Religious TV shows aimed at a young audience are pretty rare, but last week I week I caught up with a few. Life on the Rock (EWTN) has a more youthful feel than most of that channel’s output but the format needs to be more energised. It can be more than a bit staid but…
The Greatest Secret: How Being God’s Adopted Children Changes Everything by Krish Kandiah (Hodder and Stoughton, £12.99) I showed this book to a regular reader of religious books while writing this notice. She grasped the general tenor of its theme at once. “Oh,” she said, “what a lovely idea.” It seemed to her to get to…
Mention Mozart’s operas and possibly four spring to mind immediately – The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte and The Magic Flute – but there others not least La clemenza di Tito, which like The Magic Flute, was written in the last months of the composer’s life in 1791. But going back a…
The Benedictine Nuns & Kylemore Abbey: A History by Deirdre Raftery and Catherine KilBride (The Benedictine Nuns Kylemore Abbey Centenary/Irish Academic Press, €19.95/£17.99) This book is the story of an Irish success, but it is much more than that. It also encapsulates, in the story of Kylemore Abbey, a history of Connemara over some two centuries,…
Ballina Remembered by Aubrey Malone (Lapwing Publications, Belfast, €9.99; ISBN 978-1-9163457-1-3; copies can be ordered direct from the publisher marymannion@hotmail.com) Noel Monahan Here we have a collection of memory poems to take you back in time to Ballina, Co. Mayo. It’s about memory and images from the past, a view from the inside with the…
As cinemas – like churches, bars, restaurants, hair salons etc. – begin the arduous process of trying to accommodate the public and still keep them safe during the time of Covid-19, we’re promised a rehash of old classics as the new releases are pushed back to mid-August at least. At home we can watch our…
Shadow Warriors: The Irish Army Ranger Wing by Paul O’Brien and Wayne Fitzgerald Mercier Press (€12.99/£11.99) Joe Carroll Back in the 1980s, there used to be an advertisement on RTÉ showing a squad of soldiers in battledress, holding rifles jogging along a road while singing lustily: “We are Rangers, mighty, mighty Rangers.” And then the Rangers…
At the end of every year I look back to see what outstanding religious programmes were broadcast on mainstream media and usually there’s not a huge lot, but last week there was one strong contender. Priest School (BBC Two, Tuesday) was an endearing insight into the training of priests in the Scottish College in Rome.…
Irish Jesuits in Penal Times: Thomas Betagh and his Companions by Thomas J. Morrissey SJ (Messenger Publications, €19.95) In what is now called St Kevin’s Park in Dublin’s Camden Row, just off Camden Street, which was once a graveyard dating from medieval times, there stands a monument. It is to the Jesuit Fr John Austin, who…
Without a Dog’s Chance: The Nationalists of Northern Ireland and the Irish Boundary Commission 1920–1922 by James A. Cousins (Irish Academic Press 2020) In July 1925, nearly a full century ago, the Irish Boundary Commission sat for the last time, bringing to an end a sorry business that began badly and ended in confusion. It may…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone