Rodham: a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld (Doubleday, £16.99) Felix M. Larkin Towards the end of this novel (which will make an ideal summer ‘beach read’, if only on Playa de Backgarden), one of the characters speaks about “the sense most of us have that there are other lives out there we could have led”. This novel…

Summer outings (No.4 in a six-part series) My first visit to Iona was a memorable event in my life. After a long dreary drive across the central valley of Mull, we came down to the little port from where visitors took the ferry to the island. It was now a sunny afternoon. The sea bed…

War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights by Peadar King (Liffey Press, €19.95/£18.95) Anthony
 Redmond I remember many years ago, when I read Wilfred Owen’s powerful anti-war poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, how deeply it affected me with its description of the sheer horror, obscenity and cruelty of war. It was a poem that really made…

Adomnán’s Lex Innocentium and the Laws of War by James W. Houlihan (Four Courts Press, €50.00 /£45.00) In this book the ordinary reader will find an account of the roots of the views about the treatments of innocent civilians, clergy and other unarmed folk in time of war. It is a discussion of the Cáin Adomnáin…

Summer outings (No.3 in a six-part series) Clonmacnoise is one of the most remarkable places in Ireland. However, back in the late 1940s, the Emergency had left it even more isolated, a place which in the right light could seem unchanged since Early Christian times in Ireland. One of the pioneers of exploring Ireland’s inland…

Lost in Thought. The Hidden Pleasures of Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz (Princeton University Press, £18.99) Frank Litton The world is too much with us. The most distinctive feature of Irish culture is its contempt for all things intellectual. Consider the questions that occupy us in the daily round. Because we are social animals, we seek…

Freedom is a Land I Cannot See by Peter Cunningham (Sandstone Press, £8.99) Peter Cunningham’s latest novel, Freedom is a Land I Cannot See, is one of his best. He shows great skill and sympathy in evoking living conditions of a century ago, when Ireland, or more particularly north rural Dublin was passing through revolutionary turmoil,…

Summer outings (No.2 in a six-part series) Daniel
 O’Connor The Canon Daniel O’Connor (1843-1919) was the parish priest in the 1890s in whose domain Lough Derg and the ancient Shrine of St Patrick’s Purgatory lay. He was one of its first real historians of the place, a writer who devoted many years to collecting and…

Fearless Woman: Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Feminism and the Irish Revolutionary by Margaret Ward (University College Press, €30/£25) Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was born on May 24, 1877 in Kanturk, Co. Cork. She came from a well-known nationalist family. Fr Eugene Sheehy, her uncle, was a leading figure in the Land League and a close associate of the Irish…

Summer outings (No.1 in a six-part series) For much of her life Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington toiled not only as political publicist, but as a working journalist. She also wrote many non-political articles for magazines and papers which reveal her true skills as a writer. These now forgotten pieces are often quite charming, filled with insights into…