The Christmas Season is by long-established tradition, the season when most books are bought in every civilised centre. The books bought need not themselves be civilised, but they must have some suitable connection with the time of year and the seasonal feelings that it arouses. Books, it is so often said, “make a nice present”.…
Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz RTÉ 2 Saturday, December 20, 8 pm In the most personal and unflinching film of his career, historian Simon Schama confronts the Holocaust as not just a Nazi obsession but as a European-wide crime of complicity. The Catholic University of America’s Christmas Concert EWTN Sundy, December 21, 6 am…
Young people’s engagement with social media is definitely problematic, and became a hot topic last week as Australia moved to ban young people under 16 from social media, YouTube included. The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, Wednesday) explored the issue, but with a loaded start – reference was made to extreme content online, instancing “negative commentary…
Whose side were you on during the Civil War? I’m not talking about the 1922 one caused by the rift between Dev and Michael Collins. I mean the one that impassioned maybe even more people in 2002. Yes, my friends, that was the year Mick McCarthy sent Ireland’s best player home from the World Cup.…
J. Anthony Gaughan As a keen follower of Gaelic games, I found Eamonn Sweeney’s The Last Ditch: How One GAA Championship Gave a Sports Writer Back his Life the most interesting book of the year. In the first two chapters Eamonn reveals the challenges – phobias – which he has to overcome in plying his…
The Passing Year: Remembrances, Recollections, Ruminations, by John Quinn (Red Stripe Press, €12.99 / £11.99) Come the end of the year everyone’s memories have a tendency to cast themselves back, not only on the last twelve months, but inevitably on the years before, often taking us back into our childhood, for Christians, Christmas time…
Irish Heritage Studies: The Annual Research Journal of the Office of Public Works, vol. 1, 2025, Edited by Caroline Péguy (Office of Public Works / Gandon Editions, €20.00 an issue) When the Irish Church Act took effect in 1871 there was rejoicing in Cashel. Now at last when Queen Victoria (in the shape of her…
Building Mitchelstown 1779-1830, by David A. Fanning (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €12.95 / £11.95) These days my experience of Mitchelstown is of a place that one passes through on the way to somewhere else more interesting. That this is an unfair estimation is revealed in this pamphlet by David A…
Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings, by Colm Tóibín (Gallery Books, €16.95) Colm Tóibín may not appreciate this recommendation, but his latest collection would be a perfect Christmas present. These thirty-six articles of varying length are the collected writings from his three-year term (January 2022 – 2025) as Laureate for…
St Edith Stein’s Aesthetic, Beauty and Sanctity: Masterpiece of the Divine Artist by Elizabeth A. Mitchell (Gracewing, £17.99 / €20.50) This book offers an exploration in part of the thinking of Edith Stein. The author, Dr Elizabeth A. Mitchell, who for some time worked in the Vatican Press office as translator, is now a teacher at…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone