While Covid-19 continues to cast doubts over live music performances, some promoters are battling on. One such has a three-week tour of the country by piano supremo, Finghin Collins, currently in hand. Mr Collins actually began his serpentine journeying on November 13 at Tullynally Castle in Co. Westmeath overlooking Lough Derravaragh, the legendary lake of…
It’s interesting how the concept of justice is used so liberally these days – everything from ‘climate justice’, a relatively new concept, through ‘social justice warriors’ whose methods don’t always taste of justice, to genuine justice tempered by mercy. The phrase ‘crying out for justice’ was used in a timely interview on Times Radio Breakfast…
The Letters of John McGahern edited by Frank Shovlin (Faber & Faber, €29.99 / £27.92) Derek Hand John McGahern made very clear his unease with the act of letter writing, declaring to his friend the artist Paddy Swift, “I don’t like writing letters… it is so easy to be anything except honest here: surely the…
Midnight in London: The Anglo-Irish Treaty Crisis, 1921 by Colum Kenny (Eastwood Books, €9.99) Scholars and others continue to mull over the minutiae of the negotiations that led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in the early hours of the morning on December 6, 1921. Even now a hundred years later, there is a great deal…
Finding Peace compiled by Sister Stan (Columba Books, €16.99 / £14.50) A reader opening this book is likely to turn first out of curiosity to those entries by public figures such as the party leaders of the Government and opposition: this is worth reading, and recalling perhaps on future occasions, such as at the time of…
Joy in the Good: Rekindling an Inner Fire by Joachim Hartmann SJ and Annette Clara Unkelhäußer (Messenger Publication, €12.95 / £11.20) On first picking up this book I was taken by a sentence in the blurb: “We overlook the rich and complementary relationship between silence and communication. In silence we can rediscover the gift of…
My favourite joke about the JFK assassination concerns the dyslexic who thought President Kennedy was murdered by the ICA – the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. One could be forgiven for expecting Oliver Stone to have finished with conspiracy theories surrounding his death with the humungous JFK back in 1991. Not so. He’s still banging on about…
When something is a right you shouldn’t have to kick up a fuss to vindicate it, yet it often seems to be that way. These thoughts were prompted by episodes of Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1) last week, at its best when championing the rights of the vulnerable. Last week there were so many stories of…
When a person who holds opinions not beloved by media folk is called onto a current affairs show, it can feel like being called to the principal’s office for a ticking off. I’ve been there. It felt like that when Mary Wilson interviewed Anna Sochanska, the Polish Ambassador to Ireland, on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio…
Following Wexford Festival Opera’s conclusion on Halloween, Irish National Opera (INO) raised its curtain on Beethoven’s Fidelio at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre earlier this week with further performances tomorrow and Saturday, November 12 and 13. Around 1802 Beethoven became acquainted with the play, Léonore, by French author Jean Nicolas Bouilly. Reading it in a German translation…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone