The sudden decision of the government of Israel to close its embassy in Ballsbridge because of, so the government in Jerusalem claimed, the outright “anti-Semitism” of the Irish government brings archive files relating to Robert Briscoe (dating from 1944 and 1955) in the latest release into focus, which suggest that the Netanyahu government’s grasp…
The poet and Nobel Prize winner William Butler Yeats died on 28 January 1939 at Roquebrune-Cap Martin, on the French Riviera. In ill health for some years he had been staying there to enjoy the mild warm winter weather for several years. He had said to his family that if he died he might…
Irish Paris: Stories of famous and infamous Irish people in Paris through the centuries by Isadore Ryan (€19.00; reach irishmeninparis.org for details of purchase) This is an interesting and entertaining book by a Paris based Irish economic journalist with a passion for the past. He is the author of two previous books, No Way…
An Irish Food Story by JP McMahon (Nine Bean Rows Press, €25.00 / £20.75) Irish Food History: A Companion, by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, Dorothy Cashman and others (Royal Irish Academy, €45.00 / £38.00) This holiday season of feasting and drinking, quite in the ancient fashion of the Fianna some might say, seems to be…
Watching the ceremonies from Notre Dame, whether in the congregation or on television (where the view was better), for the occasion of the rededication of the great cathedral, many must have had their attention caught over the two days by the vestments worn by the participating clergy. These certainly struck a very different and new…
Christmas and the New Year are the most important marketing periods for the book trade. The shops are filled, not only with their normal stock, but a flood of special seasonal “present” books, most of which will be of little real interest in a month or so. To help readers navigate this swamp of printed…
The reopening of Notre Dame, which took place finally on December 8, is one of the great ecclesiastical events of the year, saved for the final days of 2024, giving the world something real to celebrate. The restoration of the cathedral, as previous articles in these pages have noted, has been a task fraught with…
The selected choices of our reviewers Joe Carroll My choice is tripartite: Patrick Kavanagh: Collected Poems, Tarry Flynn and the biography of the poet by Antoinette Quinn, none of them new, but still to be found in the shops. On a visit to the Patrick Kavanagh Centre in Inniskeen I picked up a new…
Since the recovery of a lost Caravaggio of the very greatest importance in the dining room of a Jesuit residence in Dublin, a work of art now safely enshrined in the National Gallery, there has been a continuing interest in Caravaggio across Ireland. A portrait of created by Caravaggio has just gone on show in…
Newman and His Critics, by Edward Short – (Gracewing, £35.00 pb / £65.00 hb) This large and very detailed book, running to some 600 pages, is one of three which the author has written on John Henry Newman. He has already published Newman and His Contemporaries and Newman and His Family. Those earlier volumes are now again available to make…