When Elizabeth II passed away at Balmoral, her beloved Scottish home, in September last, my first thought on her son’s coming Coronation, was “What are they going to do about the Stone of Scone?” This was the ancient inauguration stone of the Scottish nation. Having been removed from the royal site at the Moot Hill…
Somebody once described art as “Life with the dull bits cut out”. But sometimes the dull bits can be just as artistic – or more so. That’s the case with Lakelands (15), a beautifully modulated evocation of rural life in Cavan, what Eamon Dunphy likes to refer to as ‘unofficial Ireland’. It’s a part of…
Recently, 25 years of relative peace were celebrated in Northern Ireland, but recent events also show that it’s fragile, and there are legacies that linger and threaten to disturb it. A minority won’t let go of a Troubles frame of mind, but I’d suspect most want to move on to a time when sectarianism fades…
Recovering Politics, Civilisation, and the Soul: Essays on Pierre Manent and Roger Scruton, by Daniel J. Mahoney (St Augustine’s Press, paperback US$20.00; ebook) Frank Litton The Good Friday Agreement whose 25th anniversary we celebrate, or at the very least, acknowledge the enormous sigh of relief it occasioned, is taken as an example of politics at…
Uproar! Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London, by Alice Loxton (Icon Books, £25.00). Felix M. Larkin When Martyn Turner skewers today’s politicians in his cartoons for The Irish Times, he is following in a rich tradition of visual satire that stretches back into the late 18th Century. The early years of such satire in…
Roman Imbroglio: Italy and the Irish During World War Two, by Isadore Ryan (Published by the author, available through Amazon, €24.99 / £22.19; contact isadore.ryan@gmail.com) Dermot Keogh This is a most welcome, widely-researched and original book. It covers untilled historical ground, introducing readers to a ‘new’ cast of Irish men and women religious and diocesan…
Whodunits in Dubliners: What Joyce Says, And How He Means, by Peter van de Kamp (Cambridge Scholars, €92.99/£81.99; ISBN: 9781527581487.) For a generation Dr van de Kamp has led the annual Dubliners seminar at the James Joyce International Summer School in University College Dublin, a gathering that is a major event in the Joycean…
Last Saturday Irish National Opera began a nationwide tour of Massenet’s Werther. Opening in An Grianán in Letterkenny, it proceeded to Navan’s Solstice Arts Centre and then Galway’s Town Hall Theatre, where it is tonight, Thursday April 27. Werther’s next port of call is Limerick’s Lime Tree Theatre on Saturday 29, followed by Dundalk’s An…
If there are two sides in a controversy I prefer to hear a discussion between two representatives. When it’s just one at a time being interviewed the presenter may not be informed or willing enough to ask the hard questions of both sides. On The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, Wednesday) Michael Fitzmaurice TD, Independent, and…
Frank Litton The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, by Martin Wolf (Allen Lane, £30.00/€34.50) For all its faults, democratic capitalism is worth defending. But it is in grave peril” and “Democracy [in the United States] is not yet a lost cause. But it is highly endangered”. These are not the words of a maverick seeking attention…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan