Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life by Henri J. M. Nouwen, edited by Gabrielle Earnshaw, foreword by Brené Browne (Hodder & Stoughton, £10.99) Anthony Redmond Fr Henri Nouwen was one of the most prolific and important spiritual writers of the 20th Century. Since his unexpected death in 1996 his fame and influence as a spiritual writer…
Padre Pio: Irish Encounters with the Saint by Colm Keane (Capel Island Press, €14.99) Author Colm Keane will be familiar to many from his earlier books exploring aspects of life, death, and spirituality. They have proved to be both very popular and, in the eyes of some, controversial. In his new book he explores the life…
The World of Books Si Newhouse died the other day, and as the American millionaire owner of some high-profile titles such as Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, he was something of a celebrity, a celebrity however with a dubious reputation. The name of André Schiffrin [pictured] may not be so familiar to many,…
The Quiet Architect (PG) I don’t tend to get very worked up about buildings. I’ve always seen them as things you go into when you want to get in out of the rain. This fascinating documentary from Mark Noonan made me re-think that. Kevin Roche is Irish but he’s spent most of his life ‘stateside’. He designed over…
Atlas of the Irish Revolution edited by John Crowley, Donal Ó Drisceoil, and Mike Murphy, with associate editor John Borgonovo (Cork University Press, €59.00) Felix M. Larkin The many plaudits this volume has received since its publication in mid-September are well justified. It is an epic production, running to almost 1,000 pages and weighing in at five kilos.…
Humour is a very subjective thing, and with something I think is funny, others may remain untickled. That being said I find W1A (BBC 2, Friday nights) hilarious. But then it is a send up of the media so I’m in my zone and with my tribe. The target of the satire is political correctness,…
Return to Montauk (PG ) Max (Stellan Skarsgard) is a writer from Berlin. He’s doing a promotional book tour in New York. Seventeen years ago he had a brief romance with Rebecca (Nina Hoss). Neither of them realised how much they cared about each other at the time. He meets her again now. You don’t have to be Einstein…
The pseudo-traditionalist website rorate-caeli.blogspot.com has become perhaps stranger than ever in the aftermath of the much-ballyhooed ‘filial correction’ of Pope Francis. It’s getting attention, as Roberto de Mattei says on the site, though it’s hard to justify his claim that it’s had an “extraordinary impact”, even if it’s been widely reported even in Russia and…
It’s quite a while since I saw a documentary as moving and impressive as Ministry of Hope, RTÉ’s new series on the work of lay chaplains. The programme concentrated on Margaret Sleator in the Mater Hospital, Catherine Black in Shelton Abbey open prison and Philip McKinley, Church of Ireland chaplain at DCU. Margaret Slater’s work…
Life is a Funny Business: A Very Personal Story by Alan Shatter (Poolbeg, €16.99) Peter Hegarty In a candid affecting book Alan Shatter takes us into the “deep recesses of my mind”. The deepest, darkest recess holds the memory of the cold December afternoon in 1965 when he returned home to find his mother Elaine dead on…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Greg Daly