Chruchill (PG) I interviewed Gay Byrne once and asked him what he thought was the main reason for his success in broadcasting. He replied tartly, “Events, dear boy, events!” What he meant was that he’d simply been in the right place at the right time. Perhaps the same could be said of Winston Churchill. Churchill…
I thought I’d be writing this a week ago, but the start of the much anticipated drama Broken (BBC One, Tuesday nights) was postponed by a week out of sensitivity over the Manchester bombing, though I’m not quite sure as to why. Seán Bean stars as Fr Michael Kerrigan, an inner city priest struggling with…
The Shack (12A) In Paradise Lost John Milton tried to “justify the ways of God to man”. Stephen Fry did the opposite in more recent times on The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne, castigating him for what he saw as his cruelty to, among others, children. The latter is a theme that’s apposite to…
Declan Marmion Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident by Peter Stanford (Hodder & Stoughton, £20.00) When Martin Luther allegedly pinned his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517 he had little idea of the theological and political tumult he was about to unleash in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.…
Shouldering the Lamb: Reflections on an Icon by Richard Clarke (Dominican Publications, €12.00) This is the second book of Dr Richard Clarke, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh. It has already won praise from his episcopal neighbour, Archbishop Éamon Martin. Taking the almost universal image of Christ as a shepherd carrying a lamb to safety…
Christopher Moriarty Europe’s Atlantic Fringe: Exploring the west coasts of Portugal, Spain and Ireland by Michael Fewer (Ashfield Press, €25) Michael Fewer combines scholarship with readability in an impressive number of books about Ireland, Irish people and Irish architecture. In his latest work he widens the range by the addition of two countries, Portugal and…
The World of Books There are many people who see the Church of the Middle Ages as being an institution not only at the peak of its sanctity, but also as a model from which modern society can learn. I suspect that this view, especially in Ireland, owes much to the views of Chesterton and…
Last week I wrote about a drama (Little Boy Blue) that told the true story of a murdered young boy. I wasn’t expecting another such story to come along so soon, but it was worth it. Damilola, Our Loved Boy (BBC One, last Sunday night) told the tragic story of Nigerian schoolboy Damilola Taylor, stabbed…
Baywatch (15A) “I don’t mind being called a dumb blonde,” Dolly Parton likes to say, “because I’m not dumb – and I’m not a blonde.” Pamela Anderson has parlayed a similar trajectory in her career, playing into the sexist stereotypes that proliferate around her. One joke goes: “The longest anything stayed in Pam’s head was…
Valerie Roche A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura by Eileen Markey (Nation Books, $US 26.99 / £21.00) It is difficult in this era of global communications to imagine what it must have been like for Sr Maura Clarke to leave behind the familiar, stable life in the convent in Ossining, New York and…
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan