Following the conclusion of its ‘subscription concerts’ at the end of May, the National Symphony Orchestra continued to be engaged in a number of Tuesday lunchtime and Friday evening programmes at the National Concert Hall. These have also come to an end as the orchestral members have embarked on their holidays. For most of August…
I’ve often thought that if all the Twitter warriors, rough coots and autocrats would just get gardening the world would be a far better place. It’s one of the best interests parents can pass on to their children, but it takes time and patience. Gardeners’ World (BBC Two, Friday) is always full of inspiration, and…
Here are two books, for two different age groups, which will provide amusing and interesting reading for children this summer when they need to escape from the all too brilliant sun and sit in the shade and read. The Most Irish Person written by Shelly Corcoran, illustrated by Angelika Sowul (Currach Books, €12.99) The first…
Thomas O’Loughlin Hospitality is something we all know about. We have all experienced true, warm hospitality that puts us at our ease. Inhospitality has also left a trail in our memories. In Matthew hospitality is offered as a key to discipleship, and inhospitality is presented as the signal of failure in following Jesus. “I was…
All those years after his death in 1980, Alfred Hitchcock still remains not only the ‘Master of the Macabre’, his more ubiquitous soubriquet, but also the supreme purveyor of enticing visual grammar in storytelling. In Mark Cousins’ fascinating documentary My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (15) – which I recommend you watch in tandem with the…
Can comedy go too far? Oh yes, I think so. I don’t see free speech as an absolute right, and most people draw the line somewhere. Disputes tend to happen over the where the line should be drawn, and over who should draw it. The question was posed by presenter Ciara Kelly on Newstalk Breakfast…
RHA exhibition at the National Gallery, Room 21 at the National Gallery until October 22. Curated by Kate McBride and others from both the RHA and the NGI. The limited exhibition at the National Gallery is one of some special interest concerning the advancement of women artists in modern Ireland. The Royal Irish Academy during…
Trieste Joyce School 2023 James Joyce lived in Trieste from 1905 to 1915, albeit with one interval of nine months spent in Rome in 1906-7. He moved to neutral Switzerland because of the First World War in 1915, but returned briefly to Trieste in 1919 before going to Paris where he would remain for almost…
Thomas McCarthy * * * Song of the Goldfinch, by John F. Deane (Veritas, €19.99 pb/ £17.50pb) Have we forgotten how universal our secure and graceful Irish Catholic life once was? Well, that is, as the song goes, if your Dad was rich and your Mom was beautiful – true wealth, of course, was then to…
The Philosophers’ Daughters, edited by Peter Vardy (Darton, Longman and Todd, £12.99/ €15.50) Peter Vardy was vice-principal of Heythrop College, University of London, and now runs the largest conferences for students of Philosophy and Religious Studies in Britain. In this thought-provoking book he has gathered a number of questions posed by his two young daughters, Petra…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone