Summer outings (No.3 in a six-part series) Clonmacnoise is one of the most remarkable places in Ireland. However, back in the late 1940s, the Emergency had left it even more isolated, a place which in the right light could seem unchanged since Early Christian times in Ireland. One of the pioneers of exploring Ireland’s inland…
It’s a pure fluke that the programmes under review this week all begin with the letter M! I’ve been catching up on the TV drama series Mrs America (BBC Two) which came to an end last Thursday. It was an absorbing dramatisation of the culture war between radical feminists and activist conservatives over the Equal…
Had all gone according to plan, I should be in Salzburg – Mozart’s birthplace – this evening (August 6) at Richard Strauss’ opera Elektra. But, as ‘man proposes and God disposes’, I abandoned my travels. Anyway, the Festival, celebrating its centenary this year, cancelled its original programme, proposing something less adventurous instead. With a ‘select…
Lost in Thought. The Hidden Pleasures of Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz (Princeton University Press, £18.99) Frank Litton The world is too much with us. The most distinctive feature of Irish culture is its contempt for all things intellectual. Consider the questions that occupy us in the daily round. Because we are social animals, we seek…
Freedom is a Land I Cannot See by Peter Cunningham (Sandstone Press, £8.99) Peter Cunningham’s latest novel, Freedom is a Land I Cannot See, is one of his best. He shows great skill and sympathy in evoking living conditions of a century ago, when Ireland, or more particularly north rural Dublin was passing through revolutionary turmoil,…
‘End of an era’ would be too strong; it was more a case of significant change in the media landscape. Last Friday saw Ivan Yates’ last outing as presenter on the evening show The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk). He could come across as cynical, brash, crude and laddish, but was open to diverse viewpoints, and in…
I recently mentioned some Christian-themed films you can watch on Netflix. There are many others as well, some of which you may have already seen, like The Two Popes. It got a lot of publicity at the time of its release. It has Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce as the future Pope…
Summer outings (No.2 in a six-part series) Daniel O’Connor The Canon Daniel O’Connor (1843-1919) was the parish priest in the 1890s in whose domain Lough Derg and the ancient Shrine of St Patrick’s Purgatory lay. He was one of its first real historians of the place, a writer who devoted many years to collecting and…
Fearless Woman: Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Feminism and the Irish Revolutionary by Margaret Ward (University College Press, €30/£25) Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was born on May 24, 1877 in Kanturk, Co. Cork. She came from a well-known nationalist family. Fr Eugene Sheehy, her uncle, was a leading figure in the Land League and a close associate of the Irish…
Summer outings (No.1 in a six-part series) For much of her life Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington toiled not only as political publicist, but as a working journalist. She also wrote many non-political articles for magazines and papers which reveal her true skills as a writer. These now forgotten pieces are often quite charming, filled with insights into…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone