Paul Durcan at 80edited by Niall McMonagle, with an introduction by Colm Tóibín (Harvill Secker, £16.99 / 19.99hb) Thomas McCarthy Paul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944 into a legal family with Co. Mayo connections. Educated at Gonzaga and UCC, he has become the leading poet of his generation, a former Ireland Professor of…
Laurence O’Toole, Dublin’s Own Special Saint The Latin Lives of St Laurence of Dublin edited with critical introduction by Maurice F. Roche (Four Courts Press, € 45) Catherine Swift St Laurence O’Toole is the patron saint of Dublin Archdiocese and, quite apart from the churches which are dedicated to him, such as North Wall,…
Jesus and the Powers. Christian political witness in a age of totalitarian terror and dysfunctional democracies, by Tom Wright & Michael F. Bird, (SPCK, £12.99 / €15.50) Politics are changing. In this imperfect world change is inevitable. There is the normal change that comes with the adjustments we make as circumstances shift, new problems appear,…
Mike Cronin and Mark Duncan,Revolutionary Times: Ireland 1913-23: Forging of a Nation,(Merrion Press 2024) This book will be a delightful read for professional historians, amateur historians and members of the reading public who are interested in our recent history. At the outset the authors explain how it came to be published. It has its origins…
Irish Eccentrics,by Aubrey Malone(Penniless Press, £7.99 )Daft as Brush: Eccentricities of the famous and infamous,by Aubrey Malone(Penniless Press, £7.99) In the days of gloom and doom we all need something light-hearted to relieve the depressing ambience around us. In these two books, Aubrey Malone, the film critic of The Irish Catholic, provides two good doses of…
A Dictionary of Irish Saints, Second Edition, by Pádraig Ó Riain (Four Courts Press, €65.00 / £55.00) This is a new edition of an important, indeed for some purposes, essential book, which was warmly welcomed by The Irish Catholic when it was first published back in 2011. At that time I wrote that this was…
A Holy Mess: Making the Most of Our Misfortunes, by Donagh O’Shea (Dominican Publications, €14.99 / £12.50) I was only a few pages into this excellent book when I came upon a passage discussing the 1951 catechism, so well known to an older generation. From time to time efforts are made by well meaning but…
Letter from America On the last Sunday in February, I attended Mass at the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia. I was visiting that city to attend the 2025 national meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies. The cathedral is sumptuously decorated, and inevitably that distracted me from my prayers. Among…
The Carlow Sugar Factory: The Extraordinary Story of an Irish Industrial Icon, by Christopher Power (Created by Alhaus for Carlow County Council Centenary Committee, supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media; available gratis from Carlow Public Library; email library@carlowcoco.ie) To mark the centenary of the creation of the sugar factory at…
Travellers in the Golden Realm: How Mughal India Connected England to the World, by Lubaaba Al-Azami (John Murray, £25.00 / €30.50 ) This is a most arresting book, though not always for the reasons the author may have hoped for. It was, it seems, originally to be published under a different title First Encounters:…
Peter Costello