From Crown to Harp: How the Anglo-Irish Treaty was Undone, 1921 – 1949, by David McCullagh (Gill Books, €26.99 / £25.99) This is an account of the three decades in Ireland which followed the War of Independence. Those years featured a number of remarkable Irish persons. Not least among them was Alfred O’Rahilly, an…
Someone once said that when you talk about your marriage problems to a third party, all you’re doing is giving evidence at an inquest. The quote was hardly a vote of confidence in counsellors. Alex (Will Arnett) deals with such problems idiosyncratically in Is This Thing On? (15A). Instead of using an individual person, he…
It’s nice to find something to get optimistic about at the start of a new year. And so, I bring you glad tidings. Education Nation (Spotify) is a new podcast from The Irish Catholic stable, exploring various aspects of the Irish education system. And it’s complicated! This was certainly clear in presenter Nicholas Cuddihy’s interview…
Broken But Holy: Becoming Human, by John O’Brien OFM (St Pauls Publishing, €10.00; contact stpauls.ie) The writings of John O’Brien, formerly of the Franciscan monastery in Athlone, and now at Multyfarnam, were recognised by the late Pope Francis in a personal letter of appreciation for his earlier book Winter Past: The Spirit of Hope. In…
Bloody Summer: A New History of the 1798 Rebellion, by James Quinn (UCD Press, €30.00 / £25.00) Though the events of 1798, variously a “rebellion” for some, but for others a proto-revolution, have never been forgotten, their meaning at the time and their present-day significance today are still debated, often with heated exchanges. The events…
Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and its Maker, by Zachery Leader (Harvard University Press, £29.95 / €34.50) Richard Ellmann was the author of what is regarded as the definitive biography of James Joyce, published in 1959. In Ellmann’s Joyce, Zachary Leader explores not only how Ellmann went about composing that biography but…
For the respectful formation of young people, I reckon the three most important influences are family, schools and peers. It’s great when all three are good and aligned, disastrous if all three are bad. There is a lot of talk about ‘influencers’ today, especially the online variety, but parents and teachers were surely the early…
The scatterbrained, chain-smoking Helen (Claire Foy) is a rather unlikely Cambridge lecturer in H is For Hawk (12A). At the beginning of the film she loses her father, photo-journalist Ali (Brendan Gleeson). She deals with her grief by acquiring a wild goshawk as a pet – though she denies it’s a hobby, or that the…
Doctor of the Church: An Introduction to Saint John Henry Newman, by Michael Rear, preface by His Majesty King Charles III (Gracewing, £12.99 / €15.00) On the feast of All Saints, November 1, 2025, Pope Leo XIV conferred the title of Doctor of the Church on St John Henry Newman, thus ranking him with…
The Root of All Evil: The Irish Boundary Commission, by Cormac Moore (Irish Academic Press, €22.99 / £20.00) In the negotiations between Irish and British leaders in 1921 that brought the War of Independence to an end and culminated in the Treaty that created the Irish Free State, there were two central issues: the extent…
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello