A Place Where Ireland is Invisible, by James Harpur, woodcuts by Paul Ó Colmáin (The Eblana Press, €35.00 postage included, Ireland / €45.00 post included, worldwide) The allusion in the title is to the banishment of Columcille to Scotland: he had to go to a place from which the coast of his beloved Ireland could…
Domhnall Gleeson recently said Rachel McAdams “changes a room merely by entering it.” I wondered if I was hearing him right. He wasn’t talking about Einstein or Winston Churchill. Domhnall appeared with McAdams in About Time, an average enough film. Where does this kind of hyperbole emanate from? Are film stars on such elevated plateaus…
This week there’s one show on the way out, two on the way in and one getting well established. Last week there was no more of the long-running show Press Preview, (Sky News) a disappointing development I thought. It was essential nightly viewing for avid news heads, as two prominent UK journalists pored over the…
From Bullets to Ballots: Politics and Electioneering in Post-Civil War Kerry, 1923-33, by Owen O’Shea (University College Dublin Press, €30.00 / £24.99) This is an account of how Kerry people emerged from the horrors of the Civil War, or as the author pithily puts it – how they settled their political differences by ballots…
Pre-Famine fever epidemics: A case study of the Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin, by Ciarán McCabe (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €12.95 / £10.99) Molly Malone is a much-disputed Dublin character. Though she may well have been a songwriter’s invention, her death from a “fever” was one which certainly carried…
Leo XIV: An Augustinian Life in Context, by Brian Heffernan (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £10.95) This book is the second short biography of the new Pope to arrive in the last three months. Others are doubtless on the way. And we can be sure that those 500-page volumes so typical of American journalism today…
Jonah and Me, by John F. Deane (Carcanet Press, £12.99 / €16.99) John F. Deane is a poet who continues to bewilder us with the sheer skill of his late creativity. Like W.B. Yeats, and another more famous Person, he has kept the best wines until the late hour. This new collection comes with…
From Crown to Harp: How the Anglo-Irish Treaty was Undone, 1921 – 1949, by David McCullagh (Gill Books, €26.99 / £25.99) This is an account of the three decades in Ireland which followed the War of Independence. Those years featured a number of remarkable Irish persons. Not least among them was Alfred O’Rahilly, an…
Someone once said that when you talk about your marriage problems to a third party, all you’re doing is giving evidence at an inquest. The quote was hardly a vote of confidence in counsellors. Alex (Will Arnett) deals with such problems idiosyncratically in Is This Thing On? (15A). Instead of using an individual person, he…
It’s nice to find something to get optimistic about at the start of a new year. And so, I bring you glad tidings. Education Nation (Spotify) is a new podcast from The Irish Catholic stable, exploring various aspects of the Irish education system. And it’s complicated! This was certainly clear in presenter Nicholas Cuddihy’s interview…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan