Bishop’s Move, by Colm Keena (Somerville Press, €14.99 / £12.99)
Category: Books
I spy with my reader’s eye
Aimed an teenage readers weaned on video games and television, this is a spy novel for younger teenagers which moves from a conventional Dublin day school into the world of international espionage in which a group are given placements in The Planet Earthy Academy, which aims at training future protectors of the planet. Their first…
The new saints: their teachings and lives
Peter Costello examines the written legacies of the Pope saints
Contemplating the Incarnation
Anthony Redmond Fr Daniel O’Leary is a well known Irish priest, author, teacher and preacher living in England. Over the past number of years, I have read and reviewed a few of his books, among them Travelling Light, Begin with the Heart, and Unmasking God. He is a truly wonderful and inspirational writer, and his…
Saving a lost soul: scenes from Irish clerical life
Eamon Maher Generations of Irish students, myself included, had a novel by Francis MacManus as an optional text on the Leaving Certificate English syllabus. The Greatest of These was first published in Dublin just over 70 years ago, in 1943 by the Talbot Press. It presents a very sympathetic portrait of Bishop Ned Langton, who feels…
Germany calling Ireland
Joe Carroll People who listened to German Radio’s propaganda broadcasts to neutral Ireland during World War II must now be a small number. They began as a weekly talk in Irish but expanded to broadcasts in Irish and English, often using Francis Stuart (the novelist who was married to Sean MacBride’s half-sister Iseult) who was teaching…
The Mystical history of the Easter Egg
The World of Books
The great lords of Maynooth
J. Anthony Gaughan For almost 800 years from their arrival with the first wave of Anglo-Normans in 1169, the FitzGeralds – earls of Kildare and, from 1766, dukes of Leinster – were the pre-eminent noble family residing in Ireland, dominating the social, political, economic and cultural landscapes. This collection of essays by scholars associated with…
Filling up the ‘God shaped hole’
In her teens Shirley du Boulay fell in love with a beech tree. If this sounds like some hyper Green Party activity it is not. What she went through was a mystical experience akin to those of many saints, and some poets and artists, echoes here of Vaughan, Traherne, Blake, Wordsworth, and Samuel Palmer. She…
The tower at the heart of Roscrea
Over much of the 19th Century a round tower, a ruined church, a recumbent wolf hound and a harpist were the instantly recognised symbols of both Ireland’s past and its rising hopes of recovering some of that faded ancient glory again in modern times. Those modern times have brought other symbols, but the round towers…