Burning the Big House: The story of the Irish country house in a time of war and revolution, by Terence Dooley (Yale University Press, £25.00/€30.00) The Anglo-Irish descendancy from the mid-19th century is the stuff of grand tragedy. Everywhere there are echoes of the elegiac. The men and women of the caste were relatively wealthy,…
UDR Declassified, by Micheal Smith (Merrion Press, €18.95/£14.50) The Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) was set up in late 1969 as the Ulster Special Constabulary (B Specials) was being disbanded as a result of its role in the sectarian violence which broke out in Derry and Belfast the previous August. Inevitably, large numbers of the B…
To Bring Comfort and Consolation: Bereavement Ministry, by Paddy Shannon SJ, foreword by Bishop Donal McKeown (Messenger Publications, €14.99/£12.95) While our daily newspapers and television bring us continual news of war and disaster, our historians reinforce this state with multitudinous echoes of past loss and the toll it took. There are days when there seems…
Journey Into Light: The Challenge and Enchantment of Catholic Christianity, by Roderick Strange (Hodder and Stoughton, €20.99/£16.99) In Journey Into Light, Msgr Roderick Strange sets himself quite a task – to convey The Challenge and Enchantment of Catholic Christianity, as the subtitle says, in little more than 200 pages. Measured against this ambition, the book…
I always get a pleasant sense of expectation when I hear of a new channel coming to the television or radio landscape. Last week saw the start of yet another TV News channel in the UK – Talk TV, (with much the same schedule as the existing Talk Radio), available on the usual platforms and…
This week’s NSO event at the National Concert Hall (tomorrow May 6) brings young Portuguese conductor – Joana Carneiro – to its rostrum for the first time. Her programme includes Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with mezzo Tara Erraught and Stravinsky’s 1947 revised version of his ballet Petrushka. However, before these familiar and popular pieces…
The 17 Irish Martyrs by Mary McAleese (Columba Books, 2022). Thomas J. Morrisssey On 27 September 1992, Pope John Paul II beatified sixteen Irishmen and one Irish woman. They are the 17 about whom sometime president of Ireland Dr Mary McAleese writes in her latest book. Each one of them chose to die a martyr rather…
Naming of the Bones by John F. Deane (Carcanet Press, £12.99/€14.95) Thomas McCarthy A founder of Poetry Ireland and Dedalus Press, as well as Secretary-General of the European Academy of Poetry, Achill native John F. Deane is highly unusual among our great humanist horde of world poets in that he has remained a man of…
There are a number of films available on Amazon dealing with the theme of sexual and other types of abuse. It’s a subject we hear quite a lot about nowadays. While the material doesn’t generally make for comfortable viewing it’s something we shouldn’t shy away from. Miss Violence was widely acclaimed at the Venice film…
I used to avoid television dramas based on true stories – impossible to know what was added for dramatic effect, and the ending, if you were lucky enough to get a satisfying one, was often known already. Recent dramas have changed my mind – these shows are really well made, there are satisfying twists and…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone