Gaeilge: A Radical Revolution by Caoimín De Barra (Currach Press, €14.99) This is an interesting polemic which argues that Irish should and could be restored as the generally spoken language of most people in the Republic of Ireland. In the introduction the author acknowledges that most people have already made up their minds on this…
A Different Dublin: The 1960s through the lens, photographs by Bill Hogan (Currach Books, €19.99) Bill Hogan was a cinema projectionist in different cinemas across Dublin in the 1960s. He worked largely at night, so most of the daylight hours were his own to indulge his developing interest in street photography. He was largely inspired…
Late Night (15A) I’ve often wondered when they’d get around to doing a millennial version of Sidney Lumet’s Network. Here it’s crossed with The Devil Wears Prada. It’s the story of how Katie Hopkins becomes Ellen DeGeneres, how Margaret Thatcher becomes Theresa May. Emma Thompson is misogynistic chat show hostess Katherine Newbury, a televisual dinosaur.…
Medjugorje, which has grown into one of the most popular pilgrimages for Catholics around the world in recent decades, lies in the southern Herzegovina region of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which Catholics make up a mere 14% of the population. For many centuries, this area of Eastern Europe was under Ottoman rule,…
I was puzzled to see a warning about strong language for a religious programme, and even more puzzled to find no strong language in the programme after all! So it was with Young, Welsh and Pretty Religious on BBC1 on Tuesday of last week. In this episode the focus was on a young Catholic priest, a…
“I always have an issue with people who say ‘it’s much more fun to play [someone] bad’,” Michael Sheen tells the Sydney Morning Herald at smh.com.au. “Is it? I think we’ve failed as a species if good is boring. If we made good boring then we are doing something wrong. Goodness is about sharing, joy and…
Recently our local amateur drama group was courageous enough to mount a production of Dion Boucicault’s Victorian melodrama The Colleen Bawn. I don’t use the word Victorian casually, for this was one of the Queen’s favourite plays; she had drawings she had done of the scenes in her personal art collection. She loved the theatre,…
The Naked Hermit: A journey to the heart of Celtic Britain by Nick Mayhew-Smith (SPCK, £19.99) Readers may recall a six-part television series Britain’s Holiest Places from about seven years ago. This was presented by Nick Mayhew-Smith who had written the book that inspired the programmes of the series. Here, however, he deals with a…
Thomas J. Morrissey ‘The Labour Hercules’: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism, 1913-23 by Jeffrey Leddin (Irish Acadmic Press, €24.95) The author’s research and wide reading is evident in relation to the origin, nature, and activity of the Irish Citizen Army from 1913-1923. The book is, perhaps, too specialised for the general reader, but…
Pat O’Kelly Festival is a word that can be abused but with Great Music in Irish Houses I think it can be applied without hesitation. This annual event began in 1970 when it was then, and for many years afterwards, known as the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival. In its initial year it embraced…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Greg Daly