Saintly Feasts: Food for Saints and Scholars by Martina Maher & Colette Scully, with Dries van den Akker SJ (Messenger Publications, €19.95 / £17.50) Mary Litton This is a lovely book by two charming and talented ladies, one in her 90s, who undertook to cook Sunday lunch for a Jesuit community in England. Those familiar with…
The Heart is a Noisy Room by Dr Ronald Boyd-MacMillan (Hodder, £9.99) The author is a Christian activist who has had an extremely varied life, but always one engaged with getting in touch with people and telling them about the “good news”. In his third book he focuses on those inner voices which we all have,…
Bel Canto (15A) Julianne Moore may not be Maria Callas in the singing department but she’s no slouch as an actress. In this ambitious adaptation of Ann Patchett’s acclaimed novel of the same name she plays soprano Roxane Coss. She’s interrupted in the middle of a private concert she’s giving to international dignitaries in a palace…
While it may be many years before we learn what seeds were successfully sown during last year’s papal visit, such that the jury is out on whether or not it should be considered a success, there were few who attended 2012’s International Eucharistic Congress who do not think it a triumph, a real forward-looking sign…
Sometimes when you hear about an upcoming programme, it’s so predictable you could nearly write the script in advance. That was largely the case with Rome vs The Republic on RTÉ1 last Thursday. In this documentary on relations between the Vatican and the Irish State we got the usual litany – Mother and Child Scheme,…
The Poor in Spirit by Yang Yakang (Unicorn Publishing, £30.00) This is an impressive album of reportage on the Catholics of the Patriotic Catholic Church in China, running to 168 pages with 70 images. The artist’s work bears comparison with the great masters of this genre, Walker Evans, Cartier-Bresson, Werner Bischof, George Rodger, and Marc…
John Moriarty: Not the Whole Story by Mary McGillicuddy (Lilliput Press. €20.00) John Moriarty has published some fascinating books. Written in a baroque style, they are dotted with quotations from the classics of world literature. They also include numerous allusions and references to a wide variety of civilisations, cultures, mythologies, philosophies, religions and the great minds…
White Elephants: The Country House and the State in Independent Ireland by Emer Crooke (UCD Press, €40.00) These days, when no couple ever seems to get married in their native parish anymore, a country house hotel often plays a more important role in any case than the church. With wedding celebrations now lasting three or four…
Mainly About Books By the books editor It is a truism to say that Lent these days is nothing like it was several centuries ago, indeed just several decades ago. In our era of immediate self-satisfaction the idea of going without is unpopular, unless one is on a fashionable diet. In the middle ages…
One of the least endearing aspects of modern media culture is the cult of celebrities. Make ‘em dance, drop them on remote islands, pop them into quiz shows. It’s not the worst idea to send them on a pilgrimage. And so it was with Pilgrimage: Road to Rome (BBC 2) a new series that started…
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello