Last time around I mentioned the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and its Music Bursary as well as this year’s principal winner – Phoebe White whose cellist brother, Killian, received the award in 2018. But there are two smaller, yet significant, sections to the main bursary. One is the €5,000 Jago Award, the other being the…
The first time I heard of the town of Arundel in England it was in connection with the intriguing poem ‘An Arundel Tomb’ by Philip Larkin. Unfortunately the tomb, in nearby Chichester, with its romantic husband and wife statues did not figure in last Sunday’s Songs of Praise (BBC One). We did learn about the…
London-Irish voices from our great Diaspora 1851 These days we hear a great deal about the Irish Diaspora. But all too often this means the life stories of those who did well in other parts of the world; the mass of emigrants become in a sense an amorphous cloud of exiled poverty. Now and again…
The O’Mahony Journal (No. 43, 2020) Nora M. Hickey (The O’Mahony Society who produces this annual can be contacted through Cristeoir D. F. O. O’Maony ‘Rosbrin’, 27 Woodlands, Montenotte, Co. Cork. email: dfomahoney@gmail.com Here in Ireland there are many people who are well-known, and enjoyed by all but who never rise to the honour of…
Writing this column is not a dangerous business, but some journalists do put their lives on the line in pursuit of their stories. Recently we had the shooting of Dutch journalist Peter R de Vries in the Netherlands and he’s still in critical condition at the time of writing. On Times Radio Breakfast last Saturday…
It seemed stranger than fiction. An Englishman living with a Welsh woman is suspected of killing a French woman on the west coast of Cork two days before Christmas in 1996. Sophie Toscan Du Plantier, as most people in Ireland must know by now, was a documentary film-maker whose love affair with our country ended…
I am with you still: Faith reflections from a Covid-19 World edited with a series of reflections by John Quinn, foreword by Donal Dorr (Veritas, €12.99/£11.70) In his new book popular writer John Quinn has drawn together some 18 people of all kinds from the corners of Ireland to give thought to the situation we have…
From the Outside: Rethinking Church Doctrine by Fr Tony Flannery (Red Stripe/Orpen Press, €15/£13.99) Fr Tony Flannery CSsR has been barred from his public ministry for nine years and was most recently in the public eye having declined to sign a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) that would have led to…
The Bogman by Walter Macken [1952] (Modern Irish Classics/New Island Books, €11.95) Walter Macken may be a familiar name to some of our readers. In the 1960s, he was a hit author, with a best-selling trilogy of historical novels, and before that he was a successful actor and playwright with the Abbey Theatre. Knowing this, New…
Time to Call Home by Hugh O’Donnell (Veritas, €14.99/£12.90) Fr Hugh O’Donnell SDB lives in Dublin’s inner-city, where he helps minister to the local parish. But in his writing and poetry he explores what he sees as “ecological spirituality”. Doubtless the cityscape that surrounds his daily life sharpens the contrast with what should be the true ecological…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Ruadhán Jones