The low key arrival of Advent tends to impact mainly on religious programmes. Some of last week’s discussions on The Leap of Faith (RTÉ Radio 1) were particularly topical. Presenter Michael Comyn started with a beautiful Christmas piece by Mendelsohn, and then got into an exploration of attitudes to Advent and Christmas. Fr Desmond O’Donnell…
This week we present a selection of books available this Christmas time for smaller children and young adults. Younger children The President’s Glasses Peter Donnelly Gill Books, €14.99 This must be the delight of the season for both children and parents. It presents the president as slightly forgetful – well it comes to us all.…
Christmas brings out reactions in us that we might be too reserved to give vent to at other times of the year. Maybe that’s why films about the festive season, or those set in and around it, have such an emotional impact on us –and why they last down through the ages. I’m thinking of…
Science and Spiritual Practices: Transformative experiences and their effects on our bodies, brains, and health by Rupert Sheldrake (Coronet, £20.00) Christopher Moriarty Scientific evidence shows that humans have sought, for tens of thousands of years, to connect their activities with something outside their day-to-day activities. Since history began, written records of religious practices have…
The Astronomy Book (Big Ideas Imply Explained series) (DK / Penguin Random House, €20) Michael Fewer When our children were young, one of the highlights of visits to our country cottage was the night skies, particularly in autumn and winter, when we all used to wrap up well and lie out on foam mattresses,…
Sometimes one series of a TV drama is enough, as quality can deteriorate, but I was delighted to see The A-Word back for a second series on BBC 1, Tuesday nights. This is the story of an autistic boy, Joe, and the struggles of his parents and wider family to cope with the situation. It’s…
Pat O’Kelly Thanks to the hospitality of ambassador Marie-Claude Meylan, the Swiss Embassy was the convivial venue for a recently launched CD – Chopin Recital – featuring Dublin-born pianist Finghin Collins. On the Swiss classical label Claves, for which Collins has already recorded excellent Schumann albums, the new disc, 50-1719, is a cooperation with…
The squabbles about Amoris Laetitia continue to rumble on, with Dan Hitchens, deputy editor of England’s The Catholic Herald observing from his Twitter account @ddhitchens that “Rocco Buttiglione, one of the leading critics of traditional teaching on the sacraments, has collected his articles into a book”, and directing followers to his firstthings.com “critique” from August…
De Valera: Volume 1 Rise 1882-1932 by David McCullagh (Gill Books, €24.99) Joe Carroll Apart from about eight full biographies of Eamon de Valera, there have been the hundreds if not thousands of articles and critiques covering his long life. What new is there to say? David McCullagh, who is a journalist with RTÉ…
Letters from Aleppo by Fr Ibrahim Alsabagh (Columba Press, €14.99) Anthony Redmond I have a Syrian friend whom I met in Dublin 15 years ago when he was a student of English. He returned to Syria before the terrible war began in 2011 and he is now married there with two small children. We keep in touch…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly