The Mansion House and The Irish Revolution, 1912-1923 by Mícheál Mac Donncha (Dublin City Council / Four Courts Press, €25.00) Thomas J. Morrissey The author of this work was Lord Mayor of Dublin, 2017-2018. He has a deep feeling for Irish history, especially with regard to the years 1912-1923. During those years the Mansion House…
Pat O’Kelly Until earlier this month I hadn’t heard the Hibernian Orchestra for quite some time. I was actually drawn to its latest event at the National Concert Hall by its soloist, French pianist Nathalia Milstein. She took first prize in the 2015 Dublin International Piano Competition when, for once, I agreed with the…
So, you want to explore the state of religion in the country today, what do you do? Send an agnostic, avowedly cynical, gay comedian to do the job? Well, it might work? That’s what happened with Divorcing God (RTÉ1, Wednesday) presented by Oliver Callan. The show was interesting, there were some reasonably fresh perspectives, observations…
Mainly About Books by the books editor I have been wondering over recent days what Achille Ratti, later in life Pope Pius XI, would have thought of the recent images of toe-to-heel climbers, some 300 of them, ascending Mount Everest to take a selfie at the summit. In the course of this insane “bucket-list…
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…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly