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…

English Countess, Irish Earl: the social world of Frances, Countess of Clanricard, 1567–1632, by Bernadette Cunningham (Four Courts Press, €39.95 / £35.00).   his biographical investigation of one woman’s life reveals a very great deal about the dangers, personal, social, political and religious that affected even the lives of  the great in a “glorious” period…

Letter from America 1946-2004, by Alistair Cooke (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, €14.99pb  / £25.00 hb) Here is a most enthralling book that echoes the great days of radio, when a human voice, albeit of a great journalist, could engage people with current affairs in a way that our snippy-snappy media does not in our…

Fountain of Living Water: Poetry, Prayers and Hymns of the Mystics of the Early Church of the East (Gracewing, £12.99 / €15.50) When many people read the gospels they think they are hearing the words of Jesus himself. But the gospels were written in a Greek dialect; Jesus actually spoke Aramaic. Here in Ireland we…

Gothic: Building Castles in post-Union Ireland, by Judith Hill (Four Courts Press, € 50.00 / £45.00)   Castles have an immediate appeal to many people, myself among them. I can still recall as a special moment of my childhood my first visit with my family to Charleville Castle near Tullamore in a now long distant…

The Ox and the Ass of the Manger, by Jules Supervielle, translated from the original French by Sr Elizabeth McGeown (Published at the Carmelite Monastery, Star of the Sea, Seapark, Malahide, €4.99 plus p+p; email rmebodc@gmail.com) This is an unusual little book. Intended perhaps as a Christmas gift, this is a poetic evocation of the nativity…

Ulysses in Limericks, by Tom Matthews (New Island Books, €9.95)   The caricatures of Tom Matthews have been a fixture of Irish and British publications for several decades. His talent is of a partial kind. With great economy of line he can deflate those overblown attitudes which are so common these if only in the…