Category: Reviews

Christmas books for all the family

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 real meaning of Notre Dame

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…

In search of an anchor of permanence

As I was saying at the end of last week’s article, the turnout in the General Election was disappointing – 59.7%? Do we value our democracy enough? On Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) we heard from Art O’Leary, CEO of the Electoral Commission, pointing that one of the problems outlined was inaccuracy in the…

An exceptional showcase of Irish talent

I am grateful to Finghin Collins for keeping me up to date about the next Dublin International Piano Competition taking place from May 9 to 16 2025. The Irish preliminary rounds are scheduled for Friday December 20 at the RIAM’s Whyte Recital Hall beginning at 09.15am and concluding at approximately 5.30pm with the results expected around 6pm. Twelve competitors – Adam…

2024 Books of the Year

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…

A richness that is missing

Judging by exit polls from our own General Election and the US Presidential Election, immigration wasn’t as much of a concern to the voters as we might have thought from watching the aggro on the streets and in the tweets. Heart and Soul (BBC World Service, Friday) took a personal and spiritual approach to the…

Poems from the scrum of life

Crash Centre, by David McLoghlin – (Salmon Poetry, €12.00 / £10.00; contact info@salmonpoetry.com)  Poet and Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh fellow, David McLoghlin returned to Ireland in 2020 after ten years in Brooklyn. He had taught at NYU and at the Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the south Bronx. Now in his early fifties, he is probably…

John Henry Newman: a saint in context

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…