With Dante you do not just enter a poet’s world, but a poet’s cosmos. Hell is defined by theologians as a place or state of punishment. Dante, Doré, and others present visions of the place, but the state of hell may be something very different to what they have so generously imagined. Flann O’Brien more…
Podcasts aren’t quite radio but they’re close – the lines are blurred. Some podcasts are original, living only on the hosting platforms like Spotify, others are really just playback options from regular radio broadcasting. A relatively new kid on the Podcast block is State of the Nation, presented by former The Irish Catholic editor Michael…
As the main work in tomorrow’s NSO concert at the NCH will be Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony I had intended this column to be principally devoted to the Russian master. However, taking pen to paper I realised that tomorrow’s opening work is by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana born 1824, died in 1884 with this year…
Last week the annual Pan Celtic Festival was held in Carlow last week. With groups of musicians, singers and dancers it is a notably vital occasion, at which Celtic culture from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and Spain are on display. Celtic culture in its several varieties spreads from the Outer Isles of Scotland along…
These two very different books explore aspects of the same centuries long tradition in European architecture, which by extension into the colonies abroad, means worldwide. It is a tradition which has left its mark in many places in the form of classical style churches, which with many public buildings and private mansions, form an important…
Marlon Brando would have been 100 yesterday. Born on April 3, 1924 he was, by fairly common consensus, the greatest actor of his generation. Was he a ‘Method’ actor? This is the school of acting he’s always identified with, focusing as it did on reaching into one’s inner self for inspiration. He claimed not to…
Easter is a great time for religious programming in the media, whether special shows for the season or special editions of the regular shows. On the seasonal edition of Witness (RTÉ Radio 1, Good Friday), Fr Tod Nolan gave presenter Siobhán Garrigan a guide to the Stations of the Cross at Ballintubber Abbey, Co.…
Going for Glory, Irish Style Chasing Sam Maguire; The All-Ireland Football Championship 1928-1977 by Dermot Reilly and Colm Keys, foreword by Larry McCarthy (The O’Brien Press, €34.99 / £32.99) This is a comprehensive account of the All-Ireland Senior Football finals from 1928 to 1977. On each occasion the teams competed for the Sam Maguire Cup.…
Easter being the most important feast day in the Christian calendar has always attracted artists. Each incident of Holy Week from the Last Supper, the arrest in the garden, the trial before Pontius Pilate, the denials by Peter, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the women at the empty tomb: each of these has been the…
Thomas McCarthy Few poets have written with the intensity and seriousness of Aidan Mathews; and fewer still have sustained that intensity over a career of five collections, six books of prose and six plays. This heroic, wide ranging and always engaged achievement belies the poet’s character which has seemed at all times evasive, ironic…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone