A recent phone call from pianist Darina Gibson invited me to a recital in the NCH’s John Field Room being given by RTÉ NSO flautist Sinéad Farrell and herself. As their principally French programme looked enticing I gladly accepted the invitation. The evening began with Bach’s B minor Flute Sonata where the opening Andante found…
Lay of the Land: Reflections on life in rural Ireland by Fiona O’Connell (Red Stag, €12.99) Christopher Moriarty This collection of chatty articles is attractively illustrated by Caroline Barry with a pen-and-ink sketch at the head of every one of the one hundred plus short chapters. They are a selection from the author’s weekly articles…
Elsewhere: One Woman, One Rucksack, One Lifetime of Travel by Rosita Boland (Doubleday, €16.99) Barbara Pierce Elsewhere is a fascinating series of essays written about extraordinary journeys travelled by Rosita Boland over a period of about thirty years. She set off alone with only a 10kg bag, a passport and a black note book, no…
Bauhaus 100 – The Print Portfolios Continues to December 1, 2019 – NGI Print Gallery, admission free This year marks the centenary of the founding in Weimar Germany of Das Staatliche Bauhaus, better known as the Bauhaus, an institution which served to promote modernist architecture, making Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe international…
A lie can be halfway around the world, as the adage so often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain has it, before the truth has got its boots on. The internet has managed to make this depressing reality all the worse, and just as paper doesn’t refuse ink, so one thing screens cannot do is screen out…
International films are having a field day on our screens at the minute. Blinded by the Light takes up where Yesterday left off, giving us the story of a disaffected young Asian man becoming liberated by music. Bob Dylan once said that hearing Elvis Presley for the first time was like “busting out of jail”.…
There are some programmes I like and some I dislike, and then there are programmes I find inspiring at times, and irritating at others. Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1) fits into the latter category, and last week I was definitely irritated. It all started on the Tuesday when ‘Diane’ (not her real name) expressed how upset…
Mainly About Books by the books editor The publication in late 2016 of Pat Wallace’s Viking Dublin (Irish Academic Press, €60.00), was a summation of decades of work by two generations of archaeologists from the National Museum and others, to define the city’s beginnings. However, the book has nothing really to say about pre-Viking…
Living the Mystery: What lies between Science and Religion by Mark Patrick Hederman (Columba Books, €19.99) Christopher Moriarty This book is a heartfelt plea from its erudite author who has spent more than 50 years of his life as a Benedictine monk. As a devoted man of religion, he celebrates the value of faith and, as…
A Farewell to Poetry: selected Poems and Translations by Gabriel Fitzmaurice (Currach Press, €19.99) Seamus Cashman The title of this collection invites echoes of its author’s friend and fellow poet Michael Hartnett’s Farewell to English — and who knows, perhaps Gabriel’s mind is quietly nurturing a similar outcome? Though it is a challenging title, it…
Peter Costello
Greg Daly
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan