…the greatest challenge in the book is confronting the difference between the sniper fighting the enemy soldier, and indiscriminate bombing likely to target many innocent people. Continue reading
Filed under Book review …
Anniversaries
There cannot be many Irish people of a particular age who have not heard of Arkle. Continue reading
Sebastian Barry’s Gentlemen
Credit has been slow in coming … for the members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the RIC. Continue reading
A Tale of Bottom-Feeders
This book, by a new writer, comes heavily laden with credentials…. Continue reading
The Origins of the Irish
There’s good reason that most archaeologists wouldn’t touch the subject of Irish origins with a barge pole: the topic involves a very unfashionable cultural historical approach to the archaeological record of a period of Ireland’s existence which is clouded in obscurity and entails a moras of issues that most archaeologists spend a lifetime trying to avoid. Continue reading
Celebrating sacred places
Tanka, conventionally used to celebrate nature and the seasons, is also perfect for registering the evanescent responses of the cultural outsider to new landscapes. Continue reading
Changing of the Guard at St. Brigid’s, Crossley; or, Transforming Divine Investment
A priest who, in a conflict, declares: ‘The Church is not a democracy. I am the power here’ is simply putting himself at odds with such people. Continue reading
The Cricketer, The Wife and the Cathedral Priest: a Sectarian Melodrama of Old Sydney
The Price of a Wife sets out to unravel the complex web of relationships, politics, skullduggery, paranoia, and the flawed and tragic human loves involved in the Coningham – O’Haran divorce trial. Continue reading
Noel King’s Knotty Poems
Living as he does in Tralee, many of King’s poems show an intimacy with the sea. Continue reading
John Sexton’s Moon Magic
The delights of this book are to be found in Sexton’s nature poems, each of which edge towards a magicked realm Continue reading
Tinteán 