Ordinary People: Dennis Dinneen’s Photographs at the Douglas Hyde Gallery Denis Dinneen: Small Town Portraits text by Kevin Barry, with 32 monochrome plates (Douglas Hyde Gallery, €10.00pb) Dennis Dinneen (1927–1985) earned his living as a publican and taxi driver in Macroom, Co. Cork. But as a side line he also acted as a local photographer,…
Miss Sloane (15A) Think General Schwarzkopf in a trouser suit. Failure isn’t an option for her. She’s Madeleine Elizabeth Sloane and she’s going up against the top dogs of the Senate, Samson-style, in a pitched battle about gun regulation. As we all know, this is a heavily divisive issue in America. The ‘doves’ say the…
The World of Books There is an old saying that one should not judge a book by its cover. But that is exactly what I propose to do. Or rather to judge the publishers and promoters of the volume, rather than the author of the text. That will be left to another hand. The book…
Last week I wrote about some good British dramas on TV. They tend to put American dramas in the shade – the latter are marred too frequently by embarrassing corniness. I’ve been following Designated Survivor on Netflix and after a promising start, dramatically speaking (US President and Congress blown up in a terrorist attack), it…
Lady Macbeth (18) People usually talk about Shakespeare’s ‘Big Four’ – Hamlet, Lear, Othello and Macbeth – as his pre-eminent works. I wouldn’t argue with that. If the first three have a fault it’s that few members of their casts can hold a candle to the main character. Not so with Macbeth. Lady Macbeth matches…
It was a week of high drama, in reality and in fiction. The absorbing crime drama Line of Duty came to the end of its fourth series on BBC 1 last Sunday night and what an impact! This show has been consistently the best crime drama that I’ve seen on TV in the last few…
Living Stream of Catholicism: View of the Catholic Church Through the Centuries by Eamon Flanagan (St Pauls, £7.95) The author sets out to highlight the living stream of Catholicism throughout the centuries and this he achieves in prose and poetry. At the outset he divides world history into a number of segments which will be…
Inside the Monkey House: My Time as an Irish Prison Officer by John Cuffe (Collins Press, € 12.99) John Cuffe dealt with some of the most depraved and violent people in this country during his 30 years as a prison officer, between 1978 and 2007. During his long years in Arbour Hill, where the worst…
Felix M. Larkin Ireland: The Autobiography – One hundred years in the life of the nation, told by its people ed. by John Bowman (Penguin Ireland, €25/£20) Shakespeare’s stage Irishman in Henry V, Captain Macmorris, famously asks “What ish my nation?” He answers his own question with these words: “Ish a villain, and a bastard,…
Fast and Furious 8 (12A) The two most popular types of books on the market these days, I’m told, are cook books and diet books. I’m thinking of writing one called Cook It But Don’t Eat It. That should corner both markets. Our society is beset with contradictions. Every night on TV – justifiably –…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan