Ireland and Argentina in the twentieth century: Diaspora, diplomacy, dictatorship, Catholic mission and the Falklands crisis by Dermot Keogh (Cork University Press, €39.00/£33.50) Of all the countries of South America, Argentina is the one with which Ireland has the most historic and ethnic connections. One has only to think of William Brown from Foxford, who…
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the city through James Joyce’s Dublin: an exhibition created by Freddie Phillipson, in collaboration with Drawing Matter Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Mondays to Fridays, 9am -5pm, runs to August 19. The centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses passed this year with a few serious…
The overdue and historical overturning of the Roe vs Wade decision in the US blew up in the media last Friday. The development was portrayed mostly as a bad thing, with some over-reactions downright apocalyptic. With a greater or lesser degree of subtlety presenters and interviewers showed where they stood and it was overwhelmingly pro-choice/pro-abortion.…
Despite the wretched Covid-19 causing the cancellation of a number of events at the National Concert Hall and other venues across the country, I am hoping the upcoming collaboration between Irish National Opera (INO) and Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre (BGET) will proceed with its scheduled performances of Puccini’s Tosca at the BGET on July…
The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies by Irving Finkel (Hodder & Stoughton, £25.00/€29.99) This is a fascinating yet grim book which describes in detail the beliefs of the cultures of Mesopotamia concerning the departed dead. The author, who is the senior assistant keeper at the British Museum, is in charge of the written relics…
Thomas Morrissey SJ The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben (Oxford University Press, £25.00/€29.00) The author has produced a readable and impressive work of scholarship and organisation, which endeavours to trace the rise and fall of religion in Ireland from 8,000BC to the present day. The advent and progress of Christianity is presented…
Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP by Ronan McGreevy (Faber, £16.99/€19.99) Sir Henry Wilson, Ulster Unionist MP at Westminster and former Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), was shot dead by two English-born Irish Republicans – Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan – outside his home in London on June…
It’s amazing to think we’re still seeing biopics of Elvis Presley, like Baz Luhrmann’s 3-hour audio-visual extravaganza, Elvis (PG), nearly half a century after the rock ‘n’ roll icon “left the building”. What would the man himself have thought? When he went into the army, he thought his career was over. He thought so again…
Conflicts between Church and State can cause a lot of grief to both, but can also help to clarify principles. These themes were explored in the rather unusual film Servants (Film Four, Tuesday). Set in a Czechoslovakian seminary during communist times, in 1980, it told the story of young seminarians resisting the imposition of state…
The World of Books Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled, by Homan Potterton, with an Introduction by William Trevor (Merrion Press, €12.95/£12.99) This is a very welcome republication of a book first issued over two decades ago by another publisher. It was then hailed by William Trevor as “a wholly delightful memoir of lace-curtain Protestants in 1950s rural…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone