I’m always glad to give some recognition to our young musicians whether or not they are planning to make the art the basis of their careers. With the spotlight shining on them at this time of the year, Barbara Elliott of Touchstone Communications tells me that the 2024 Top Security/Frank Maher Classical Music Award –…
“With Angels and Archangels”: Sharing the Worship of Heaven. Bible, Poetry Liturgy and Devotion in the Middle Ages, by John Blakesley (Gracewing, £15.99 / €19.25) For mainstream theologians this sort of liturgical poetry is a rather narrow interest. It addresses not central issues in relation to the understanding and presentation of the Eucharist, but simply…
When you see tragedies reported in the media, you feel sympathy, but it can be impersonal, unless it hits close to home. As I was watching the Nine News (RTE One, Tuesday) I was sad to hear of a man drowned in Galway. But then towards the end it was announced the deceased was singer-songwriter…
The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda, by Andrew Fleming (Birlinn, £25.00 / €30.00) The life and culture of our own offshore islands here in Ireland has long played an important part in creating our ideas about what Irish culture as whole is. The books of the islands themselves…
Currently visitors can enjoy two exhibitions related by the materials used at the Coach House Gallery, adjacent to the always interesting Chester Beatty Library and Gallery, in the extensive grounds of Dublin Castle. These are entitled respectively Roots: A dialogue in textile and poetry and Beyond Chaos: Textile Journey Collective. The first show mounted by “Contemporary Textile Art “…
It’s that time of the year again. The French film season at the Irish Film Institute runs from November 13 to 24. France knows a thing or three about making movies. Sometimes, admittedly, they’re too talky. (Eric Rohmer, anyone?) There’s also a danger of pretentiousness. You may come out of a cinema shaking your head…
Gabriel Fitzmaurice Questioning Ireland: Essays and Reviews, by Thomas McCarthy (Gallery Books, €17.50 / £14.50) Thomas McCarthy’s latest book, Questioning Ireland, is, like its predecessor, Poetry, Memory and the Party, magnificent. McCarthy, poet, novelist, essayist and critic is at once a Waterford man, a Munster man, an Irishman and a man of the world. A…
Hienrich Zimmer, along with other Germans over the last two centuries such Rudolf Thurneysen, Kuno Meyer and Ludwig Bieler, was one of the scholars who did so much to establish the foundations of modern studies into the Celtic languages of Europe. Their publications were not only respected in their own day, they still remain essential…
Inside Rural Ireland: Power and Change since Independence, edited by Tomás Finn & Tony Varley (University College Press, €30.00 / £25.00) It was a maxim in medieval times when a social problem arose to “Wait a bit: lets us ask the country folk” – “Sustine modicum: ruricolae melius hoc norunt.” This was transformed by the…
When Donald Trump was first elected President of the USA, I wrote that I had a feeling of dread. This time I have that same feeling, but it is mixed with curiosity – Trump is so unpredictable that anything could happen, from World War 3 to World peace. Worrying and intriguing times ahead! A few…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone