An exhibition by Anthony Kelly, Seán McCrum, Peter Reid, and Paddy Sammon in the Irish Architectural Archives, 45 Merrion Square; run to 29 March 2024; free The Ariège is a French department that lies in the Pyrenees between Carcassonne and the mountain state of Andorra. It is one of the least populated regions of France,…
St Brigid was recognised from an early date as one of the ‘Three Patrons of Ireland’. Born of the Celtic nobility, in Irish history and legend she has always held a premier place; and yet about her life and achievement there has always been, because of her early date, so soon after St Patrick, both…
The Great Dreamer: The Life and Mission of St Francis Xavier by Brendan Comerford (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £11.95) St Francis Xavier is among the most celebrated of the original body of Jesuits. He has been the subject of many biographies and devotional books in the past – the author mentions some of them on…
This year celebrates a number of composer centenaries, among them the anniversary of the death of Dublin-born Charles Villiers Stanford, who played an important role in music education in the UK where he was professor at Cambridge and a founder of London’s Royal College of Music. The NSO remembers him at the NCH tomorrow (February…
Tim Pat Coogan, my former boss as editor of the Irish Press, singles out in his book Ireland in the Twentieth Century, Sean Lemass and TK Whitaker as “hinge” figures between the “old” and the “new” Irelands that emerged in the early 1960s. Lemass, one of the original architects of the Fianna Fáil policy…
So, referendum time has come around again. It’s hard to deny the centrality of the process in a democracy. In a way it’s the purest form, though you can’t have referendums on everything – it’s just not practicable. Because it’s so important, it is essential that it be fair and transparent – treated with respect.…
Thomas O’Loughlin Gerald O’Donovan: A Life. 1871-1942, by John F. Ryan (Liverpool University Press, £95.00) This book is, to my knowledge, the first full length biography of that most complex character of the late-19th and early 20th Century, Gerald O’Donovan, who is now best remembered for his first novel: Father Ralph, published in April 1913,…
The other day to a female associate of mine (which is modern speak for my wife) who remarked to me that she had a clear recollection of a prayer used in her Dublin convent school in the early 1950s, she thinks about 1953, which the diocese had asked to be used in both schools and…
When Pope Francis recently approved the blessing of same sex couples by priests, he polarised many Catholics. Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers (16) may polarise them even more. It deals with the struggle of a gay man, Adam (Andrew Scott), with his sexuality, mixing reality and illusion in an intense operetta of the emotions.…
Priests have been more in the news of late, thanks to that ‘Last Priests’ programme reviewed last week. Yet again we got another fine example of a priest in action on Mornings with Wendy (Spirit Radio, Friday) when Rob Clarke interviewed Fr Gabriel Dolan – a Kiltegan missionary in Kenya for the past 40 years.…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone