Inspiration for all Seasons: Celtic Wisdom for Today by John Scally (Black & White Publishing, Edinburgh, £14.99) Coming to hand just at the end of one year and the beginning of another, with many changes of all kinds in the offing here in Ireland, and around the world, this book was a delightful surprise. Here,…
The Christmas to New Year season is a rich time for TV and Radio programmes with a religious flavour. Much of the material is made up of repeats so I’m always on the lookout for something different. The mockumentary Death to 2020 (Netflix) was ideal viewing for New Year’s Eve – a scattershot and satirical…
How to be Our Best Self in Times of Crisis by Stuart Breen and Tom Gunning (Veritas, €7.99) As human beings we seemed made to thrive at times in moments of danger. Yet the present pandemic, being what it is, created great and unexpected troubles: physical, mental and spiritual. This little book by two writers…
Deeds Not Words: The Survival of the Fitzmaurices Lords of Kerry 1550 to 1603 by Martin Moore (Gabha Beag publications,€20.00) This splendid study examines the political and military roles of the Fitzmaurices, Lords of Kerry and Barons of Lixnaw, in the Tudor Years of 1550 to 1603. It shows their involvement in local, national and…
Readers may forgive me at this season of peace and goodwill, having already written about my most enjoyed book of last year (The Irish Catholic December 24, 2020), for concluding here my thoughts about 2020 with something I wrote during this Covid-19 year, which – I now discover – seems curiously ad rem: A Poem for 2021 Bunting…
Before moving to Leipzig in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach held several positions as organist and choirmaster in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, Weimar and Cöthen. In Weimar he served under Lutheran Duke Wilhelm Ernst (1662-1728), who had a penchant for religious devotions and aimed to maintain the Church’s ancient musical tradition. This was to Bach’s advantage giving him…
The year had hardly begun when Covid-19 struck. It changed the way we viewed films. Social distancing wasn’t as much of a problem in cinemas as it was in pubs or at rock concerts but it still took away from the experience. The ‘reel’ thing wasn’t the ‘real’ thing anymore. People steeped themselves in boxsets,…
For centuries Jerusalem and the Holy Land was a place of great mystique, the hope of pious pilgrims as the object of a once in a lifetime visit. But over the course of the long nineteenth century this began to change: new techniques of image making and reproduction began to alter the ideas that people…
Sometimes when I look back on the year in TV and Radio there’s a certain sameness, but not this year. So many columns I wrote featured Covid-19 in some shape or form. One effect of the coronavirus was the proliferation of repeats in the media schedules with broadcasters finding it increasingly difficult to make programmes…
Some of our regular reviewers select the book or books they most enjoyed or were impressed by over the course of the last year… TJ Morrissey SJ The most interesting book of the year for me was Paul: A Biography, by Tom Wright (SPCK Publishing, £19.99). The author is recognised as one of St Paul’s…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone