The World of Books by the Books Editor The Piri Re’is is an early 16th Century Ottoman map, which has attracted a great deal of interest, of all kinds, since it was rediscovered in Istanbul’s Topkapi Museum in 1929. Named for the admiral who had it made, it shows the coasts of the Atlantic and…
Last week saw the beginning of several new TV drama series – maybe a coincidence or maybe to offer alternatives, both during and after the World Cup and Wimbledon. S.W.A.T. (Sky One, Sunday nights) was the least promising of the lot, a stereotypical US cop show with too much macho posturing, clichéd characters, stilted acting…
Pat O’Kelly A recent report, commissioned by RTÉ and undertaken by the BBC’s Helen Boaden in conjunction with consulting firm Mediatique, has recommended that, while the RTÉ Concert Orchestra should remain within the fold of the broadcaster, the National Symphony Orchestra should become an entity in its own, outside of RTÉ. The April report…
Heroism and Genius: How Catholic Priests Helped to Build – And Can Help Rebuild – Western Civilization William J. Slattery (Ignatius Press, $24.95 / £18.82). In this ambitious book the author records the significant contribution made by priests to the arts, literature, philosophy and the sciences. He ranges across the centuries. Among those he lists are…
On the Summits of the Highest Love by Enzo Farinella (Edizioni Grafiser, €15.00) Through Mountains and Valleys by Enzo Farinella (Edizioni Grafiser, €15.00) Joe Carroll The author is a former cultural attaché at the Italian embassy in Dublin, who has settled in Ireland as a journalist and RAI correspondent, and has made it his mission in life to…
Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism by Richard Brooks (Atlantic, £18.99) Peter Hegarty Brooks’ theme is “the demise of sound accounting”. Slipshod work by the ‘Big Four’ companies that dominate the profession – PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and KPMG – have brought it into disrepute. The author, an investigative journalist…
The Secret of Marrowbone (15A) There’s a scene in this where a girl puts her hand into a hole in the ceiling with a morsel of food to feed a skunk that’s living in her attic. When she does so, a human hand fondles her. I don’t know about you, but if that happened to me I’d be…
With the papal visit imminent we can expect some related documentaries, and on Tuesday of last week RTÉ1 was first in line. Rebel Pope was a docudrama from National Geographic, and while it was worth watching I wasn’t that impressed. The most interesting aspects dealt with revolutionary times in Argentina when Jorge Bergoglio, later Pope…
It’s unlikely that there’s a more conspicuous or remarkable example of Catholic art in the modern world than Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, described by Pope Benedict in 2010 as standing “as a visible sign of the invisible God, to whose glory these spires rise like arrows pointing towards absolute light and to…
Life in the Church of Ireland 1600-1800 by Robert Wyse Jackson (Ballinakella Press, €17.50) Robert Marshall Published initially in 1941 under the title Scenes from Irish Clerical Life in the 17th and 18th Centuries, this book was written by a clergyman of the Church of Ireland who had read law at Trinity College Dublin and been called…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly