A Late Finding, a novel by Lucy Beckett (Gracewing, £20.00 / €24.00) We seem to live in a time where Catholic culture has passed out of general public discourse, especially in fiction. The days of Fr Benson, Belloc, Chesterton, Waugh, Graham Greene and others are lost in the past. Yet there must be a readership…
Many readers who find many of today’s novels present them with a problem, will find many titles that they long to reread (which is the real pleasure of all reading), or have heard of, but which never come their way, which are hard to find in libraries, will be delighted by what they can find…
Gaza, so much in the news recently, is one of the world’s oldest cities, though one might not believe this from what one reads or hears about it today in the media. Gaza, which lies 50 miles or so south-south-west of Jerusalem, was in antiquity a great Philistine city and fortress, often mentioned in the…
I recently mentioned 2024 as a year for remembering the centenary of a number of composers’ births or deaths. One such is Charles Villiers Stanford who was born in Dublin’s Herbert Street on September 30, 1852 and died in London on 29 March, 1924. Ideals of Brahms Stanford’s music is akin to the romantic ideals…
Some radio shows I listen to in the line of duty, some I actually enjoy, and it’s great when a show ticks both of these boxes. I really enjoy a relatively new feature on The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk Monday-Friday) – it’s the daily ‘Afternoon Update’ at 4pm when presenter Kieran Cuddihy chews the cud with…
Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age by Joseph Minich, foreword by Carl R. Trueman (Lexham Press, €25/ $29 / £21) How did we, in the West, move from a world in which belief in God was the default position to one in which it is an option among others? Charles Taylor’s The…
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, with a new afterword (Vintage, £9.99 / €12.60) The author of this book would, I think, regard this ambition as the start of a race to the bottom. Jaron Lanier is a Jeremiah of the internet who has emerged directly from Silicon Valley.…
The Power of Thank You: Discover the God of Gratitude by Joyce Meyer (Hodder and Stoughton, £9.99 / €11.99) Each moment that you’re given,” Joyce Meyer writes, “is a precious gift from God.” How often were we told when small to ‘say thank’ on so many occasions? But how little it affects the adult world. Many are…
Whenever anyone signs up for a research experiment in a film – especially if they’re locked in the kind of laboratory you associate with David Cronenberg – you get the sneaky feeling that things are going to go horribly wrong. Soon. Such suspicions are copper fastened when the person conducting it says things like, “You…
I don’t know anyone who approves of rudeness, though obviously there are people who are guilty of it. Maybe they don’t realise their behaviour is rude. Anyway, I’m not sure how many words we need to describe it. On Drivetime (RTÉ Radio 1 Thursday) there was a largely tongue-in-cheek discussion of ‘microaggressions’ – including eye-rolling…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone