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…
Pavarotti (12A) Peter Ustinov remarked once of Pavarotti, “Luciano is difficult to pass at the net in tennis – even when he’s not playing”. His appetite was so large he asked for kitchens to be added to the hotel rooms he stayed in. A man for whom the term ‘larger than life’ would have…
It doesn’t often happen, but I love it when broadcasters do something really imaginative and innovative in religious programming. Life and Soul (RTÉ1 and Radio 1 Extra) is a new addition to RTÉ’s Sunday morning religious services slot and based on last weekend’s first episode it has a lot going for it. An occasional series,…
Frenzy and Betrayal. The Anatomy of a Political Assassination by Alan Shatter (Merrion Press, €19.95) Joe Carroll Alan Shatter has had to wait five years to give his version of his political downfall in May 2014 and the long ordeal of having his name cleared by two commissions of enquiry and finally the Supreme Court.…
Under the Bed by Robert Pierse (A Little Platoon, €15.00; copies from bookshops, or jm.murphy@outlook.ie / 087 1844378, for €20 inc. post and packaging) This is a collection of interesting stories, drawn from the lawyer author’s experience of many different places and people, many, however, close to home on the Munster Circuit by a solicitor…
Mainly about books by the books editor Under the City Hall of Dublin at the top of Dame Street – right in the heart of Dublin – one of the rooms of the basement crypt has been converted into a charming little café, the rest of the vaults to a museum devoted to unrolling…
I find it hard to enjoy TV dramas if there isn’t someone to ‘root’ for, if there aren’t sympathetic characters. And so I have mixed feelings about Wild Bill (ITV and Virgin Media One). It’s a crime thriller with an American cop taking over a UK police department, ironically in the English town of Boston, Lincolnshire.…
Greg Daly
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello