Brian Friel: Beginnings, by Kelly Matthews (Four Courts Press, €29.95 / €24.95) A problem with many modern literary biographies is that their authors hurry over the subject’s earliest years in their haste to get to the years of success and fame, as if failure and obscurity were not a possibility. By contrast this book especially…
A different kind of power: a memoir, by Jacinda Ardern (Macmillan, £25 / €19.99) Jacinda Ardern was aged 37 when she became the fortieth prime minister of New Zealand in 2017, the youngest person to hold that office since 1856. She was the third woman to fill the role. This memoir traces her humble…
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, by Bill Bryson (Penguin Random House, €15.40 / £9.99) Anthony Gaughan Bill Bryson is an American humourist. Like other comedians he portrays himself as woebegone, put upon and the butt of those who work in bars, restaurants and hotels. His style is breezy and entertaining. Bill writes travel…
Widowed fisherwoman Barb (Emma Thompson) is driving through northern Minnesota when she spots a kidnapped teenage girl. She loses her phone signal. Then her truck gives up. She’s 66 years old but she’s determined to rescue the girl. In between efforts to do that she harks back to her own youth, to times she spent…
I’m really sick of the head wrecking aggravation from the USA following the murder of Charlie Kirk, and the related, but trivial by comparison, cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel. I have to say neither was much on my radar up to last week. In this polarised environment both are either being canonised or demonised and neither…
I’ve been catching up on a few TV dramas of interest, an entertaining break from the grim real-life dramas dominating news and current affairs. Many of them of course take their inspiration or background from such real-life events, and I hope they don’t in turn trigger such events. None of them are family entertainment –…
In 1943 in The Song of Bernadette, Jennifer Jones played Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant who claimed to have had a vision of Our Lady in the French village of Lourdes. Charles Bickford was Fr Peyramale, representing the Church’s initial discounting of her claim before the worldwide attention conferred on her resulted in a change…
Dublin’s Stained Glass: A guide to the finest twentieth-century windows, by David Caron (Four Fours Press, €29.95 / £24.95) This is a book which will give delight as well as insight to those who enjoy nothing more than exploring our great tradition of stained glass, largely created since the beginning of the 20th century.…
England’s Thousand Best Churches, by Simon Jenkins, with photographs from the Country Life archive (Allen Lane, £50.00; also available in paperback) This is not strictly a new book, but it is one which is very relevant to an important discussion for today: what is the future of our churches here in Ireland? Some readers will like…
Shadows + Reflections: The Irish National War Memorial Gardens at Island Bridge, by Annie Dibble and Angela Rolfe (Gandon Editions, €25.00 / £22.00) When my wife and I were small our respective fathers were only too happy to take their families down rural side roads to inspect a monument or two. However, the Irish…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan