The Mystical Imagination of Patrick Kavanagh: A Buttonhole in Heaven by Una Agnew (Veritas, €16.99) This is a new and enlarged edition of an important book first issued over a decade ago. For a work of literary criticism this is an unusual thing, but then for many readers what Sr Agnew has to say about the…
Falling for a Farmer by Maura McElhone (Mercier Press, €14.99) In this beautifully written memoir Maura McElhone presents a perceptive mirror both to life on the farm and life in 21st-Century Ireland. This she achieves in a romantic tale about herself and a farmer, named Jack. Maura, a native of Portstewart in Co. Derry, was educated…
Saint Patrick: An Ancient Saint for Modern Times by Edmond Grace SJ (Sacred Heart Messenger, €4.95) At this time of the year we Irish tend to think of St Patrick as ‘our saint’, but Edmund Grace begins his brief book with a very insightful encounter far from Ireland. In St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York he…
Nathaniel Hone: Travels of a Landscape Artist National Gallery of Ireland 23 February–1 December 2019 After Nathaniel Hone the younger died in 1917 his wife donated to the National Gallery some 500 works of art: it took until the 1950s to catalogue them all. Most of us have an image of Hone as the creator…
Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Allen Lane, €35) Robert Marshall “The evil that men do lives after them, / the good is oft interred with their bones…’ This apposite quotation from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar comes to mind when reflecting on this magisterial book written by Diarmaid MacCulloch about the life of Thomas Cromwell (1485 c.-1540). MacCulloch is professor…
Ways to go Beyond and why they Work by Rupert Sheldrake (Coronet, £20.00/€23.00) Christopher Moriarty In his preface, Rupert Sheldrake introduces himself as a research worker who is making a substantial contribution to the human knowledge that he calls “mundane”. He means the facts relating to our material world, which can be ascertained by…
Mainly about Books by the Books Editor It has long amazed me the amount of abuse that creationists and many evangelicals heap upon the head of Charles Darwin. Much of what is said is simply wrongheaded, or relies on over simplistic interpretations of the Book of Genesis (one of the most challenging books of the Bible…
Religion, Landscape & Settlement in Ireland, from Patrick to the Present by Kevin Whelan (Four Courts Press, €45.00) This book is one which will interest a wide range of readers. As it is already into a second printing it can be said to have scored a great success with many of them, and many more…
Last Stories by William Trevor (Viking, £14.99) Derek Hand The title of this posthumously published collection, Last Stories, signals that this is the final work from William Trevor who died in 2016. The title is doubly appropriate because the 10 pieces gathered here are imbued with a melancholy sense of things ending. Trevor as a writer…
Game Changer by Cora Staunton with Mary White (Transworld Ireland, €28.00) While Cora Staunton is well-known for her skill and prowess on GAA playing-fields, little is known about her life beyond football or her private persona. That deficit is rectified in this frank autobiography. Cora recalls her early years as she was raised in a small…
Peter Costello