An Urban Sketcher’s Galway by Róisín Curé (Currach Books, €22.99) My wife and I often go down to Galway by train to have lunch, then a walk in Salthill by the sea, rounded off with a browse in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop – truly the best in Ireland. The city, in our experience has changed dramatically since…
I had the good fortune to interview Leonard Cohen in 1988 when he was promoting his I’m Your Man album. During the course of the interview he told me Marianne Ihlen, a Norwegian woman he met on the Greek island of Hydra during the 1960s, was the love of his life. At the Irish Film…
We’ve had the exposure of child abuse scandals in the Church, in sports, in scouting and there’s been the #MeToo movement. But I still feel there’s a scandal to hear about relating to the abuse of children in the film industry. A few years ago former child actor Corey Feldman made accusations but it didn’t…
“I do not understand people who struggle to understand this Pope,” begins Mark Shea over at patheos.com/blogs/markshea. “I don’t really believe they find him ‘confusing’. I think they just don’t want to listen to him.” Perhaps Mark overreaches in saying that everything people need to know about Francis is summed up in the words “he has…
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…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Greg Daly