Smyllie’s Ireland: Protestants, independence, and the man who ran the Irish Times by Caleb Wood Richardson (Indiana University Press, $85 hb / $35 Pb and e-book) Ian d’Alton This book is a new take on an old subject. Using as a peg the larger-than-life editor of the Irish Times in the 1930s, 40s and early…
The Great Famine in Kinsale by Catherine Flanagan (Four Courts Press, €9.95) Catherine Flanagan gives us an account of the Great Famine in Kinsale and its hinterland. At the outset she describes the social and economic conditions in the area before the famine. The lower classes – cottiers and labourers – made up 80% of the…
Mainly About Books by the books editor The other week in the course of a visit to Sligo, we spent part of a morning in Drumcliffe churchyard. We had been there before – what poetry lover in Ireland does not want to see the beautifully located grave of W.B. Yeats? The church – which…
I like a film with positive messages, a redemption theme (not necessarily religious) and maybe even a feel-good ending. But often such films can be predictable, preachy, overly sentimental, and even corny. I couldn’t accuse Rudderless (TG4) of any of those faults. The unpredictable storyline featured a school shooting, some great songs and a family breakup,…
Treasure at the Bottom of my Garden by Judy Roblin (Matador, £8.99) Judy Roblin is a retired social worker now living in Wales. Her writings in The Tablet will be familiar to some. She has made for herself a poustinia in a shed-like hut at the end of her garden. To this little ‘desert’ she retired…
Pat O’Kelly Founded in 2013 by enterprising trumpeter David Collins and his violinist wife Sarah Sew, Dublin Brass Week (DBW) brings an intrepid set of musicians to the capital as teachers, performers and participants in its varied programme. An important part of the biennial festival is its series of master classes given by tutors…
Jacobites: A New History of the ‘45 Rebellion by Jacqueline Riding (Bloomsbury, £25.00) John Bruton I have greatly enjoyed reading this new history of the 1745 Rebellion. It appears at a very appropriate time. I read it during my recent visit to Scotland, during which I was at Glenfinnan, where Prince Charles Edward first raised the…
100 days to a Younger Brain by Dr. Sabina Brennan (Orion Spring, £14.99) Dr Christopher Moriarty Recent decades have seen profound changes in human life and understanding: people are living longer and research workers have been equipped with instruments and techniques that have led to an understanding of the minutiae of how the brain functions.…
Walking Backwards to Heaven? Hope and the Catholics of Cloyne Diocese, 1700 – 1830 by Martin Millerick (Diocese of Cloyne, €10.00 + 3.40 Postage Eire, €5.70 UK; Cathedral Bookshop, Cobh, Cloyne Diocesan Office & bookshops) Martin Millerick’s new book is a scholarly history of the Catholic diocese of Cloyne in the 17th and 18th Centuries.…
One of the best homilies I ever heard was preached a month after the beatification of Cardinal Newman, when in a Mass to welcome the newly beatified cardinal’s relics to Manchester’s Oratorian church a priest of the Oxford Oratory spoke about differences between Britain’s 1982 and 2010 papal visits. After Pope St John Paul II’s…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Greg Daly