The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times by Lionel Barber (W. H. Allen, £25.00 / €20.25) Over Christmas, I read the book with the above arresting title. It is by Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times for the past 15 years, who has just retired. It is a gallop through the last…
While I wrote about Beethoven’s String Quartets at various times during his 250th anniversary last year, other topics diverted me along the way only allowing me to reach his 13th – Op 130. Beethoven’s C sharp minor 14th Quartet was written in the first half of 1826. Arguably the greatest of his last five, it…
Last week Covid-19 had to share the media limelight with the report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission – grim stories from past and present. In the blanket coverage first and foremost there were the heart-breaking stories of mothers and their babies, the personal stories of residual hurt and anger made all the more…
No Complaints: A Memoir of Life in Rural Ireland and in the Irish Public Service by Maurice O’Connell; edited by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €15.00) Ciaran Casey Former ministers for finance have demonstrated a welcome readiness to publish memoirs in recent years. We now have offerings from five of the seven office-holders from the period…
Snow, a Novel by John Banville (Faber &Faber,£14.99/€17.50) Derek Hand Abandoning the nom de plume of Benjamin Black – the name under which appeared a highly successful series of crime novels – John Banville has finally embraced as his own the thriller genre with this murder mystery Snow. The creation of this mask and the sleight of hand it entailed,…
The Gentle Saint: A pilgrimage to Oxford, Dublin and Rome in the Footprints of Saint John Henry Newman by Patricia O’Leary (Gracewing, £12.99) To many readers Patricia O’Leary will be a familiar name, as she contributed a column to this newspaper for some 14 years. By metier a Cork-based journalist, she also studied catechetics and scripture at…
The Art of Spiritual Direction: a guide to Ignatian practice by Jos Moons SJ, with a foreword by Paul Nicholson SJ (Messenger Publications, €19.99/£18.99) Most of us recognise in areas of our life and leisure that training is important, and that practice is needed to keep in trim. Yet when it comes to matters of the…
Bono was sitting beside Sophia Loren on a plane once when a lightning bolt flashed through the sky. She leapt into his arms in terror. “Don’t worry,” the U2 frontman assured her, “That’s just God taking your photograph.” It’s hard to believe the 86-year-old star is still acting. The term “living legend” is over-used but…
Well, 2021 came in with a bang, what with rapid escalation of Covid-19 infection rates, continuing upheaval in US politics and a rare apology from RTÉ. Vocation story In this context, I enjoyed listening to the more relaxed discussions on The Leap of Faith (RTÉ Radio 1, Friday). Michael Comyn spoke to Dr Dermot Farrell,…
Let us Dream: The Path to a Better Future by Pope Francis with Austen Ivereigh (Simon & Schuster (£10.99) This new book by Pope Francis is a very striking one. It contains, which is unusual in Papal works, pages of autobiography of the three periods of his own personal moments of isolation, moments akin to…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone