Category: Reviews

Maeve Binchy, who died a year ago, will still be much missed by her countless readers. It seems very soon for any really full and deep searching account of her life to appear. Certainly this is not it. Indeed Piers Dudgeonís book reads more like a fanís notebook than a true biography. He has been…

It is a common complaint that children here and in England, where this book originates, have very confused ideas of history. This profusely illustrated large format book will go some way to remedying that. With a significant input from the Smithsonian in Washington DC, it begins some six and half millenniums ago and comes right…

Though the text is compact, the range of art over time which some five scholars have put together gives a revealing appreciation of what art has been since earliest times, enhanced by many fine and often unusual illustrations. As a basic text, it covers a great deal, though one has qualms that fully a quarter of…

Mark Patrick Hederman, OSB has already given a wide ranging appreciation in this newspaper of some of the special qualities that characterised the late poet Seamus Heaney, whose passing has been greatly mourned. But there are other things too that might be said about Heaney from the point of view of the literary historian.  …

In this book Fr Hogan, now living in Cork after a life spent on the missions in Africa, continues his interesting investigations of the social, political and religious interactions in the early years of colonial Nigeria. The Ebira of his study maynot be so familiar a name as the Ibo or Yoruba are to many…

A sign of the changing times: this is a CD by a Connemara based priest, influenced perhaps by Eastern ideas, which allows listeners to become at home in themselves, and in doing so open up their spirit to wider influences. His insights are intended for both individuals and for prayer groups. There has been a long…

The allusion in the title is, of course, to the robe of Christ, but in these poems by the parish priest of a parish near Dublin, they might also allude to the seamless nature of life and spirit. Poets he notes write from what they know, and what a parish priest has is a very…

Majella is a familiar enough personal name in Northern Ireland, as Fr McConvery reminds us, and in past decades there was a wide spread devotion to him, especially in matters that concerned what the author calls ìthe great life- giving mysteriesî of conception, labour and birth. Though St Gerard (born in 1726 and died in 1755),…

iRosary is an innovative new Rosary for the iPhone and iPod Touch which displays a fully-animated set of Rosary beads that flows across your hand as you move it with your finger, like a standard Rosary.   For those new to the Rosary, there is no easier way to learn this perfect prayer which engages…