Selected Prayers by Pope Francis (Veritas, €4.99) Prayer, according to Pope Francis, helps a person to keep their faith in God, and to entrust themselves to him even when they do not understand his will. “Prayer brings you to hope,” the Pope adds. “And when things become dark, with more prayer there will be more hope”– …
King Arthur: Revenge of the Sword (12A) That Arfur bloke wasn’t a bad old geezer, wuz he? No, mate. Okay, so it done his head in trying to get the hang of – whaddya call it, Excalleybur? – but the job was Oxo in the end, innit? There’s a joke told about John Wayne when…
A Man Sent by God: Blessed John Sullivan SJ by John Looby SJ (Messenger Publications, Beatification souvenir hardback edition, €14.95, paperback €9.95) This Saturday in ceremonies at the Jesuit church in Gardiner Street, the Venerable John Sullivan will be raised to the status of Blessed, another stage on the path to his eventual canonisation. This…
Felix M. Larkin The Easter Proclamation 1916, a comparative analysis by Liam de Paor (Four Courts Press, €14.95pb) The words “Easter Proclamation” in the title of this book are singularly ill-judged. They evoke the sacred Easter Proclamation, the Exsultet, sung at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night and so they reinforce the identification of…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan