Category: Reviews

The national power of the parish pump

Independents in Irish Party Democracy by Liam Weeks (Manchester University Press, £80) Michael O’Leary once dismissed them as “local lunatics”, but UCC political scientist Liam Weeks takes a more favourable view of our independent TDs, in a thorough and well-informed book. He begins in Kerry on count night in February 2016 when independents and brothers Michael…

Gothic tale of sublimated longing in remote Virginia

Colin Farrell takes the role Clint Eastwood essayed in Don Siegel’s 1971 version of this civil war story based on Thomas Cullinan’s acclaimed novel A Painted Devil. This time Sofia Coppola directs, replacing Siegel’s misogynistic psychodrama with sensitivity and sultry elegance. Farrell is John McBurney, an injured Yankee soldier who’s deserted his post. He’s taken…

All for God’s greater glory

In the hallway of Clongowes Wood Castle there stands a white marble statue of St Ignatius Loyola. To the mind of at least one small boy it had a pale ghostly appearance, little suggesting a living person, and certainly not the vivid vitality of Ignatius himself. In his book Brendan Comerford aims to reveal the…