Pat O’Kelly Although it officially opens tomorrow evening, Friday, September 28, the 2018 New Ross Piano Festival is already under way. It began yesterday, Wednesday, September 26, with its Young Pianists’ Concert when a fledgling group, ranging in age from seven to 17, tried out the Steinway grand at the festival’s base – the…
Kindling the Flame: 150 years of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation by Niamh Puirséil (Gill, €24.99) Daire Keogh Media reports of the planned retirement of Sheila Nunan as general secretary of the Irish National Teachers Organisation have naturally focussed both on her personal achievement, as first female leader of her union, and the enduring influence…
Defending Hope: Dispatches from the Front Lines in Palestine and Israel by Eoin Murray and James Mehigan (Veritas, €16.99) Geoff Day ‘Hope is not the solution, nor the end goal: it is just the beginning’ writes Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire in her introduction to this important book of essays from those at the front…
Corruptio optimi pessima goes the old saying – the corruption of the best is the worst, and one of the most dispiriting things about the internal quarrels that have increasingly marked the English-speaking Catholic internet over the last few years is that commentators, publications, and websites that once were measured and thoughtful have become less…
Black 47 (15A) Rambo meets Fionn Mac Cumhaill in this mesmerising drama from Lance Daly. I don’t think we’ve ever had a Celtic action hero before unless we count Braveheart. There’s an almost super-human one in this highly unusual film. It starts out as a kind of post-colonial history lesson about the horrors of the famine…
Chalk Dust by Noel Monahan (Salmon Poetry, €14.00) Seamus Cashman In my first reading of this collection of some 56 poems (150 pages long!) by the Longford poet, dramatist, and former teacher, I found several poems taking me into imagination, back my own era of ‘chalk dust’. The first poem, ‘Still-Life Study’, a poem based on…
I have mixed feelings about programmes set in hospitals, whether drama or fly on the wall as I’m a tad squeamish, but they can be emotional and thought provoking, especially when on the edge of life and death. The Rotunda on RTÉ1, on Thursday of last week, was not ideal for the squeamish. We were spared…
Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age by Michael Chertoff (Grove Press, £20) Peter Hegarty When it comes to the protection of data “we are overdue to recast the rules of the road”, says Michael Chertoff, writing with the authority of a former US Secretary of Homeland Security. What he has to say has…
Smitten Soul: Illuminating the Dark, by Gabriel Fitzmaurice; with paintings by Brenda Fitzmaurice (Salmon Poetry, €12.00) Seamus Cashman “Am I going to Mass on Sundays?” Mary asks in a string of questions, and the poet remarks, “how the good are frightened of their Church”. The poem, from Gabriel Fitzmaurice’s latest collection, is called ‘Alzheimer’s Disease’ and it carries…
Kilkenny in Times of Revolution 1900 – 1923, by Eoin Swithin Walsh foreword by Diarmaid Ferriter (Merrion Press, €19.99 pb) This is a comprehensive account of the revolutionary years in Kilkenny city and county from 1900 to 1923. As a narrative on the War of Independence and Civil War it is remarkable for its detail.…
Greg Daly
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan