Irish lives in America Edited by Liz Evers and Niav Gallagher (Royal Irish Academy, €19.95/£18/$25) On this day every year Irish thoughts turn without fail to our relatives and friends in the United States. In reciprocation, President Joe Biden has this year issued a special proclamation from the White House declaring March 2022 as Irish-American…
Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings Curated by Ann Hodge Runs to 12 June 2022; Print Gallery, National Gallery of Ireland | free admission (This exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Royal Collection Trust, the York Museums Trust, the National Gallery of Ireland and Nottingham Castle.) Thomas Gainsborough was hugely productive of drawings, so…
The Hollywood Academy likes to ‘big up’ a given film each year. People are saying Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is going to sweep the boards this year. Will Smith is expected to win best actor for King Richard but let’s remember what happened to Chadwick Boseman last year. He was unbeatable and…
Seán Ryan ‘And Finally…’: A Journalist’s Life in 250 Stories Paddy Murray (Liffey Press, €14.95) The late Paddy Murray (who died last month) spent 46 years at the coalface of Dublin journalism, producing from a rich vein of Irish life the golden ore of stories which earned him the ‘Young Journalist of the Year’ award in 1975…
Very often TV series from the 80s don’t date very well but a select few are as engaging and relevant as ever. Yes, Prime Minister, currently on repeat (BBC Four, Wednesdays and Saturdays), is as fresh as ever –the political satire still bites sharply. Last week’s episode ‘The Bishop’s Gambit’ is one of the funniest.…
Anthony Redmond Vincent van Gogh and the Good Samaritan: The Wounded Painter’s Journey by Henry Martin (Darton, Longman & Todd, £12.99/€15.50) One of the greatest of the post-impressionists painters Vincent van Gogh led a troubled, somewhat unhappy life searching for love and recognition as an artist. He wrote countless letters to his devoted brother, Theo,…
Under fire in Ballymacandy: How ‘the Troubles’ came to an Irish village Ballymacandy: The Story of a Kerry Ambush by Owen O’Shea (Irish Academic Press, €14.95/£12.99) In his latest book Kerry Historian Owen O’Shea provides a dispassionate account of the details surrounding the deadly ambush at Ballymacandy on June 1, 1921 dealing even-handedly with all…
The ongoing war in Ukraine seems to many in the West to defy reason. But that is very much the view from Strasbourg or Washington. From Moscow the prospect looks quite different. In the weeks leading up to the deployment of his forces, President Vladimir Putin spoke of Ukraine being part of “the historic Russia”,…
And so, we got another week of intense coverage of the war in Ukraine – absorbing, disturbing and frequently heart-breaking. On The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, Thursday) we heard the latest fighting words from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – he said the Russians may bomb their cathedrals but they won’t make Ukrainians give up their country or…
Two recent National Symphony Orchestra programmes at the National Concert Hall focussed on a pair of well-established contemporary American composers, each of whom has his own particular following but with one better known through his involvement with the ‘silver screen’ not least Jaws and Star Wars. New York-born John Williams is the more recognisable household…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan