Spike Island: The Rebels, Residents and Crafty Criminals of Ireland’s Historic Island by John Crotty (Merrion Press, €18.00 / £14.99) Thomas McCarthy On a bright summer’s morning there is nothing quite as magical as the watery approach to Spike Island from its old naval supply-base of Cobh. John Crotty, Waterford-man, has been the latest keeper of…
Memory Near and Far by Éamon Flanagan CM (Published by the author at St Peter’s, Phibsborough, €6.00 plus postage; available directly nationwide from Veritas, and also through the Knock Shrine Bookshop.) It is appropriate that the impressive city church of St Peter’s in Phibsborough should be in the charge of The Congregation of the Mission,…
Media debates can be frustrating when people are talking at cross purposes, misunderstanding or misrepresenting each other and generally being illogical. These thoughts were prompted by Today with Claire Byrne (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday), when the topic was the proposed reduction in welfare contributions to Ukrainians here since the beginning of the war – the…
Although something of a fiasco at its première on March 6, 1853, at the La Fenice opera house in Venice, Verdi’s La traviata now ranks among the most popular of his operas and, indeed, the most frequently performed in the Italian repertoire worldwide. La traviata has returned to Irish National Opera for a series of…
Gerald Boland: A Life by Stephen Kelly (Eastwood Books / Wordwell, €20.00 / £18.99) Enoch Powell famously wrote that “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure”. The career of Gerald Boland was no exception. A senior figure in the Fianna Fáil party from its foundation in…
How We Survived and Surprised: A Collection of Writing by Polio Survivors in Ireland (Post Polio Support Group Ireland, €10.00 plus postage; contact Post Polio Support Group, Unit 319 Capel Building, Mary’s Abbey, Dublin 7; email infro@ppsg.ie; tel: 01 889 8920) From time to time in these pages we review books published in support of…
The River Healer and other stories: A Journey to the Heartland of America by Paddy Reid (Liberties Press, €19.99 / £18.99) During the long 20 years after the Second World War, the large American glossy magazines which circulated in Ireland then, such as Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, and House Beautiful brought Ireland a…
If you uttered the word ‘Cheer’ to me before I saw Tanya Doyle’s Eat/Sleep/Cheer/Repeat, I’d have thought you were giving me an instruction to support someone. In actual fact it’s shorthand for cheerleading. For those of you who, like me, thought cheerleading was ‘an American thing’ here’s a corrective to that mindset. Though we’re still…
Some days I get more confused than others – it could be the weather; it could be the politics but Wednesday of last week it was the law. Listening sleepily to Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1) I heard an interview with Padraic Jones, Chief Superintendent of Community Engagement with An Garda Síochána on foot of…
Spirit of Revolution: Ireland from below 1917-1923, John Cunningham and Terry Dunne (Four Courts Press, €24.95 / £21.95) The cover of this book is graced by a 1934 watercolour by Harry Kernoff, entitled Liberty Hall, Dublin, night: the street is scattered with a selection of typical working class Dubliners, a social group with which…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone