Left without a handkerchief, by Robert O’Byrne (Lilliput Press, €18.00/£16.00) The title of this erudite, elegant and elegiac book from ‘The Irish Aesthete’ blog writer Robert O’Byrne captures the essential “grand tragedy” that befell the Irish gentry in their “twilight”, to quote Mark Bence-Jones. Here O’Byrne takes advantage of a tight focus and a circumscribed…
With its Dublin HandelFest running in Dublin Castle over the weekend – Friday July 15 to Sunday July 17, the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO) continues its devotion to the composer who lived in Dublin for almost a year across 1741/42. Conducted by Peter Whelan, tomorrow’s 7.30pm opening event in the Castle’s St Patrick’s Hall, has…
The story that intrigued me most in the media last week was the political upheaval in Britain – an engaging turmoil somewhere between high drama and low circus. So, it was timely for the recently returned Sunday Morning Live (BBC One) to look at the question of moral integrity and leadership. Former Conservative minister Edwina…
Line of Fire: Journeys Through A Media Minefield, by David O’Donoghue (Orpen Press, €17.00/£15.00) The “media minefield” that the author negotiates had its dangers like being thrown on the breadline at short notice but mainly it is a humorous telling of a blooding on provincial newspapers, a stint in RTÉ and then into the world…
An Irish Pilgrimage Guide to the Holy Land by Michael Kelly (Columba Books, €16.99/£14.99) Michael has led some dozen pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and he is well aware of what information pilgrims would like to have, and what information they really need. The usual range of guide books are these days very internationalised and…
Alison Gilliland and Clodagh Finn Her Keys to the City: Honouring the Women Who Made Dublin Alison Gilliland and Clodagh Finn (Dublin City Council / Four Courts Press, €19.99/£17.20) The old Thom’s Directory, which down to the end of the 1960s was the essential reference work for nearly every aspect of Dublin life, used to print…
Search and Rescue. True Stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 Lorna Siggins (Merrion Press, Price €16.95) Lorna Siggins’s update of her book Mayday, Mayday, covers the huge expansion of Ireland’s air-sea rescue services since 2004. The time when mariners in distress off our coasts were almost entirely dependent on the Royal Air Force when a…
Last week saw the 100th anniversary of the start of Ireland’s Civil War. It’s not something most of us would want to celebrate, but it’s appropriate to mark or commemorate it – it was a significant event that we can still learn from, and an event that, unbelievably, still influences our politics today. It’s a…
Nobody expected The Railway Children to capture the public imagination the way it did in 1970. Films about displaced children in wartime usually go down well (especially if they’re tearjerkers, as this was) but its appeal went off-the-scale. People were still talking about it half a century later. It makes you wonder why they took…
Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World by Stephen Cottrell (Hodder Faith, €11.50/£9.99) This little book, by the Anglican Archbishop of York, might provide an object lesson to some Irish Catholic bishops. It is basically a letter answering a query to him by a complete stranger: ‘What made you become a priest?’ He…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone