Summer outings (No.4 in a six-part series) My first visit to Iona was a memorable event in my life. After a long dreary drive across the central valley of Mull, we came down to the little port from where visitors took the ferry to the island. It was now a sunny afternoon. The sea bed…
The news cycle last week was dominated by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the Beirut bombing and the death of John Hume, and in a way they were all connected. As if the people of Lebanon hadn’t enough to put up with, what with political turmoil and the pandemic, that massive explosion earlier in the week…
War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights by Peadar King (Liffey Press, €19.95/£18.95) Anthony Redmond I remember many years ago, when I read Wilfred Owen’s powerful anti-war poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, how deeply it affected me with its description of the sheer horror, obscenity and cruelty of war. It was a poem that really made…
Adomnán’s Lex Innocentium and the Laws of War by James W. Houlihan (Four Courts Press, €50.00 /£45.00) In this book the ordinary reader will find an account of the roots of the views about the treatments of innocent civilians, clergy and other unarmed folk in time of war. It is a discussion of the Cáin Adomnáin…
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…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan