Dublin’s Industrial Heritage: From Sandymount to Crumlin Road, by Rob Goodbody (Wordwell in association with Dublin City Council, supported by the Heritage Council, €17.99) The Victorian novelist George Moore, himself a landed gentleman from Mayo, deprecated Dublin as an industrial city. Aside from a few streets and the nice houses of his artistic friends, the…
Granny Bridget’s Fairy Tales, by Felicity Dempsey (Atlantic Papers Press, €14.89; contact info@atlanticpaperspress.com) Here is a children’s book which will be welcomed by many parents. As many parents and grandparents are well aware it is difficult to wean young people away from the mass-produced pabulum which fills the internet at all hours. Felicity Dempsey is…
Diplomats in Dublin by Kees van Hoek (The Talbot Press, December 1943) Recently a relative in New York sent me a slightly battered copy of this book, which is not only of great immediate interest as evidence of just how much Ireland has changed since the “Emergency”, but suggests as well a topic for…
Last weekend saw the canonisations of Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis – distinctive because they were young lay adults, from the 20th and 21st centuries respectively. The former is probably the lesser known of the two, and the film To the Top – Pier Giorgio Frassati (EWTN, Sunday) from 2023 helped to inform us…
Last week I wrote about The Keys of the Kingdom. Another 1944 film, The Picture of Dorian Gray, explores the other pole of the heaven/hell divide. Telling the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil, it has a moodily atmospheric feel to it. German expressionism meets drawing-room comedy in an excellent…
It was another very bad week for children – killed by adults in Gaza, Ukraine and Minneapolis. The coverage was dispiriting, and anyone trying to deny the existence of evil in the world must have been sorely challenged. When I first heard of the Minneapolis school shooting, I was shocked enough, though it has become…
I recently wrote about the clergy in 1940s films. Gregory Peck played a liberal Scottish priest in Keys of the Kingdom in 1944. The film was based on A.J. Cronin’s 1941 novel centering on the efforts of one Fr Francis Chisholm (Peck) to open people’s eyes to the wider message of the Gospels in China.…
Mystical Crooner: The Lives of Leonard Cohen, by Aubrey Malone (Wisdom Twins Books / Lulu.com, £15.99) This book by our film critic provides an engaging overview of the complicated career of the Canadian poet, novelist and singer, “a charismatic Jew from Montreal’s French Quarter”. These contending identities provide much of the tension of…
Discovering St Patrick, by Thomas O’Loughlin (Darton, Longman & Todd, €15.00 / £10.95) St Patrick is universally identified with Ireland and the Irish. St Patrick’s Day is one of those few festivals that are celebrated around the world, so much so that it has become more of a carnival than a mere religious feast…
Ireland’s Curious Places: 100 fascinating, lesser-known treasures to discover, by Michael Fewer (Gill Books, €16.99 / £14.99) Irish Fairy Forts: Portals to the Past, by Jo Kerrigan and Richard Mills (O’Brien Books, €19.99 / £17.99) What with the effects of climate change and the rising objections to mass tourism around the world, it is…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone