Category: Reviews

Ronsard’s rose garden is a pure delight Stratford-upon-Avon, especially in summer, is one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions:  the crowds come not to see the Royal Shakespeare Company at the theatre, but the birth place of Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. The theatre with its celebrated productions is a truly vital place –…

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Books Editor With the fine weather here at last thoughts turn to holidays, and thoughts of holidays summon up the idea of some leisurely reading. Here are some suggestions for books which might provide some interesting and out of the way reading for those bored with best-sellers. The Land of Shades by Charles Lyte (Xlibris;…

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This year the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler Yeats is being celebrated with a wide range of events and media occasions. Yeats is one of those poets that school anthologies have made familiar, and yet remain strangely powerful in their resonances. Here are some thoughts on a man who is arguably Ireland’s…

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If you’ve ever been wondering when France will come up with an Angelina Jolie figure, your wait is over. She’s here and her name is Adele Haenel. Playing an arrogant young woman called Madeleine whose life is little more than a series of tasks whereby she pushes herself to her limits, we feel she needs to…

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A Life to Live: Awakening to God’s Abiding Presence by Jim O’Connell MHM, foreword by Liam Lawton (Columba Press, €14.99) Some years ago, our reviewer, Angela MacNamara, wrote of an earlier book of Fr O’Connell’s that “it is as though someone is taking one’s hand and enabling one to face the real world of God…

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