population of the county. As in Belfast the Ulster Volunteer Force was also established in Monaghan in January 1913. By May, part of the Larne shipment of arms had…

Seamus Cashman “I walk ever so slowly to gate and stile. / Poetry is shrinking almost to its bones”, announces the poet, a cry I know I must protest at – having just read the preceding 67 poems in Angel Hill – only to find reassurance two pages and four poems later with the gorgeous…