A Single Headstrong Heart by Kevin Myers (Lilliput Press, € 20.00) On the cover of this affecting, beautifully-written memoir is a photograph of young Kevin Myers, a parrot on his shoulder; beside him, smiling cautiously, is his father Willie, who was a GP. They were on their way to the Cup Final at Wembley when…
Apart from alcohol dependency, gambling has to be one of the most destructive addictions in this country, and one that we’re way too ambiguous about. And so it was a welcome awareness-raising exercise when stand-in presenter Dr Ciara Kelly interviewed Maebh Leahy, CEO of the Rutland Centre, on Newstalk’s High Noon last week. The specific…
Joe Carroll The World of Books Hillary Clinton won more popular votes than Donald Trump in the US Presidential election but he won more Electoral College votes under the system devised by an 18th-Century intellectual elite, some of whom were slave-owners. So is he the democratically elected President? Eamon de Valera did not believe the…
Graduation (PG) You won’t see a better film about abortion than Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days. It should be used as a resource by anyone campaigning against the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. Now Cristian Mungiu is back with another equally absorbing moral parable. Again he uses the same lingering scenes to depict the…
Donal McCartney Michael Davitt: After the Land League 1882-1906 by Carla King (UCD Press, €50.00) Michael Davitt’s early career has been well documented, most comprehensively by T.W. Moody in Davitt and Irish Revolution 1846-82. It was Moody’s contention that Davitt, in his role as ‘father of the Land League’, made his most significant contribution to…
A Church of the Poor: Pope Francis and the Transformation of Orthodoxy by Clemens Sedmak (Orbis Books / Alban Books, £23.99) This important book is written with the aim, it seems to this reviewer, of enlarging our sense of what ‘orthodoxy’ ought to mean in the era of Pope Francis. Prof. Sedmak is a distinguished…
Grace: The Remarkable Life of Grace Grattan Guinness by Michele Guinness (Hodder & Stoughton, £9.99) Grace, born in 1874, was the daughter of Charles Russell Hurditch. He was a leading figure in the Protestant sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. However, she was best known as the second wife of Henry Grattan Guinness (1835–1910). Taney-born…
In the days following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and with both houses of Congress in the hands of a Republican party keen to limit immigration and abolish President Obama’s healthcare system, there were no shortage of voices online calling for a withdrawal from civic life. “I’m just going…
American politics have become much more prominent in the media since the election of Donald Trump, and I reckon it’s important to sample a variety of media sources to get a balanced picture. Dipping alternatively into CNN and Fox News certainly gives the viewer different perspectives, but of late I’ve taken to following EWTN’s News…
The Secret Scripture (12A) This curious film, based on Sebastian Barry’s Booker Prize nominated novel, will confirm watchers in the view that over-arching anti-clericalism seems increasingly prevalent in films today. Many of them seem to delight in shining a laser on Ireland’s dark past, especially in the treatment of vulnerable young women, especially vulnerable young…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Greg Daly