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…
Category: Reviews
A young girl’s search for her mentally ill father
My Name is Emily (12A) “There’s a sadness in this country,” says the eponymous Emily in this quirky, life-affirming film, “a sadness it cannot hide.” She’s lost her mother in a car accident. Her father survived it but had a nervous breakdown afterwards. Such a breakdown resulted in some outlandish behaviour. He started doing things…
The men behind the Proclamation
The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic by Ruth Dudley Edwards (Oneworld, £18.99) Peter Hegarty Dudley Edwards’ richly-detailed book is the fruit of a lifelong interest in the 1916 Rising and the seven men who formed the military council which led it. She admires the seven, in varying degrees, without…
‘Love’ is the last word in life
A Slanting of the Sun by Donal Ryan (Black Swan Ireland, €10.99pb) Anna Farmar There’s a wistful longing in many of the stories in Donal Ryan’s third book A Slanting of the Sun – for kindness, for a sharing of love, for forgiveness – as the narrators remember the turning points when their lives went awry and…
Stories of forgiveness and atonement
In this weeks viewing Brendan O’Regan focuses on “Stories of people changing for the better”. Stories of forgiveness, repentance, atonement and homecoming are finding a new resonance in this Year of Mercy. However, when some repent, are forgiven and reconciled, others who also need it can be prone to begrudgery, rather like the older brother…
Recent books in brief
Gospel Reflections, For Sundays of the Year C: Luke by Donal Neary SJ (Irish Messenger Publications, €7.99pb) In the post-Easter call for reflection, which ought to affect all parts of our lives, Fr Donal Neary’s little book will be very relevant, as we still have a good part of Year C to run. Fr Neary…
World of Books
The murky trade in modern religious relics The urge to have a relic associated with some loved one, some hero, some person of great spirituality, is as an old as humanity. It is a quite understandable emotion. For Christians it may take on added dimensions, but they are not alone in their emotions. But as…
Soldier’s journey to faith after the crucifixion
Risen (12A) This elegiac re-enactment of the aftermath of the Resurrection in Judea in 33AD as experienced by a disaffected Roman soldier is in many ways reminiscent of Barabbas (1961), the story of the thief who reached a catharsis after believing he was responsible for the death of Jesus. The conversion of Clavius (Joseph Fiennes)…
This doubtful day of feast or fast…
It was no fluke that the climax to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – the destruction of the Ring on Mount Doom – took place, as Tolkien fans who pore over appendices will tell you, on March 25. March 25, writes Eleanor Parker at aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com, is “the single most significant date in salvation…
Tudor controversialists and the Catholic faith
Bad Queen Bess: Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Elizabeth I by Peter Lake (Oxford University Press, £35.00) It is often remarked that in modern Britain all that children learn of history are the Tudors and the Nazis. This is meagre diet, but there are universal truths to be learned…