Every now and then a programme comes along that you’d like to shower with awards. And so it is with the provocatively (and inaccurately!) titled Guns and Rosaries (RTÉ1, Thursday) – definitely my top religious programme of the year so far. It was a fascinating documentary on the life of Fr Patrick Peyton, known as…
Pat O’Kelly Like the first performances of both Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in Rome on February 20, 1816, and Verdi’s La Traviata in Venice on March 6, 1853, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly was a flop at its Milan première on February 17, 1904. The principal problem with the Rossini lay with supporters of rival…
Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster by Guy Beiner (Oxford University Press, £35.00) Ian d’Alton Troublesome memories, or memories of troubles? This fascinating book is about memory, and how the contemporary inevitably colours perceptions of the past. In that context, pinning down memory is always aiming at a moving…
Making their Mark: Irish Painter-Etchers 1880-1930 an exhibition curated by Anne Hodge (NGI) and Dr Angela Griffith (TCD) National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square, Dublin – runs to 30 June 2019. Admission free. A current exhibition at the NGI explores an almost forgotten aspect of modern Irish art, the activities of a small but influential…
At Eternity’s Gate (12A) Hollywood has never really understood artists. Kirk Douglas won an Oscar nomination for essaying the role of Vincent van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life in 1956 but his performance was way over the top. Jacques Dutronc presented him in a much more nuanced manner in Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh in 1991.…
Anybody watching St Patrick’s Day festivities with a thoughtful eye last weekend must have wondered what exactly was being celebrated. Was it Irishness? Maybe so, but that’s missing the point of the day in spectacular fashion: St Patrick’s Day is, after all, a celebration of the gift that Patrick and other missionaries brought to Ireland,…
One of the biggest media stories of the week was the massacre at the mosques in New Zealand, and among the hours of coverage I heard a few items that hit the right tone. I was impressed by the host’s interview with New Zealand’s ambassador on Saturday with Cormac Ó hEadhra (RTÉ Radio 1) last…
Buck Whaley: Ireland’s greatest adventurer by David Ryan (Merrion Press, €16.95 / £14.99) Andrew Carpenter This is a highly entertaining, well-written account of the life of one of 18th-Century Ireland’s most famous characters, Thomas ‘Buck’ Whaley. Born into a wealthy Anglo-Irish landowning family in 1765 – he was the heir of landowner, magistrate and former Member…
Saint Patrick: The Legends and History of Ireland’s Patron Saint by Roy Flechner (Princeton University Press, £22.00) The feast of Ireland’s national apostle is upon us, in all its curious modern forms. And here just in time for the world-wide celebrations is a new inquiry into the history and the legends that surround St Patrick. But…
Dublin: The Chaos Years by Neil Cotter (Penguin Ireland, €18) This is a refreshingly honest account of the interactions between the managers, players and fans of the Dublin senior football team from 1996 to 2010. It records the behind-the-scenes abuse, backchat, disloyalty and other challenges faced by the managers of that period. Pat O’Neill led the…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly