Michael Collins will be a familiar figure to readers. For many years he was an important commentator for international television services on events and personalities in Rome. He brings all that experience to bear in this new biography of Pope Leo XIV. This is the second biography of the Pope to come to hand recently,…
Brendan McManus will be known to readers for his writings on the Camino and for the trilogy of books that make up the Mess series of books, dealing with the spiritual state of the world today. These have all been widely read. But here is a very different book. It appeals to stillness and to…
The centenary of Sir David Attenborough has been marked with tributes around the globe, wherever indeed his various full-colour television series on the natural world since 1979 have been shown. These have done a great deal to arouse in many people a passionate interest in the world around us. The tributes were certainly well deserved.…
The Story of Us: Independent Ireland and 1926 Census, Edited by Orlaith McBride and John Gibney (Irish Academic Press, €24.99 / £22.99) This book, prepared to accompany the release of the forms from the Irish Free State Census in 1926, is surely misnamed. What in fact is the communal collective of the title intended to…
Daily Wisdom – Léann an Lae: Irish Proverbs and Sayings for Each Day of the Year, by John Quinn (Red Stripe Press, €14.99 / £17.50) Author John Quinn died on New Years Day at the age of 84. This book was originally published some six years ago by the now defunct Veritas Publication, whose disappearance was a…
There’s a difference between emotion and emotionalism, between sentiment and sentimentality, between pathos and bathos. Unfortunately, Morgan Matthews’ 500 Miles (12A) loses out on all three counts. If Maeve Binchy was still with us, it’s the kind of thing she’d probably be penning, giving us an Ireland that’s not so much the way we see…
here is no lack of hot button issues. As soon as one is discussed and fades, another lands to take its place. It’s a queue of controversies. Last week RTÉ seemed to be throwing its weight behind moves to progress surrogacy legislation. No fewer than three speakers in favour were interviewed last Wednesday morning, while…
The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland, edited by Gladys Daniel and Andrew Holmes (Oxford University Press, £137.50 / €130.00) Readers who are not dismayed by the suggested price of this academic book will find that it provides a wider view of Ireland in contrast to the letter box view provided by the Census of 1926.…
Here we go again – another effort in Leinster House to liberalise our abortion laws, courtesy of the Social Democrats. Is there not enough death? Party leader Holly Cairns TD was interviewed briefly on Today with David McCullagh (RTÉ One, Tuesday). The host challenged her with a relevant point – the people voted to repeal…
In Trad, a rebellious young fiddle player Shona (Megan Nic Fhionnghaile) leaves her Donegal Gaeltacht home to find herself through her music. She joins a band and lives a hippie lifestyle of hitch-hiking, camping and busking with her sort-of boyfriend Ray (Cathal Coade Palmer) whom she hooks up with on the rebound from the older,…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan