Reese Witherspoon could probably have phoned in her performance in this romantic comedy about a woman with two precocious daughters trying to make a new start in life as an interior decorator as she approaches the big four-oh. It won’t tax your brain unduly but if you like Witherspoon, who tends to hoover up the…
Ever since Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum in 1891, the Church’s social teaching has commonly been seen as favouring a carefully qualified form of capitalism, of sorts perhaps best expressed in the Rhenish capitalisms of Christian democrat Germany and Holland, or even in social democrat societies. Catholic advocates of less restrained capitalist models, however, have long…
The Dublin Lockout 1913: New perspectives on Class War and its Legacy Conor McNamara and Padraig Yeates (Irish Academic Press, €24.99 pb/ €44.99hb) Tom Morrissey The Lockout centenary commemoration was a triumph of careful organisation, hard work and trade union support. In the process, James Larkin was glorified, his failings largely ignored. The Great Strike / Lockout…
Saint Brigid: Life, Legend, and Cult Noel Kissane (Four Courts Press, €24.99) Padraig Ó Riain In the Life he wrote for Brigid, Cogitosus, the earliest known Irish biographer of a saint, declared that because of her, Kildare’s authority extended “from sea to sea”, from one side of Ireland to the other. Judging by the dedications…
The Source of All Love: Catholicity and the Trinity by Heidi Russell (Orbis Books / Alban Books, £22.99) This book is by a distinguished member of the faculty of the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University in Chicago. She addresses the problem of presenting the doctrine of the Trinity in a manner that reflects our…
The break-out from the Maze prison in 1983 was ultimately unsuccessful – most of the 38 prisoners who escaped were either captured or killed – but it could be argued that it galvanised the powers-that-be towards the Good Friday Agreement which occurred more than a decade later. This brilliant film is set in the aftermath…
Last week I reviewed some of the new programmes on Newstalk, but even then trouble was brewing on one of the regular shows, George Hook’s High Noon. The controversy reached ridiculous levels last week, culminating in the suspension of the presenter. There were lots of toys being thrown out of prams, followed by the mob with…
Irish people, as we all know, have a great grá for local legends, indeed any kind of local lore. In the poetry of W. B. Yeats, Queen Maeve, though supposedly buried on the frowning peak of Knocknarea, might be still a living person. Yeats deep interiorisation of old traditions of a locality is not unique.…
I Die in a Good Cause: Thomas Ashe: A Biography Sean Ó Luing (Mercier Press, €14.99) J. Anthony Gaughan In his introduction to this new edition of Seán Ó Lúing’ a biography of the patriot Thomas Ashe, Prof. Joe Lee speculates on the kind of influence Thomas Ashe would have exerted on the independence movement…
An Underground Theatre: Major Playwrights in the Irish Language 1930-1980 Philip O’Leary (University College Dublin Press, €50.00) Anthony Roche This important book is not a history of Irish language drama; that already exists in Pádraig Ó Siadhail’s 1993 Stair Dhrámaoícht na Gaeilge 1900-1970. Rather, Philip O’Leary critically highlights five significant playwriting careers in Irish: Mairéad Ní Ghráda;…
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello