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.…
The Family is Good News: Selections from Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) by Pope Francis, prepared for the Council for Marriage and the Family of the Irish Episcopal Conference (Veritas, €9.99) The Beatitudes of Pope Francis: A Manifesto for the Modern Christian by Aidan Donaldson (Veritas, €7.99) These two books inspired by Pope Francis provide the ordinary reader with…
I find myself naturally drawn to programmes about the media, and if they’re done in dramatic form, well that’s the icing on the cake. And so it was I checked out the new drama Press (BBC1) last Thursday night. The story revolves around rivalry between two newspapers – a serious paper and a tabloid. And so…
Pat O’Kelly With the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra bringing Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony to the National Concert Hall and Irish National Opera unveiling its production of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann simultaneously in Dublin’s O’Reilly Theatre tomorrow evening, it can be safely said that the 2018/19 ‘classical’ season is well underway. It actually began at…
Historian Dr Donal Corcoran describes his lifelong fascination with the Irishmen who served the Pope in defending the Papal States during the war of Italian unification in the 19th Century, which had lead him to do extended research on the subject for his newly published book. As a child I was fascinated with two war medals that my grandfather…
I Will Not Serve: The priest who said NO to Hitler by David Rice (Red Stag / Mentor Books, €14.99) This is a true story of Fr Franz Reinisch who was beheaded for refusing to serve in the Wehrmacht. His refusal arose from his unwillingness to swear an unconditional oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler, its…
Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson. £15.99 / €17) Peter Hegarty Faulks’ explores the German occupation (1940-44), a closed subject in France for decades after the wars. That those years were off-limits for so long shows that “the human drive to ignorance…is a force as powerful as its opposite”, as Hannah, one of the two main…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello