Category: Reviews

In the week since our last issue the world has been marking the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. This has evoked many articles, and a Hollywood film, Parkland, about the immediate aftermath of the crime. We all of us remember where we were when we heard the…

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I’ve long been a fan of Bruce Springsteen’s music, and was aware of some religious elements in his work – for example those traditional Gospel songs he recorded for his Seeger Sessions album. In fact at one stage one of his guitars featured an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an image that adorned his…

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Saving Mr Banks (PG)   Mary Poppins remains one of the most loved (and popular) Walt Disney films of all time. It was also one of the first to combine animation with real characters, not Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as many people believe. Not much is known about P.L. Travers, the writer of the book on…

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This new reference work, like the Dictionary of Irish Biography, fills a long perceived need, for it covers not only all aspects of music, composition and performance in Ireland, it deals with traditional classical and modern composers. Nor in a country where Handel’s Messiah had its first performance, is sacred music neglected, but it is…

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Irish involvement with Africa is all too often seen though the work of missionaries, especially in Nigeria and Kenya. But this reissue of a book by the late Wicklow novelist Gerald Hanley, better known for The Year of the Lion and Gilligan’s Last Elephant, deals with a very different area and very different kind of…

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