Tired of all the Bad News by Fr Bryan Shortall (Columba, €12.99) This might be just the book for The Donald when he feels particularly hard done by. But Fr Bryan, a Capuchin, while accepting that we seem to live in a period suffused by negativity, not just in the news but in life, has…
The Bible in One Year, New International Version read by David Suchet CBE (Hodder and Stoughton, £29.99; also available as a digital download) David Suchet is one of the popular and talented actors of his time, famous for in incarnation of Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Poirot (whose ‘little grey cells’ were informed by the conscience…
Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Malcolm Guite (Hodder and Stoughton, £25.00) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan are two poems known in some way to anyone anywhere who reads English. Yet there was more to Samuel Taylor Coleridge than these and a handful of other poems. He was also …
It’s hard to imagine a more inflammatory title for a blogpost than ‘Catholic pro-lifers at the Women’s March? Get used to it’, but American blogger Simcha Fisher has never been one to pussyfoot around. Writing at simchafisher.com, she starts with a bang. “Were you surprised, even shocked, to see Catholics and other pro-lifers joining in…
Well, for better or for worse, for richer but hardly for poorer, it was Trump week. The dust had hardly settled on Martin Luther King Day when the media went into overdrive in anticipation of inauguration day. I can remember the hype for Obama’s first inauguration, and there were indeed some touching and emotional moments,…
Andrew Carpenter Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel by John Stubbs (Viking, £25) It is hard to know what to expect from a new biography of Swift so soon after Leo Damrosch’s massive Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (Yale University Press, £10.99pb) in 2013, especially if the latest book is clearly designed for the…
The Editor Regrets… by James Good (Lettertec; copies from the author, Parkview, Church Street, Douglas, Cork) Ah yes, what novice contributor to the press has not received one of those rejection slips that give Fr James Good of Cork the title of his collection of essays, largely unpublished? As his own publisher, Fr Good can…
Friend of the Poor. Mary Aikenhead: Woman of Vision, Commitment and Inspiration by Rosaleen Crossan (Columba Press, €12.99) Pope Francis declared Mary Aikenhead to be Venerable on March 18, 2015. This is the first step towards canonisation. It was a much deserved accolade. Mary was born in Cork on January 19, 1787. Her father, David…
Manchester by the Sea (15A) If there’s a more natural actor than Casey Affleck working in films today I’d like to hear about him. I wait for his films to come out like I once waited for those of Robert de Niro. He’s our new James Dean, our new Montgomery Clift. He understands the conflicts…
Last Sunday Netflix launched a new documentary, Hostage to the Devil, about the legendary exorcist and former Jesuit Malachi Martin. My appetite had been whetted by an interview with one of the producers, Sharon Lysaght, on The Ryan Tubridy Show, Wednesday morning of last week. As documentaries go it was excellent, a fascinating story well…
Peter Costello
Greg Daly
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone