An Irish Pilgrimage Guide to the Holy Land by Michael Kelly (Columba Books, €16.99/£14.99) Michael has led some dozen pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and he is well aware of what information pilgrims would like to have, and what information they really need. The usual range of guide books are these days very internationalised and…
Alison Gilliland and Clodagh Finn Her Keys to the City: Honouring the Women Who Made Dublin Alison Gilliland and Clodagh Finn (Dublin City Council / Four Courts Press, €19.99/£17.20) The old Thom’s Directory, which down to the end of the 1960s was the essential reference work for nearly every aspect of Dublin life, used to print…
Search and Rescue. True Stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 Lorna Siggins (Merrion Press, Price €16.95) Lorna Siggins’s update of her book Mayday, Mayday, covers the huge expansion of Ireland’s air-sea rescue services since 2004. The time when mariners in distress off our coasts were almost entirely dependent on the Royal Air Force when a…
Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World by Stephen Cottrell (Hodder Faith, €11.50/£9.99) This little book, by the Anglican Archbishop of York, might provide an object lesson to some Irish Catholic bishops. It is basically a letter answering a query to him by a complete stranger: ‘What made you become a priest?’ He…
Ireland and Argentina in the twentieth century: Diaspora, diplomacy, dictatorship, Catholic mission and the Falklands crisis by Dermot Keogh (Cork University Press, €39.00/£33.50) Of all the countries of South America, Argentina is the one with which Ireland has the most historic and ethnic connections. One has only to think of William Brown from Foxford, who…
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the city through James Joyce’s Dublin: an exhibition created by Freddie Phillipson, in collaboration with Drawing Matter Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Mondays to Fridays, 9am -5pm, runs to August 19. The centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses passed this year with a few serious…
The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies by Irving Finkel (Hodder & Stoughton, £25.00/€29.99) This is a fascinating yet grim book which describes in detail the beliefs of the cultures of Mesopotamia concerning the departed dead. The author, who is the senior assistant keeper at the British Museum, is in charge of the written relics…
Thomas Morrissey SJ The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben (Oxford University Press, £25.00/€29.00) The author has produced a readable and impressive work of scholarship and organisation, which endeavours to trace the rise and fall of religion in Ireland from 8,000BC to the present day. The advent and progress of Christianity is presented…
Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP by Ronan McGreevy (Faber, £16.99/€19.99) Sir Henry Wilson, Ulster Unionist MP at Westminster and former Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), was shot dead by two English-born Irish Republicans – Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan – outside his home in London on June…
The World of Books Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled, by Homan Potterton, with an Introduction by William Trevor (Merrion Press, €12.95/£12.99) This is a very welcome republication of a book first issued over two decades ago by another publisher. It was then hailed by William Trevor as “a wholly delightful memoir of lace-curtain Protestants in 1950s rural…
Peter Costello