Inside Rural Ireland: Power and Change since Independence, edited by Tomás Finn & Tony Varley (University College Press, €30.00 / £25.00) It was a maxim in medieval times when a social problem arose to “Wait a bit: lets us ask the country folk” – “Sustine modicum: ruricolae melius hoc norunt.” This was transformed by the…

Caricature and the Irish: Satirical prints from the Library of Trinity College Dublin, c.1780 –1830, by  Nicholas  K. Robinson (Four Courts Press, €40.00 / £35.00) Felix M. Larkin   E.B. White, the noted children’s author, for decades a literary stalwart of  the New Yorker, that great home for cartoonists of all kinds over the last…

Living the Camino Back Home, by Brendan McManus SJ and Katherine O’Flynn FCJ (Messenger Publications, €9.95 / £8.95) Here is a book which can be seriously said to fill a pressing need. Books about the Camino and the experiences of those walking it, for their various reasons – which are not always quite as “religious”…

The formal reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, now fully restored after the disastrous fire on April 15 2019, will take place a month from now, on  December 8.   It will be an occasion with important lessons for all the world to learn from, but also one surrounded by controversy. With this important event…

Hotel Lux:  An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals, by Maurice J. Casey (Footnote Press, £20.00 / €24.00)   The Communist International, which became widely known as Comintern, was founded in Moscow 1919.  In the tangled politics of the left since 1848 there had been two other international movements, which had failed; but this new organisation…

We are all aware of the great importance of ancient Irish manuscripts to our knowledge of the past and the history of the peoples that have lived in Ireland. But the prominence of the Book of Kells has distorted this tradition.  The Book of Kells is a liturgical set of the gospels, but the text is unimportant compared with…

A History of Irish Magic, by Sally North and James North (Holythorn Press, limited hardbound edition € 60.00;  paperback edition,  €30.)   When the remains of the poet W. B. Yeats were brought back to Ireland in September 1948, they were interred as he had intended in Drumcliffe Churchyard in Sligo, according to the ritual…

Recently Dr Peter Cherry retired from his post as a long time lecturer on the history of art in Trinity College. Among his other activities there was directing a seminar for final-year students on “Art and Religion in the Hispanic world”. Of essential assistance  to his teaching programme at all levels was the nearby presence in…

Communal Discernment: A Lamp for our Synodal Journey by Michael Bach and  Esdac Tea, edited and with an introduction by Brian Grogan SJ (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) I am inclined to think that the Synodal process is as significant event in the history of the Church as was the Second Vatican Council. The Council was…