The Last Bus is an offbeat story about a widowed pensioner (Timothy Spall) who travels from John O’Groats to Land’s End with his wife’s ashes in a suitcase. He uses only local buses. The people he meets on his journey – the longest one can make in Britain – help him deal with his loss.…
St Kevin and the birds The little monasteries of early Christian Ireland derived their monastic ideals from the desert fathers of Egypt. But instead of some cave or remote hill top such as was to be found in the Libyan desert or in Sinai, they remained faithful to the notions of the ancient Celts, whose…
St Brendan and the sea beasts Brendan of Clonfert must be the most famous Irish saint after Patrick himself. Today, whereas most of the Irish saints listed in the in the reference books are hardly known, Brendan stands out, and this is entirely due to his fame as a sailor. He is always ‘Brendan the…
With return of blocked sacraments imminent, I’m still mystified by how the State presumed to ban sacraments. How come Baptisms, until last week’s easing, couldn’t happen at ceremonies where 50 people have been allowed for some time now? On Today With Claire Byrne (RTE Radio 1, Thursday) Fr Joe McDonald of Celbridge and Straffan parish…
A while ago I wrote about Co. Wicklow composer Ina Boyle (1889-1967) following the issue of a CD of some of her orchestral music. Happy to relate another CD, this time containing 33 of her songs, has come my way. On the Delphian label – DCD 34264 – I also find it a very attractive…
In the Shadow of Vesuvius: a Life of Pliny by Daisy Dunn (William Collins, £9.00 / €11.90) The Natural History by Pliny the Elder, translated with an introduction by John Healey (Penguin Classics, €15.99 / £9.99) The Letters of the Younger Pliny translated by Betty Radice (Penguin Classics, £9.99 / €9.42) A life of Pliny? Yes please, I said,…
To Love and to Serve: Selected Essays Exploring the Ignatian Tradition by Brian O’Leary SJ (Messenger Publications, €25.00 / £23.00) From the beginning of his career as a priest and academic Brian O’Leary has been involved in exploring various aspects of spirituality, especially as they derive from the Ignatian tradition to which he himself belongs. Much…
Counsels of the Holy Spirit: A Reading of Saint Ignatius’s Letters by Patrick C Goujon SJ, translated by Joseph Munitiz SJ (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) Counsels of the Holy Spirit promises in the blurb that “the lay reader will find [it] an accessible and practical guide to the core concepts of Ignatian spirituality”. Being myself a…
A City Imagined: Belfast Soulscapes by Gerald Dawe (Merrion Press, €19.95) Joe Carroll Gerald Dawe grew up in pre-Troubles sectarian Belfast, and this slim book is his third attempt to re-capture what today can seem a magical time when poetry and music were flourishing on narrow streets. As Dawe took his first steps as a…
The silly season is upon us. That means that we have to suffer nonsense like Fast and Furious 9, which even by its own (lack of) standards is pretty crazy, featuring an outer space element as well as a mad car chase through Edinburgh. But Vin Diesel (whose very name seemed destined to land him…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Ruadhán Jones