Codebreaker: The untold story of Richard Hayes, the Dublin librarian who helped turn the tide of World War II by Marc McMenamin (Gill Books, €16.99) Felix M. Larkin “Ghosts hover / Lyster, Hayes, Henchy, / And those who served them”: thus in 2007 did Gerard Lyne, formerly Keeper of Manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, recall in…
Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy by Ian Hughes (Zero Books / John Hunt Publishing, €14.50) Peter Hegarty Do we have a right to know something about the mental health of prominent people? Ian Hughes, a research fellow at UCC’s Environmental Research Institute, suggests that we do: if, as psychiatrists believe, one in twenty people…
Disobedience (15A) Head Orthodox rabbi Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser) stands on the altar of his London synagogue speaking about “the beasts of the flesh”. Then he collapses and dies. His estranged daughter Ronit (Rachel Weisz), a photographer living in New York, is informed of the news by her friend Esti (Rachel McAdams). She had an affair…
Awakening Inner Peace: A Little Books of Hours by Sister Stan (Columba Books, €12.99 / £10.99) This little book, harking back to the pre-Reformation books of hours, though it lacks illustrations, might be called ‘the very rich hours’ of Sr Stanislaus. Certainly her intention, like those ancient books, is to enrich the daily prayer life of…
I listen with interest to debates about gender, sexism and political correctness, and often these are interrelated. On Prime Time (RTÉ1) on Tuesday of last week, Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor defended her creation of women-only professorships – it’s a “positive discrimination” measure that has met with everything from whole-hearted support to derision. Prof. Patricia Casey thought…
“Church archives and the records of ecclesiastical bodies such as religious orders of priests, nuns and brothers are what stitches together the rent and ragged fabric of Irish history,” says UCD’s Prof. John McCafferty, beginning an enthralling podcast on the Royal Irish Academy website, ria.ie. ‘In time of inquistion: preserving and using the archives of…
Nano Nagle: The life and the Legacy by Deirdre Raftery, Catriona Delaney, and Catherine Nowlan-Roebuck (Irish Academic Press, €24.95) In 2013 Pope Francis declared Nano Nagle (1718–84), the founder of the Presentation Order, to be venerable. For the nuns of that order, their friends and associates and the countless admirers of Nano Nagle’s work this was…
Sharing the Wisdom of Time, Pope Francis and friends (Messenger Publications, €24.95 / £27.50) This is a book inspired directly by Pope Francis. Youth, as we are all aware, knows it all, middle age has had ‘experience’, but maturity (surely to God a better term than ‘old age’), maturity has wisdom. Though it contains reflections…
Lonely Mystic: A new portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen by Michael Ford (Paulist Press, $16.95 / £12.99) Anthony Redmond What is the reason for the enduring appeal of Henri Nouwen? This Dutch Catholic priest and celebrated spiritual writer died in 1996 at the age of 64. His appeal, for me, is his vulnerability, openness, sensitivity and…
The World of Books by the books editor During the Presidential election a native minority found themselves the focus of unwelcome attention. I was surprised at quite how confused many people, city dwellers for the most part, were about the social group now usually called ‘Travellers’. I find this a difficult word. The corollary…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Greg Daly