School can be boring when you’d prefer to save the world than read books, right? So Peter Parker (Tom Holland) aka Spider-man, tends to be somewhat distracted in class, knowing just what he could do if the occasion called for it. Billionaire playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) – his mentor – tries to persuade…
A few items last week were more than a bit off. On Tuesday of last week on Today with Sean O’Rourke, Cormac Ó hEadhra spoke to former US Navy Seal Robert O’Neill, the man who claims to have killed Osama Bin Laden. Needless to say I’m no Bin Laden fan, but the clinical description of…
Conor Donnelly In this memoir two sisters give an hilarious and poignant account of boarding school life in Ireland in the 1960s – echoes of the ever popular Mallory Towers perhaps, but this is a true tale of Irish education; and for once a happy enough education too. The authors are both scientists. Valerie has…
Exploring Amoris Laetia: Opening the Pope’s Love Letter to Families edited by Breda O’Brien (Veritas, €12.99) With preparations well under way in Dublin for The World Meeting of Families in August, this collection of essays edited by Irish Catholic columnist Breda O’Brien is very timely. Some nine established Catholic communicators share their insights into the…
Geoff Day Here is a true book full of surprises. It starts as an examination of the suicide bombing of the Dolphinarium nightclub in Tel Aviv in June 2001 and ends with highlighting some real moral dilemmas related to issues around heart transplants and apartheid. Somerville neatly begins by juxtaposing his recall of the facts…
Dublin prides itself of being “a city of literature” – there are UNESCO signs all over the place promoting the fact. But when we look back over the centuries we can see that the city’s true life in literature only begins with Jonathan Swift, the 350th anniversary of whose birth we are celebrating this year.…
Nobody reading this review is likely to have heard of Hugh Mahon. So why does he merit a biography – in fact a projected two-volume biography? The book to hand is the first instalment, with the second to follow in the not-too-distant future. Mahon was born near Tullamore in 1857, and lived in Canada and…
The summer used to be regarded as the silly season for current affairs, but I don’t think that holds true anymore. Sunday Morning Live, back on BBC 1 on Sunday mornings, has no shortage of topical religious and ethical issues to cover. Last weekend’s episode started with an illuminating discussion prompted by the recent attack…
The World of Books The news that President Trump is to withdraw the US from the Paris Accord on Climate Change may already be last month’s news, but a few comments of a cultural nature about the background might not be out of place. It is to be hoped that given his hectic schedule the…
Ian D’Alton County Louth and the Irish revolution 1912-1923 edited by Donal Hall and Martin Maguire (Irish Academic Press, €19.99 pb, €39.99 hb). In this ‘decade’ of commemorating and remembering the formative period from 1912 to 1923 we are already buried in books. The centenary of the 1916rebellion has seen the emergence of literally hundreds of…
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello