Had everything gone according to plan, Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra would be in the National Concert Hall next Tuesday (June 2) under Sir Mark Elder, its principal conductor since 2000. The concert promised an interesting Franco-Russian mix with Ravel surrounded by Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. I was looking forward to it, as the Hallé’s visits, despite the…
Journeys of Faith: Stories of Pilgrimage from Medieval Ireland by Louise Nugent (Columba Books, €26.99) This book is an epitome of a thousand years of Irish history, roughly 500 AD to 1500 AD. It is a reminder, if one is really needed, of just how important the context of history is to understanding present attitudes…
Raphael’s World by Michael Collins (Messenger Publications, €19.95 / £17.95) The Renaissance painter Raphael (1483-1520) is an artist whose work is widely familiar to many people without them being aware of it. His images affect their imagination because of their content, not because of whom they are by. This is because (rather like Murillo) he was…
Tin Can Cook by Jack Monroe (Bluebird Books for Life, £6.99) During this current term of trial, I was talking on the phone to a friend who is unmarried and lives alone and was finding life very hard. Feeding a single person economically – takeaways are costly – is difficult. He said he was very clever…
Covid-19 has made us all change the way we watch movies. Those of us lucky enough to have computers can cope easily enough with online purchases. Others have to be more innovative; I saw a news report about a man in Fermoy recently who’s showing films on walls for his neighbours. Desperate situations require desperate…
Over the coming weeks some of our literary collaborators will give suggestions for ‘lockdown’ reading, books of all kinds to amuse and raise our spirits. This week, Des Egan on James Thurber… I have always had a soft spot for cartoons, even to the point of proposing some cartoon-plays consisting of a single sentence,…
One of the things I’ve noticed about public debate in the media is that sometimes certain views are marginalised. People are often unaware of this, or conveniently oblivious, until they find their own views suffering the same fate and then the penny drops. This is happening to a certain extent in the debates over Covid-19,…
Strong in the Face of Tribulation: The Church in Communion, A Sure Support in Time of Trial, compiled and edited by the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, gratis, by download from the website of the publishing house, in pdf format; currently available in English, Italian, Spanish and French) The scene…
Coping with Coronavirus: How to Stay Calm and Protect your Mental Health A Psychological Toolkit by Dr Brendan Kelly (Irish Academic Press, €3.99 pb; Kindle price, €0.99) Anthony Redmond I am sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that I feel as if I am living through a strange, bizarre nightmare when…
The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey by Lorraine V. Murray (St Benedict Press, Charlotte NC; kindle-edition, £7.46 through Amazon UK) Many people are finding the restrictions caused by Covid-19 somewhat tiresome. In these circumstances it would be difficult to recommend a more appropriate read that this biography of Flannery O’Connor. The distinguished American writer…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan