The Ideal Diplomat: Women and Irish foreign affairs, 1946-90 by Ann Marie O’Brien (Four Courts Press, €45.00/£40.00) Joe Carroll Josephine McNeill was the first woman to head an Irish diplomatic mission abroad when appointed Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the newly-opened legation in the Hague in 1949. Three years later in a letter to Seán Nunan,…
There have been lots of interesting changes in the media landscape in recent times, and I’ll get through them in turn. It seemed natural that Joe Duffy would take over from the late Gay Byrne (Duffy was once his protégée) for the new series of The Meaning of Life (RTÉ One, Sunday). I was expecting…
I’ve been getting DVDs from John Andrushkoff for over ten years now. I imagine I’ve bought over a thousand from him during that time. He claims to have dealt with that many dealers in his career as a collector. He has an excellent range of films from all genres, including religious ones, and charges just…
Mainly About Books by the Books Editor The slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ has rightly swept the world, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that it protests about the condition of racial harmony – or lack of it – in the United States today. Like so many movements of the moment, it reflects an…
As an occasional continuation of our series ‘Lockdown Reading’. This week we are publishing an appreciation of an important book once very well known, but now neglected… Realizations: Newman’s own selections of his sermons edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl, with a preface by Muriel Spark (Liturgical Press, 2009 [originally published 1964]) Teresa Whitington These 13 sermons…
We Built Reality: How social sciences infiltrated culture, politics and power by Jason Blakely (Oxford University Press, £64.00pb/$99.00hb/ €23.00pb) Frank Litton In a world of uncertainty one thing is certain: Ireland has changed significantly over the last 50 years. The way to describe, or evaluate, that change is less certain. Jason Blakely’s well-informed and accessible account…
Sacred Space: The Prayerbook 2021 (Messenger Publications, €12.95/£15.49) The cover of the new edition of this always popular book shows a lighthouse at dusk, and out at sea a barely visible sailing ship in the distance. There came into my mind at once those lines from Newman, “lead, kindly light, amidst th’encircling gloom…”, which is…
What with the #Golfgate row, the thirst for punishments and polarising conflicts worldwide you’d wonder if Covid-19 wasn’t infecting brains and temperaments. There has been much honest grappling with challenging issues but also much casting of first stones. On Thought for the Day (BBC Radio 4) last Wednesday morning, Anglican Bishop Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani took…
Writing about Beethoven’s Quartets last time, I got as far as his three Op 59s. Now I’ll go on a little further. Early in 1809, Princes Franz Lobkowitz and Ferdinand Kinsky together with Archduke Rudolph combined to grant the composer an annuity of 4,000 florins. As a result Beethoven considered marriage but his subsequent rejection…
Summer outings (No.6 in a six-part series) This book, edited from Tim White’s Irish diaries, was published in 1959, the year after the compilation of his separately published Arthurian novels appeared in one volume, The Once and Future King. This book became a major best seller here and in the Americas. It provided the source…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello