Passage to America: the story of Ulster’s emigrants Taking ship: Essays in transatlantic migration from Ulster, edited by Sophie Cooper, Patrick Fitzgerald and William Roulston (Ulster Historical Foundation, £11.99 / €13.99) Felix M. Larkin *** An Post has recently marked the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence with a stamp featuring a portrait…
Temple of God: An Unbroken Vision of the Virgin Mary, by Theo Andreou (Gracewing, £15.99 / €18.99) It can be hard for the rising generation to imagine just how cut off the Ireland of their grandparents and great-grandparents was from the worldwide expressions of Christianity. That all changed, thankfully, with the Second Vatican Council. The…
Freedom of Speech in the Press in Times of Conflict: Historical Perspectives from Ireland and Europe, ed. by Richard C. Allen, Felix M. Larkin, Oliver O’Hanlon and Aoife Whelan; Studies in Franco-Irish Relations, volume 26 (Peter Lang AG, £40.00 / €49. 40) This is a collection of essays about a most important subject; the freedom of…
Remembering Peasants: a Personal History of a Vanished World, by Patrick Joyce (Penguin £25.00 / €29.99; also available in paperback) Often in writing reviews a relevant passage in the Gospels will come to mind. This time from John 4:38 (in the familiar words of the Douay-Rheims version), where Jesus tells the disciples: “I have sent you…
The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival, at Newbridge, Co. Kildare, will be opened tomorrow evening (Friday, July 24) at 7.30pm in the theatre of Newbridge College by His Excellency David Gill, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany. As Hopkins is one of the most important literary figures in late Victorian times, the festival has…
The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam, by G. W. Bowersock (Oxford University Press, £45.50 / €38.00) We all talk carelessly about “Muslim countries “, which is a way of rewriting the past, and forgetting that places like the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Yemen were not always Muslim. They were, before…
Ernest Hemingway: Flawed Genius, by Aubrey Malone (Fonthill, £ 25.00 / €29.00). The film critic of The Irish Catholic, Aubrey Malone is also steeped in the American literature of the 20th century, dominated by such names as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway – the latter three authors winning the Nobel Prize for…
Salt Wind and Rising Water: Planting a Wood on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Coast, by John S. Doyle (Merrion Press, €18.99 / £16.99) I suspect that since the invention of cities there have ever been those who longed to fly from the crowded streets to the flowing streams of the countryside. From the Epic of…
The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya, by David Stuart (Princeton University Press, £30.00 / €36.00) This year as we are all too well aware is a year of special celebration in the United States, to many 1776 being “the beginning of America”. In my personal experience from living in the great…
Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth and Proceed Sergeant Lamb, two novels by Robert Graves (Penguin Modern Classics, £10.99 each) Oliver Wiswell, by Kenneth Roberts (Published in 1940, and though no longer in print, early editions are widely available on the internet) === Starting at the beginning of this month, the celebrations and ceremonies to mark the anniversary…
Peter Costello