Roman Imbroglio: Italy and the Irish During World War Two, by Isadore Ryan (Published by the author, available through Amazon, €24.99 / £22.19; contact isadore.ryan@gmail.com) Dermot Keogh This is a most welcome, widely-researched and original book. It covers untilled historical ground, introducing readers to a ‘new’ cast of Irish men and women religious and diocesan…
Whodunits in Dubliners: What Joyce Says, And How He Means, by Peter van de Kamp (Cambridge Scholars, €92.99/£81.99; ISBN: 9781527581487.) For a generation Dr van de Kamp has led the annual Dubliners seminar at the James Joyce International Summer School in University College Dublin, a gathering that is a major event in the Joycean…
Frank Litton The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, by Martin Wolf (Allen Lane, £30.00/€34.50) For all its faults, democratic capitalism is worth defending. But it is in grave peril” and “Democracy [in the United States] is not yet a lost cause. But it is highly endangered”. These are not the words of a maverick seeking attention…
Finding God in the Mess: Meditations for Mindful Living, by Brendan McManus SJ and Jim Deeds (Messenger Publications, €11.95 / £10.95) This is a new edition of a book that proved a great success when it was a first issued in 2018, indeed it was awarded two media awards. Though it then had many readers,…
My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill-Seeker/£20.00/€15.99) The tale about the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ of the Vatican has been often and well told, and even filmed by Hollywood in 1983, with the chief character being played by Gregory Peck. In this novel, however, Joseph O’Connor provides a fresh version of what is the very remarkable story. It…
The Irish Defence Forces 1922-2022 by Eoin Kinsella (Four Courts Press/€30.00/£27.50) Defending Ireland over the past 100 years of independence has been the task of the Irish Defence Forces but their main struggle has often been to survive the neglect and parsimony of their political masters. For a new state that came out of a brief…
By the Books Editor Into Iraq by Michael Palin (Hutchinson-Heinemann/€19.99/ £16.99) Having abandoned the Python squadron, Michael Palin has created a new strand to his life making travel documentaries. In his new book, which deals with a long-intended journey through Iraq, he admits to feeling the effects of what we can kindly call his mature years, but…
The Death of Jesus: Midrash in the Shadow of the Holocaust by Peter Keenan (Columba Books, €12.99/£10.99) This book is a continuation of the researches that Peter Keenan began to issue through the same publisher in 2021. In a review in these pages back then I felt that despite the deployment of much new information…
Doing Christianity: How religion is about what you do, not what you believe by Paul Higginson (Columba Books, €12.99 / £10.99) As a book for Eastertide, or indeed any time of the year, Paul Higginson’s book is much more interesting. It seems to me to derive more certainly from the precepts and actions of Jesus…
An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A personal journey into the magic of rewilding, by Eoghan Daltun (Hachette Books, €19.99/£16.99) Christopher Moriarty ainforest is a word all too familiar to conservationists. The context is usually the forlorn one of the replacement of tropical rainforest by intensive cattle grazing for the ultimate production of beefburgers. With this background, the…
Peter Costello