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…

My Indian Journal: Exploring Interfaith Connections by Catherine McCann (ISPCK, €8.00; ISBN 978-81-8465-529-2; available from Veritas, Dubray and Easons) They say that there are two ways to get to know the heart of a country: either make a brief intense visit, or spend a lifetime there. Anything in between may well leave one confused about the…

My Other Self: Conversations with Christ on Living Your Faith by Clarence J. Enzler (Christian Classics Ave Maria Press, $13.95 / £8.99; e-book £8.54; ISBN: 978-0870612480) Donal Anthony Foley This book comes with high praise from figures including the late Fr Benedict Groeschel (who also wrote the foreword to this edition), in which he argues that “trust” is…

Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamont (Hodder & Stoughton, £9.99) In this wise little book, popular writer Anne Lamont draws on the now almost lost art of make and mend which our grandmothers so firmly believed in. A stitch in time can save not only that favourite garment, but also, she…

Ireland’s troubles in fact and fiction It is inevitable that the flood of books about 1916 should include some novels. But the precedents for such fictions are not good, as I know from reading many of them while writing my account of the literary revival and the Irish revolution, The Heart Grown Brutal (1977). There…