The decadent society: How we became the victims of our success by Ross Douthat (Avid Readers Press / Simon & Schuster, $US27.00 / £20.95) Frank Litton ‘We live in a time of unprecedented change.” Do we, really? My Grandfather was born in 1875 and died in 1950. I reckon he experienced far more radical…
The Noble Martyr: A Spiritual Biography of St Philip Howard by Dudley Plunkett, with a foreword by the Duke of Norfolk (Gracewing, £9.99) This book is published at a very timely moment. With Hilary Mantel’s final novel in her Tudor trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, climbing up the best seller lists, it is good…
Murillo: The Prodigal Son Restored text by Aoife Brady and Muirne Lydon, with an introduction by Sean Rainbird (National Gallery of Ireland, €19.95) Murillo: the Prodigal Son Restored Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Hugh Lane Room (Room 31), runs to 30 August 2020. Free entry The National Gallery since its foundation has been…
The O’Donnells of Tyrconnell: A Hidden Legacy by Francis M. O’Donnell (Academica Press / Maunsel Irish Research Series, $US95.99/€89.99) There has been a burgeoning increase in the interest in genealogy in recent years. This has been driven by the access to information on families on the internet and such popular programmes on TV, such…
The other week we reviewed in these pages an interesting, indeed important, book about new development of church architecture in Germany and Ireland after World War II. Of course, after the massive destruction during World War II when a large swathe of Northern Europe, from Brittany to Byelorussia, from the port of Brest to the…
Cork Harbour by Cal McCarthy (Merrion Press, €29.95) Cal McCarthy’s important book on Cork Harbour, the second largest natural harbour in the world, is beautifully shaped into three sections: Military Development, Commercial Development and Migration. The period covered is from 1700 to 1918. Hence there are no references to the role of Spike Island as…
Thomas J. Morrissey Navigating the Zeitgeist: A Story of the Cold War, the New Left, Irish Republicanism, and International Communism by Helena Sheehan (Monthly Review Press, $US20.00/£18.99) Dr Helena Sheehan is a well-known left-wing intellectual. Her book, Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: Critical History, published in 1985, became a classic work on its subject. She…
Newman’s Oxford: The places and buildings associated with Saint John Henry Newman during his years in Oxford 1816-1846 by Fr Jerome Bertram FSA (Gracewing, £6.99) The canononisation of John Henry Newman will open the way to many more popular accounts of parts of his life. In this very appealing brochure Fr Jerome Bertram, a priest…
Modern Religious Architecture in Germany, Ireland and Beyond: Influence, Process and Afterlife since 1945 Lisa Godson & Kathleen James-Chakraborty (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, £44.95/$US80.00) This collection of 11 articles derives from a conference held in Newman House in Dublin back in 2014. Alas, for the general reader concerned with religious architecture it is written in the…
Thomas Morrissey The Enigma of Arthur Griffith: ‘Father of Us All’ by Colum Kenny (Merrion Press, €19.95) The sub-title ‘Father of Us All’ stems from a declaration of W.T. Cosgrave in 1925 attributing to Michael Collins the statement: “Griffith was the greatest man of his age, the father of us all.” There have been a…
Peter Costello