A Star is Born (Netflix) got me through Covid. When I heard they were making the film for the third time I thought: Too much. I’d seen the version with Judy Garland and James Mason and also the one with Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand. How many times could you re-heat the soufflé? Then I…
Not being British or a monarchist I didn’t feel too drawn to the platinum jubilee celebrations in the UK at the weekend, but I dipped in to the coverage from time to time out of curiosity. The Platinum Party at the Palace (BBC One, Saturday) was certainly a spectacular concert – the light shows in…
The town of Oberammergau (the district “above the river Ammer”) is situated in the Bavarian Alps of Southern Germany. It is best known world-wide for its decennial Passion Play. The 42nd Oberammergau presentation of the play opened on May 14, 2022 and performances will continue up to October 2, 2022. According to the local legend the staging…
Kilmichael: The Life and Afterlife of an Ambush by Eve Morrison (Irish Academic Press, €19.95/£16.95) Here in Ireland, we had a very economical revolution, with possibly no more than about 5,000 fatalities in the period from 1919 to 1923. By contrast Finland’s contemporaneous civil war, an outcrop of the Russian Revolution, a struggle between right…
Come Drink at the Fount: Introducing the Carmelite Authors by Edmond Cullinan TOC (Veritas, €12.99/£11.99) Edmond Cullinan, a native of Dungarvan, and a priest of the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, is currently vice-rector of the Pontifical Irish College, Rome. He is a member of the Third Order of Carmel and is also involved in…
Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of media neutrality on controversial issues. There’s few more controversial issues than school shootings in the USA and sadly we had another such last week. The massacre at the primary school in Uvalde, Texas, dominated media news and current affairs in the last week. First there…
The World of Books The picture which illustrates this article represents an old story-teller and his young listener as engraved as a tail-piece by artist Thomas Bewick, and comes from Ritson’s Robin Hood (1795), a celebrated collection of the medieval materials about that notorious British bandit. It is a charming scene, which I like to…
With President Higgins on hand at the NCH to present the awards and the accompanying NSO under Gerhard Markson, the 12th triennial Dublin International Piano Competition finals had four outstanding young musicians – two Japanese, one Czechian and one Russian – vying for the €15,000 first prize along with a series of engagements across the…
Ireland’s Great Famine, Britain’s Great Failure William H. A. Williams (Anthem Press, £80.00/€94.00) It is impossible to write about certain matters, even in a scholarly context, without feelings of outrage. The Irish Famine of 1845-49, the subject of this new book by William H. A. Williams, an American historian who taught at University College Dublin…
The Joseph Tree by Isabel Chenot (Wiseblood Books, US $14.00; the publishers can be addressed at P.O. Box 870 Menomonee Falls, WI 53052, USA, or emailed at wisebloodbooks@gmail.com) Isabel Chenot writes beautifully about the transcendent power of nature in this poetry collection. It’s dedicated to a friend who lost her baby son. The poem documenting this is…
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello