The Miracle of the Myrrh by Marci Alborghetti illustrated by Hervé Blondon Winslow House International, €13.50/£10.70) Though not exactly a new book, this illustrated tale of the first Christmas has provided many families with just the right kind of text to read together and to explore the true meaning of Christmas from a Christian point…

Paddington Bear

The Homesman by Glendon Swarthout (Simon & Schuster, €9.99/£7.99)

Anthony Redmond Mother Teresa was being  interviewed on a particular occasion on TV and there was a break for advertisements for various inessential, unimportant things. “I see that Christ is needed in television studios,” she muttered. Malcolm Muggeridge said about her, “she sees in each sorrowing, suffering human being neither a body surplus to a population…

Sean Ryan Anthologies are a great way to be introduced to a writer, as the editor’s job is to highlight the best of the author/columnist/essayist within the pages of a single book. In this case, it is the sermons of Australian Cardinal George Pell, and he has been well served by his editor, Tess Livingstone, who…

J. Anthony Gaughan The GPO is the nerve centre of our postal system. That system can be traced back to the political and military turmoil of the 16th and 17th centuries when communication became vital to the English policy of aggrandisement in Ireland. Then in the 1640s, Evan Vaughan, the postmaster in Dublin, established a staging system along the…

Periodicals and Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland ed. by Mark O’Brien and Felix M. Larkin (Four Courts Press, €55.00/£43.70)