And The Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity, and the Threat to Global Stability by Yanis Varoufakis (Bodley Head, £16.99hb) Peter Hegarty In a memorable passage in this apologia, former Greek Minster of Finance Yanis Varoufakis describes walking down a long cold corridor in the finance ministry in Berlin. At the other end German finance…
Tall Grass: Stories of Suffering & Peace in Northern Uganda by Carlos Rodríguez Soto (Fountain Publishers, Kampala, Uganda, £23.00pb; available via Amazon) The author, a Spanish priest, is a member of the Comboni Missionary Society. He served for 25 years in the society’s mission in Northern Uganda. Apart from three years in Kampala, editing a diocesan magazine,…
Miles Ahead (15A) For those of us who’ve watched Don Cheadle in films over the years – not all of which could be described as consciousness-raising – it comes as some surprise to see him eating the heart and soul out of a part. He does that here with his electrifying portrayal of jazz legend…
The Rising. Ireland: Easter 1916 by Fearghal McGarry (Oxford University Press, £20hb) Joe Carroll This is a special ‘centenary edition’ of Dr McGarry’s book which was first published in 2010 and earned the accolade then as “the finest account yet of the 1916 Rising”. Since then, new books on the Rising are almost overflowing from Eason’s bookshop…
This week the civilised world has been marking the fourth centenary of the death of William Shakespeare, poet, playwright and businessman. Universally admired he may be, but his works have suffered many vicissitudes over the years. The man himself began as a poet in a classical sense. The dramas came perhaps as a way of…
One Bold Deed of Open Treason: the Berlin Diary of Roger Casement 1914-1916 edited by Angus Mitchell (Merrion Press, €19.95pb / €70.00hb) W. J. McCormack A lamentable feature of this year’s 1916 commemorative programme has been its failure to establish comprehensive and reliable editions of the insurrectionary leaders’ writings in which “the mind of the Rising” might be…
Our Lady of the Nations: Apparitions of Mary in 20th Century Catholic Europe by Chris Maunder (Oxford University Press, £25.00) Marian shrines are of great antiquity. At Knaresborough near Harrogate in England a small shrine, dedicated to Our Lady of the Crags, still survives. Built by John the Mason in 1408, and now the property of…
Dissonant Voices: Faith and the Irish Diaspora edited by Conn McGahhann (Institute for Theological Partnerships Publishing, £10.00) This book presents a selection of the papers read at a conference held in the London Irish Centre two years ago. Diaspora is given a very wide interpretation for the topics range from the 17th Century exiles in Europe,…
The Man Who Knew Infinity (12A) It’s 1914 and World War I is raging. But inside the walls of Trinity College in Cambridge the old duffers at the helm are more concerned about something mathematical they call “cracking partitions”. Into their hallowed portals comes Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian student who can work out the finer…
It sometimes seems that the further to the rightward and leftward ends of the Church spectrum Catholics go, the more controversial Pope Francis can seem, and never more so than now in the aftermath of Amoris Laetitia. Criticism of the Pope surely crossed into a whole new realm on April 11, though, when the lead…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello