The Conference was both a celebration of the centenary of the arrival of the future Archbishop of Melbourne and an effort to bring ‘New perspectives on old stories’ Continue reading
Filed under Book review …
A New Stage in the Saga of Irish Famine Orphans
The saga of 4000 Irish orphans who were transported to Australia by the British government during the Great Famine has taken a new twist with the publication of two books this year, one in Kerry and one in Donegal, about the less well known Irish end of the story. Continue reading
Lady Historian and Pro-Communist Patrician
It’s a tale of an Australia which has disappeared – bourgeois, genteel (be-hatted and gloved), learned after its own fashion, but also full of patrician pro-communists. Continue reading
Australian Catholic Lives by Edmund Campion
Campion’s subjects represent the gamut of being human. Continue reading
Decolonising Indigenous Australia
Irish and Irish-identified Australians, or Scots who might have voted ‘Yes’, will be interested to read Noel Pearson’s latest pungent Quarterly Essay for its take on the agonizingly slow process of Indigenous decolonisation. Continue reading
A Socialist Insurgent
This is a thoughtful, well-balanced, sensibly structured and extremely well-written book. Supported by a ‘Timeline’ of Connolly’s life and times, a useful and clear map of central Dublin in 1916, a selection of interesting photographs (some of which were new to me) an extensive bibliography and a couple of short appendices containing some of Connolly’s writings (including a number of his ballads and poems) the author presents a really clear and concise introduction to Connolly. Continue reading
Brutalised by Prison, and with a Thirst for Revenge
Chapter Two, ‘ Prisoner Number J464, 1883-98′ is the fulcrum of this book. It concentrates in detail on the British prison system of those times and Litton has done meticulous research to justify her conclusion that Clarke suffered so badly and permanently that it led to his utter thirst for revenge and a military solution against English oppression. Continue reading
Seán Heuston
It seems Sean Heuston led a double life, by day a diligent and trusted employee of the GSWR and by night and on weekends spending his time on military training and quasi military marches in the Dublin hills. Continue reading
Hail Mary, full of Yeats
McCready makes much of how Belfast in the 1950s was a cultural desert, and I wondered if, in terms of serious literary theatre, the same could not also be said of many cities in the western world; certainly ’50s Brisbane and Melbourne were not too dissimilar from Belfa Continue reading
Move over, Flann O’Brien.
Here is a book to restore your faith in reading, to make you laugh loudly and often. You will be enthralled by the way words can be used to coax you into a story that is sad and funny and uplifting and engrossing, all at the same time. Continue reading
Tinteán 