Here are two books, for two different age groups, which will provide amusing and interesting reading for children this summer when they need to escape from the all too brilliant sun and sit in the shade and read. The Most Irish Person written by Shelly Corcoran, illustrated by Angelika Sowul (Currach Books, €12.99) The first…
Thomas O’Loughlin Hospitality is something we all know about. We have all experienced true, warm hospitality that puts us at our ease. Inhospitality has also left a trail in our memories. In Matthew hospitality is offered as a key to discipleship, and inhospitality is presented as the signal of failure in following Jesus. “I was…
Trieste Joyce School 2023 James Joyce lived in Trieste from 1905 to 1915, albeit with one interval of nine months spent in Rome in 1906-7. He moved to neutral Switzerland because of the First World War in 1915, but returned briefly to Trieste in 1919 before going to Paris where he would remain for almost…
Thomas McCarthy * * * Song of the Goldfinch, by John F. Deane (Veritas, €19.99 pb/ £17.50pb) Have we forgotten how universal our secure and graceful Irish Catholic life once was? Well, that is, as the song goes, if your Dad was rich and your Mom was beautiful – true wealth, of course, was then to…
The Philosophers’ Daughters, edited by Peter Vardy (Darton, Longman and Todd, £12.99/ €15.50) Peter Vardy was vice-principal of Heythrop College, University of London, and now runs the largest conferences for students of Philosophy and Religious Studies in Britain. In this thought-provoking book he has gathered a number of questions posed by his two young daughters, Petra…
‘Irish Explorers of the Jordan Rift Valley and the Euphrates Valley in the 1830s: Scientific Adventure and Imperialism’, in George Moore: Dublin, Paris, Hollywood, by Haim Goren, edited by Conor Montague and Adrian Frazier (Irish Academic Press, €26.99 pb/ €44.99 hb) I was recently given this book as a present from someone who knew…
A Quest for Meaning: A Journey Through Philosophy, Science and Spirituality, by Gearóid Ó Donnchadha (Orpen Press, €14.99/ £12.99) This is a stimulating book by an author who in his lifetime as a teacher invited and delighted in argument and debate. Gearóid Ó Donnchadha was a very committed priest and a very committed academic. Born on…
Books Editor This year’s Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival will take place in Newbridge College, Co. Kildare from July 21 to 27 inclusive. It should not be missed. The festival has been held every last week in July since 1987, an unmatched record in Ireland. It celebrates, of course, one of the greatest of Victorian…
More Book Reviews 1896-2023 by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €24.00/ £21.00) J. Anthony Gaughan is one of our regular reviewers and has been for many years. This is the second and concluding collection of his book reviews of all over the years since 1975. Many of these reviews appeared in these pages, but by no…
The Contemporary Woman: Can she really have it all, by Michele Guinness (Hodder, £10.99/ €12.99) Author Michele Guinness is one of the Guinness clan, the Anglo-Irish brewing family of longstanding fame, but only by marriage. Back in 1999 she wrote a widely selling family history called The Guinness Spirit, which many found both entertaining and…
Peter Costello