Michael Duggan, Author at Catholic Herald

Michael Duggan

What is Notre-Dame without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

January 16, 2020

Notre-Dame By Ken Follet Harper, 80pp, £9.99/$17 Before he has reached the 10th sentence of his new book, Notre-Dame, the bestselling novelist Ken Follett has claimed the cathedral on the Île-de-la-Cité as “one of the greatest achievements of European civilisation”. Watching it aflame on his television screen on that momentous night last year, and hearing

A love letter to the north of England

January 02, 2020

The Northumbrians By Dan Jackson Hurst, 320pp, £20/$34.79 Dan Jackson grew up on the banks of the Tyne to parents from Newcastle and pit-village Northumberland. Later in life, he came to realise that not everywhere was like the place he had grown up. “Why were the pit villages so close-knit, and where did that instinctive

Why is there an Ireland-shaped hole in recent histories of England?

November 15, 2019

At my elbow, as I write, is a small tower of books, all volumes of English history, stacked up in order of age. At the top of the pile are the three published most recently: from 2011, the first volume of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England; then Daniel Hannan’s How We Invented Freedom and Why

Catholicism’s long struggle with modernity

November 07, 2019

The Irony of Modern Catholic History by George Weigel, Basic Books, 336pp, £25/$30 From the societas perfecta, its face set against modernity, to a communion of disciples in mission, engaging with modernity in order to convert it. In his compelling new book, eminent American historian, biographer and theologian George Weigel revisits the Church’s tempestuous journey

How Ireland became a suburb of Hollywood

October 03, 2019

Richard Devane SJ By Martin Walsh Messenger Publications, 176pp, £23/$24.50 For many Irish people nowadays, flicking through the pages of Martin Walsh’s book on Fr Richard Devane SJ will trigger a fit of the giggles. Or the creeps. Here was a social reformer who devoted himself to causes that, in these times, only get an

This vivid guide to cathedrals forgets what they were built for

August 15, 2019

Ships of Heaven: The Private Lives of Britain’s Cathedrals By Christopher Somerville Doubleday, 352pp, £20/$39.95 This is the book in which the walking correspondent of the Times gains his sea legs. Well, sort of. Positing the idea that the cathedrals of the United Kingdom are ships of heaven, Somerville provides a vessel-by-vessel account of “a

Can anything halt the fragmentation of the West?

July 11, 2019

The Demons of Liberal Democracy By Adrian Pabst Polity, 160pp, £13/$19.95 Throughout his new book, Adrian Pabst patrols the frontier where the immense gains of liberal democracy collapse into grievous losses. Citizens of modern Western states now live mostly on the far side of this boundary, and the prospect, as Pabst describes it, is dismal:

Escaping the ‘raging wee cantons’ of Belfast

June 20, 2019

The Ghost Factory By Jenny McCartney 4th Estate, 272pp, £12.99/$17.99 The Ghost Factory is set in Northern Ireland at the tail end of the Troubles. While there may be an uneasy peace between the paramilitary groups, certain cycles of in-house violence – vigilantism, extortion, punishment beatings, score-settling of all kinds – are intensifying. Walled up

An island of saints and scholars seized by technocrats and wonks

May 23, 2019

My Father Left Me Ireland By Michael Brendan Dougherty Sentinel, 240pp, £20/$24 “You leave. I cry.” With these four words, Michael Brendan Dougherty sums up for his father their relationship as he perceived it while growing up. Dougherty was raised by his Irish-American mother in New Jersey. His father was far away in Dublin, a

Plato, Peppa Pig and the power of darkness

May 02, 2019

Darkness: A Cultural History By Nina Edwards Reaktion books, 288pp, £16.99/$27.50 Buttons. Offal. Weeds. Nina Edwards has written books about all of them. Now she has turned her attention to darkness, producing a “cultural history” with three main objectives in mind: to discover how the idea of darkness, cultural and metaphorical, has come to wield

An academic philosopher takes on the universe

April 11, 2019

The Territories of Human Reason By Alister E McGrath OUP, 304pp, £25/$35 Alister McGrath is someone who has frequently taken on the New Atheists, once charging Richard Dawkins with practising “the atheist equivalent of slick hellfire preaching”. McGrath’s new book, subtitled Science and Theology in an Age of Multiple Realities, is a different kind of

The long read: Ireland must remember that it is truly a land of saints and scholars

March 16, 2019

Under a rough, monkish cowl, skulking in the frayed margins of the historical record, Mael Dub feels elusive, barely knowable. An Irish rover of the seventh century, he is the subject of best guesses rather than undisputed fact. His very name compounds the murkiness. It means ‘dark disciple’. Malmesbury, on the other hand, has not

← 1 2 3 4 … 11 →

Sorry, no search matching search results found. Please try again.