Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda
One of the charms of Peter Reason’s “In Search of Grace” is his human honesty at the gap between the lofty ambition of pilgrimage and actual experience. At the very outset of…
I have just begun reading Elizabeth Taylor’s At Mrs Lippincote’s (not, it feels obligatory to point out, not that Elizabeth Taylor. From Valerie Martin‘s introduction: Though I never met either…
The Making of Mr Bolsover is a novel which it is relatively easy to find critical words phrases to describe – mock-heroic, deadpan, quietly subversive – yet each leaves one…
It is often argued that appreciation of nature is a phenomenon of industrial societies. The implication being that “nature” is something that intellectuals and city folk appreciate – not people…
Given how much I have been featuring Harry Clarke work (see also here and here and Harry Clarke Studio alumni here) I thought it might be nice to share this…
St Mary’s Church is one of the most striking Tipperary Churches I have come across. Designed by a student of Pugin (reportedly) it is an impressive structure set onto a…
In The Church of the Assumption, Booterstown, Dublin we find the above poignant plaque. Here is the text as the above turns out to be a little blurry: MADDEN. Of…
Having three children under 10, a reasonable proportion of my time is spent watching children’s programmes. While I have of late been damning the notion that there is such thing…
Séamus Sweeney 