Hollywood was a hotbed of scandal both on and off the screen in the ‘Roaring’ twenties and tumescent thirties. It was a time of flux in the film industry. It cleaned itself up after 1934 when the Hays Code made a stern set of celluloid bans – no double beds (even for married couples), no…
Portal: Otherworldly Wonders of Ireland’s Bogs, Wetlands and Eskers text and photographs by Tina Claffey, foreword by Matthijs Schouten (Currach Books, €29.99/£25.99) This book came in hand during weeks in which California, the south of France, Spain, London and other places are being ravaged by fires, fires which are directly attributable to climate change promoted by…
A Short History of the Church of Ireland by Kenneth Milne (Messenger Publications, €12.95/£11.50) Dr Milne is well known to all those working in the areas of Church history in Ireland. This book at hand is the fifth edition of a book which has already served its purpose well by providing a little manual with…
Birth and the Irish: a miscellany edited by Salvador Ryan (Worldwell,€25.00/£22.00) Salvador Ryan is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. This new book completes a trilogy begun with Death and the Irish, (published in 2016 by Wordwell Books). The sequel, Marriage and the Irish, appeared in summer 2019. And now we are given…
Looking at a BBC Proms TV transmission recently I was reminded of this year being the sesquicentennial anniversary of the birth of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (VW) on October 12, 1872. The broadcast included one of VW’s best-loved works – Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis – expressively played by the Sinfonia of…
In the worst of pandemic times many people got comfortable with online Masses and for sure they were a brilliant opportunity to engage, but some got to like it so much that they didn’t return to in-person Masses when they could, finding it more meaningful at home. But that deprives them of community and the…
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler (Serpent’s Tail, £14.99) Booth, by the American author Karen Joy Fowler, is a novel about the family of actor Junius Brutus Booth. The most famous – or infamous – of his children was John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. Booth père (1796-1852) was an Englishman who abandoned a wife and…
Fr Niall Coll The Synodal Pathway: When Rhetoric Meets Reality, edited by Eamon Conway, Eugene Duffy and Mary McDaid (Columba Books, €16.99/£14.99) St John Henry Newman famously observed that “there has seldom been a Council without great confusion after it”. The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was no exception. Hence the often fractious discourse between traditionalists and…
Climb with Charlie, by Charlie Bird (Merrion Press, €17.99/£16.99) In 2021, veteran RTÉ journalist Charlie Bird made it known that he has motor neurone disease. He was charged up to make a positive response. He decided to organise a charity climb of Ireland’s famous Holy Mountain, Croagh Patrick. In its fulfilment, his simple plan grew…
34th International Hopkins Festival July 22-28 2022 Newbridge College Theatre, Newbridge, Co. Kildare The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Summer School, which has been called “a bright gem in the literary world”, by Patrick Samway SJ, the American literary scholar and teacher, begins tomorrow (Friday July 22), and closes next week on 28. The details of all…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan