The Mountbattens by Andrew Lownie (Blink Publishing, £20.00; 490 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates) Lord Louis Mountbatten was assassinated by members of the Provisional IRA at Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, on August 27, 1979. This is recorded in considerable detail in one of the 29 chapters of this comprehensive biography. Dickie, as he was known from…

Dignity: Seeking respect in back row America by Chris Arnade (Sentinel/Penguin Random House, £20.00) Frank Litton For years, I taught a course introducing Irish politics to US students who came to work as interns in the Dáil and Seanad. Many were surprised to discover how much the people they met knew about US politics. Some told…

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis (First published in 1946 by Geoffrey Bless; available in many editions new and second-hand) C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) was described as one of the intellectual giants of the 20th Century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his time. This slim volume – a literary outcome of the…

Death Comes for the Archbishop a novel by Willa Cather (Virago Press, £8.99/€11.40) Willa Cather’s Catholic classic Death Comes for the Archbishop was recognised from the time of its publication for its excellence. But Ms Cather is an unusual figure in American literature – a prolific author, poet, journalist and schoolteacher –and the romantic flavour of…

Peace-building and Catholic Social Teaching by Theodora Hawksley (University of Notre Dame Press, US$42.00, paperback/US$100.00,hardback; €50.00, paperback/€80.00, hardback) Dr Theodora Hawksley is associated with the Jesuits in Britain and specialises in peace studies, black theologies and other explorations of the essential connections between Catholic social teaching and the realities of the world we live today. This…

Robots, Ethics and the Future of Jobs by Fr Seán McDonagh SSC, with a foreword by Karlin Lillington (Messenger Publications, €19.95/£18.95) The Russian quasi-mystic and film director Andrei Tarkovsky was reputedly terrified about the implications of robots. He thought The Terminator, though by his own account a mediocre film, pushed “the frontier of cinema as art” for…

From Whence I Came: The Kennedy Legacy, Ireland and America edited by Brian Murphy and Donnacha Ó Beacháin (Merrion Press, €19.95/£17.95) Joe Carroll One would think that there is little new to be explored in the Kennedy-Ireland relationship 60 years after John F. Kennedy’s election as the first Catholic President of the United States and its…

St Patrick’s Day and Easter coming so closely together this year, set my mind running back over what we know about the earliest years of Christianity in Ireland, more especially around Dublin. Despite the assurance with which many people speak about this period, there are many mysteries about the events of the process of ‘national…

Night’s Bright Darkness by Sally Read (Ignatius Press, £14.99/€18) It’s hard to resist a good conversion story. They have a ready-made narrative to exploit, one typically filled with twists and turns, and the ending is a happy one. When luminous talent is combined with an already pleasing narrative form, it’s bound to entrance. That is exactly…

A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur by Gayatri Devi with Santha Rama Rau (Rupa & C, New Delhi, 2008; copies of other editions are available second-hand online from €10.00 approximately) These extraordinary memoirs of an eminent Indian princess, who achieved great electoral success in later life, present a fascinating account of India…