From the Earth to the Moons and Around It, by Jules Verne (Aladdin Books / Simon & Schuster, €16.50 / £14.50; many other editions also available) The successful voyage around the moon by the crew of Artemis II brought to my mind this pioneering novel by Jules Verne, who is rightly described as the “inventor of…
The big event in Ireland in recent days has been the release by the National Archives of the online version of the digitalised forms filled in by every household in the country on April 18, 1926 forming the first census since 1911, a census which now presents us with a picture of the then Irish…
I’m uneasy when politics, especially party politics, gets mixed up with religion. Commonly it is religion that suffers. Yet the Church has an imperative to speak out on social justice and moral issues. These thoughts were on my mind as I observed the rather bizarre goings on last week, widely covered in the media –…
Recent conflicts in Gaza and Palestine have caused many people to reflect anew on the holocaust of World War II. In such circumstances, it might be timely to re-view the 1959 film Conspiracy of Hearts. Featuring Lilli Palmer as the Mother Superior of an Italian convent, this is a moving work dealing with the efforts…
Seán Lemass, The Lost Memoir: The autobiography of Ireland’s most admired Taoiseach, edited by Ronan McGreevy (Eriu / Bonnier, £22.00 / £20.00) The title of this book is misleading. It is neither a memoir nor an autobiography of Seán Lemass, but rather the edited transcripts of taped interviews that Lemass gave to businessman Dermot…
William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy, by Alice Insley, Anne Hodge and Christina Morin (National Gallery of Ireland / Tate Gallery, €40.00 / £35.00) Exhibition organised by NGI in collaboration with the Tate Gallery, London, curated by Alice Insley and Anne Hodge. Runs to July 19, 2026; Rooms 6-10. Tickets online from €0 – €16. …
Thomas More: A Life and Death in Tudor England, by Joanne Paul (Penguin Books, £12.99 / Michael Joseph €32.00 hb) Thomas More has been a figure of such controversy as to make even the opening sentence of this review seem problematic: should he be entitled as St Thomas or Sir Thomas? In following the author of…
Jiving With Wasps: New and Selected Poems, by Rita Ann Higgins (Bloodaxe Books, €16.95 / £9.95) Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people”, the poet Adrian Mitchell famously pronounced. Rita Ann Higgins doesn’t fall into that category. As readable and accessible a poet as the late Paul Durcan, she could fairly…
The religious output of mainstream media channels is patchy – no specifically religious programmes at all in some cases, with significant input in others. BBC continues to impress with its commitment to their long-running pilgrimage-themed series. The latest version came to an end last week. Pilgrimage: The Road to Holy Island (BBC Two, Tuesday, with…
After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace, by Robert Polito (W.W. Norton, £15.00 / €29.99) Bob Dylan has reinvented himself more often than any artist inside or outside music. Morphing from the folk-rock avatar of the sixties counterculture to a born-again Christian in the late seventies, he went from singing anti-religious anthems like ‘With…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone