Thomas McCarthy Few poets have written with the intensity and seriousness of Aidan Mathews; and fewer still have sustained that intensity over a career of five collections, six books of prose and six plays. This heroic, wide ranging and always engaged achievement belies the poet’s character which has seemed at all times evasive, ironic…
One of the curious facts of 2,000 years of Christian history is the readiness with which Christians will dispute their traditions and the dates appropriate to them, especially in relation to the nature, date and place of Easter, the most important date in the whole Christian calendar that is celebrated this weekend. Historically, the…
Rev. Robert Marshall The opening paragraph of the editors’ introduction notes that “Ireland’s centuries old reputation as a land of saints and scholars (and sinners) is well established”. They continue that two decades into the 21st Century the island’s association with religious devotion is increasingly considered something of an historic artefact – a kind expression…
This I suspect is the sort of book that many families have been looking for, a compact, highly readable and adroitly written narrative of the Irish aboard. Author Bunbury makes vivid use of all the human parts of a 2,000-year-old history that academic historians resolutely leave out in favour of a more austere impersonal narrative.…
Every March since 1991 has been designated Irish-American Heritage Month in the United States. President Biden has continued the practice again this year, and a proclamation to this effect was signed by him on February 29th. America has not always been so sympathetic towards Irish immigrants and their descendants, as this book illustrates. Written…
This Sunday the whole world, it seems, will for a few hours become Irish, or at least recover enough of their nominal ‘Irishness’ to join in the fun. President Biden, in the name of the American people, will accept yet again a giant bowl of flourishing shamrock, and avow his Irish roots. Streets around the…
Frank Litton We learn two things from history. Assumptions quite different from those that frame our world shaped the actions of our predecessors. The second follows from this. World views do change. They are human constructions that endure for long periods. We might think of them as buildings, but if we do, they are buildings…
St Patrick’s day sees the arrival of great numbers of visitors from abroad, many of them part of, or deeply interested in the Irish diaspora. This seems an appropriate moment then to visit the EPIC presentation down on Customs House in the Dublin Financial Centre. EPIC stands for Irish Emigration Museum, by the way. This is…
The latest partnered exhibition at the National Gallery, featuring as it does the works of a series of great artists, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer and a few others, is a remarkable show, not so much for its bravura accomplishments of style and setting, but for its concentration on the wonderful landscapes of the human face through…
A love of home, ‘one’s own place’, is said to have characterised Irish people from the earliest days. These days, when people remove themselves to as far away as the Antipodes, there is still, even in the sunshine of Bondi Beach, that melancholy longing for the old place at home. How we lived in the past is…
Peter Costello