Séan Ryan The Silent Books: A Deaf Family and the Disappearing Australian-Irish Sign Language by Bernadette T. Wallis (Missionary Sisters of Service; available on Amazon.co.uk at £17.86 / Aus$30.00; www.missionarysisters.org.au) Ahearing child of parents who were both profoundly deaf, Sr Wallis has written an insightful history of her parents’ childhood, education and family life, and…
A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics: A Neuroscientist on How to Make Sense of a Complex World by Daniel Levitin (Viking. £12.99 / €17) Exposure to misinformation is part of the human condition. Some – Levitin calls them ‘lying weasels’ – will bend the truth in order to persuade us to buy something or…
Markievicz: A Most Outrageous Rebel by Lindie Naughton (Merrion Press, €19.99 pb / €65hb ) This is a comprehensive account of the many lives of Constance Gore-Booth also known as Countess Markievicz, the defiant aristocratic hero of the poor of Dublin. She was born in London on February 4, 1868. Her father Sir Henry Gore-Booth…
Without a doubt, one of the key challenges of the Church in the modern world is to reach out to those who are outside it – whether those might be people who have fallen away from the Church, or never been part of the Church, or simply people opposed to whatever social role they see…
With so much negative stuff in the news these days, it was good to hear an upbeat item on the Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk), last Friday. It was part of a series on the North Inner City of Dublin, a place full of history, characters and subject to what Kenny called “one of the worst…
Hacksaw Ridge (16) There are so many Christological echoes in this blistering World War II tale, by the end you expect messianic doctor Desmond Dos (Andrew Garfield) to say something like, “I am who I am” as he’s being stretchered off the battlefield. A pacifist from the outset, he enlists in the army on an…
In the past few weeks I’ve been following the English crime thriller series Unforgotten on ITV. This is series two and the high artistic standards set in series one are thankfully maintained…though really it’s the same plot with different characters – a body is found that has been hidden for years, and gradually the police…
Jackie (15A) If you get the accent right, the part usually takes care of itself. Natalie Portman does that to an exemplary degree here – right down to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s tendency to pronounce ‘r’ as ‘w’ – and ends up giving a performance of such quality that the film, like its title, truly belongs…
Welcome to the world of alternative truth The row that erupted after President Trump’s inauguration between Team Trump and the media about the attendance at the inauguration has thrown up some interesting attitudes to what some of us I suppose are old fashioned enough to call ‘truth’. Pilate may have turned away with the philosophical…
Peter Hegarty Greenpeace Captain by Peter Willcox with Ronald B.Weiss (Sandstone Press, £9.99) In his memoir, seafarer Peter Willcox drolly recalls the 30 years he has devoted to creating ‘chaos and spectacle’ to heighten awareness of destruction of the environment. Activism is dangerous. He was on board the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in July 1985…
Greg Daly
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone