The Captain and the Saint: The Story of St Oliver Plunkett, by Fintan Tracey (Published by Fintan Tracey, Drogheda, €10.00 plus €2.50 postage, direct from fintansfineart@gmail.com) Next year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of St Oliver Plunkett. This little book by Drogheda-based artist Fintan Tracey is the first small droplet of what will…
Some Occasional Writings 2003-2024, by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €25.00 / £21.50) Reviews and occasional writings are exactly that, articles written to meet a specific occasion. And yet since the 18th century such pieces have provided some of the finest and most entertaining writing available. I relish and reread such collections as Graham…
The 2023/24 NSO subscription series drew to a close recently with a particularly satisfying performance at the National Concert Hall of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. The occasion, with highly agreeable soloists Miah Persson, soprano, Jennifer Johnston, mezzo, Valentyn Dytiuk, tenor and Evgeny Stavinsky, bass, also involved the National Symphony Chorus under Jaime Martín. The performance…
Well, I think Mad World has to be my theme song this week. Maybe there’s nothing new under the sun, but previous generations would surely be mystified by some of last week’s goings on. One of the high-profile events of the week was a US presidential debate where an oldish guy, a convicted felon, debated…
Fully alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, by Elizabeth Oldfield (London: Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99 / €26.99) Elizabeth Oldfield directed the London based ‘think-tank’, Theos from 2011 to 2022. Established in 2006 with the support of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the then Archbishop of Westminster and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Theos researches issues…
Keeping the Faith, by Alf McCreary (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) This is a sombre and sobering book, one dealing with the Northern situation that could have driven a saint to despair, but it is also a book that carries a final message to never despair, however appalling and inhuman the situation. Alf McCreary tells…
We don’t like to talk too much about death. It’s the ultimate elephant in the room – inevitable and ignored for as long as possible, while we use euphemism to whistle past the graveyard. On The Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4, Wednesday), many of the issues surrounding death were literally interrogated as the panel quizzed…
The Catholic Media Conference in Atlanta has just released details of three films which may be of interest to readers. The first, Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist, embarks, as the CMC puts it, “on a global journey to rediscover and revive the transformative power of the Eucharist.” Produced by Jim Wahlberg and directed…
The Yeats Sisters and Irish Design: Making, Identities & Legacies An exhibition in the Long Room of the Old Library, Trinity College, Dublin Currently mounted in the Long Room of the Library at Trinity College is an exhibition on the life and work of the Yeats Sisters, which draws on the immense collection of…
Walled in by Hate: Kevin O’Higgins,His Friends and Enemies, Arthur Mathews (Merrion Press, €19.99). The tragedy of the Irish Civil War and its legacy of hatred loom large in this new biography of Kevin O’Higgins by Arthur Mathews. Data on the Civil War fatalities recently published by a team of researchers in UCC highlights the…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone