Ireland’s First Sanitorium: The St. Ann’s Hill Hydro, County Cork, 1843-1953, by Sinéad McSweeney and Ronan Foley (Four Courts Press / Maynooth Studies in Local History, €12.95/11.95) Cork’s famous “Hydro” was one of the most ambitious and successful health spas of its era in Europe. When its doors closed in 1953 it had been…
Parnell’s Other Island: Charles Stewart Parnell’s life and times in late Victorian Britain, by Alan F. Parkinson (Eastwood Books, €25.00 / £21.50) The title of this book echoes that of George Bernard Shaw’s 1904 play John Bull’s Other Island, but with the conceit inverted. Whereas Shaw was referring to Ireland, Parnell’s other island was…
Changing to Be Faithful: Living Tradition in a Synodal Church, by Eamonn Conway, foreword by Cardinal Mario Grech (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) This is a book written to enlighten the ordinary reader in the whole Synodal process and what it means for the Church, now and into the near future. In reading…
The Bayeux Tapestry, by Sue Brunning, Lloyd de Beer, Michael Lewis and Naomi Speakman (British Museum Publications, £40.00 / €46.50) Today there opens in the exhibition galleries of the British Museum in London a much anticipated exhibition of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, a visual record of the Norman invasion of England in 1066 and the…
Faith and Football: Played for the Glory, by Marc Lyden-Smith, foreword by Cardinal Vincent Nichols (McCrimmon Publishing, £7.95 / €9.50; available on Amazon, or search mccrimmons.com/shop/books/faith) This is a delightful little book which will be greatly appreciated by sport lovers and especially football fans. It provides a comprehensive account of Sunderland Football Club in the North East…
The Political world of Sir Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde of Ballynastragh, Co. Wexford, 1862-1935, by Brian Fennell (Four Courts Press, €12.95) The Catholic Church in Ireland that attained a position of dominance in many spheres of Irish life in the nineteenth and twentieth century has always been slow to acknowledge the debt owed for its…
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection, by Robert Farrar Capon (Modern Library, US$20.00 / €17.50) This has been a bad summer not just in Europe but also in North America. The lack of rain and the bleaching out of the vegetation has threatened food shortages for the coming winter. Such a summer underlines…
An Artist in Glass: Frances Biggs, a pamphlet by John Keating (gratis at Terenure College Chapel) Recently a funeral Mass took us to the chapel of Terenure College. The last time I was in the college was to attend a book launch of a history of the college itself by Prof. Fergus D’Arcy; that very…
Downfall of a King: Juan Carlos of Spain, by Paul Preston (William Collins, £30.00 / €35.50) Paul Preston is one of the foremost historians of modern Spain. He has written sixteen books about the history of Spain since the late 19th century, most of them describing different aspects of the Civil War. Preston, an…
Pathway to the Cosmos: The alignment of megalithic tombs in Ireland, Britain and Atlantic Europe, by Peigín Doyle (Wordwell in Association with the National Monuments Service, €10.00 / £8.99) The recent total eclipse of the sun, visible across a large swathe of Europe caused great excitement. It was certainly a rare lifetime event, but…
Peter Costello