Tin Can Cook by Jack Monroe (Bluebird Books for Life, £6.99) During this current term of trial, I was talking on the phone to a friend who is unmarried and lives alone and was finding life very hard. Feeding a single person economically – takeaways are costly – is difficult. He said he was very clever…
Over the coming weeks some of our literary collaborators will give suggestions for ‘lockdown’ reading, books of all kinds to amuse and raise our spirits. This week, Des Egan on James Thurber… I have always had a soft spot for cartoons, even to the point of proposing some cartoon-plays consisting of a single sentence,…
Strong in the Face of Tribulation: The Church in Communion, A Sure Support in Time of Trial, compiled and edited by the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, gratis, by download from the website of the publishing house, in pdf format; currently available in English, Italian, Spanish and French) The scene…
Coping with Coronavirus: How to Stay Calm and Protect your Mental Health A Psychological Toolkit by Dr Brendan Kelly (Irish Academic Press, €3.99 pb; Kindle price, €0.99) Anthony Redmond I am sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that I feel as if I am living through a strange, bizarre nightmare when…
The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey by Lorraine V. Murray (St Benedict Press, Charlotte NC; kindle-edition, £7.46 through Amazon UK) Many people are finding the restrictions caused by Covid-19 somewhat tiresome. In these circumstances it would be difficult to recommend a more appropriate read that this biography of Flannery O’Connor. The distinguished American writer…
Passion Play: Oberammergau 2020 by Christian Tüeckl and others (Theatre der Zeit, £30.00; ISBN-13: 978-3957492845) The village of Oberammergau lies some 45 miles south of Munich in the Tyrol. In many ways it is a remote place, but in time of war and plague, no place is truly remote, in the sense of being totally…
Douglas Hyde: A Maker of Modern Ireland by Janet Egleston Dunleavy & Gareth W. Dunleavy (University of California Press, £48.00) Douglas Hyde/Dubhlas de hÍde served as Ireland’s first president from 1938 to 1945. This was the very highest distinction which the new state and the people of Ireland could bestow. Hyde himself was a man who…
The Jewel in the Mess by Alan Abernethy (Columba Books, €12.99 / £12.99) Out of danger comes hope: this is the theme of the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Connor’s new book. He has suffered in recent years from depression and well as prostate cancer. But in these dark hours he has recovered a…
The Autobiography of William Carleton with a foreword by Benedict Kiely (The White Row Press, 1996; other editions are now available on line). This is the unfinished autobiography of William Carleton. Although it ends well short of when he died on January 30, 1869, together with his other writings, it is an important source for the…
Dark Enchantment by Dorothy Macardle (Tramp Press, Recovered Voices Series, No.6) Teresa Whitington Dorothy Macardle has been primarily associated with her 1937 partisan history The Irish Republic, written at Eamon de Valera’s request to give an account of the independence struggle from the anti-treaty side. In so far as the novelist Dorothy Macardle is known,…
Peter Costello