Bees and Their Keepers
by Lotte Moller
MacLehose Press, £20
Having kept bees for many years, Lotte Moller began researching the social and cultural history of beekeeping and this well-illustrated, fascinating and informative book resulted.
Allocating a chapter to each month, she explains a year in the life of bees, inside and outside the hives. Her knowledge is encyclopaedic and scholarly and the complex nature of apiculture past and present is conveyed factually but in a lively anecdotal style that employs humour to great effect as she ranges through literary, historical, philosophical and other references.
We discover humanity's understanding of bees and their lore from ancient times to the present and are introduced to many intriguing and memorable characters along the way, a favourite of whom is Benedictine monk Brother Adam, world-famous breeder of the Buckfast bee. – Brian Maye
Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages
by Katharine Simms
Four Courts Press, €65
Medieval Gaelic Ulster has left little physical evidence but was once a flourishing area and society. It supported schools of poets, physicians, historians and lawyers which have left behind many literary texts and historical records in the Irish language.
Katharine Simms’s monumental work of scholarship delves into the neglected history of Gaelic Ulster from the Anglo-Norman invasion to the Plantation. Her first section is a chronological narrative of the political history, tracing the influence of internal and external political change and how Ulster related to the rest of Ireland.
The second section, covering culture and society, tells of its chieftains, churchmen, warriors, scholars, the role of women and the pastimes and everyday life of the people. Simms uses her specialist knowledge of Gaelic annals, genealogies and verse eulogies to great effect. – Brian Maye
From the Outside: Rethinking Church Doctrine
by Tony Flannery
Red Stripe Press, 120pp
Redemptorist priest Tony Flannery was suspended from public ministry in 2012 for expressing controversial views on issues like the ordination of women, same-sex marriage and the evolution of priesthood. His latest book describes life on the “outside” of the Catholic Church, which has afforded him the time to reflect on church doctrine and practice.
Flannery remains critical of many areas of Catholic teaching, including the Immaculate Conception. He also cannot understand the church’s refusal to even discuss the ordination of women. His reflections on life after death are uplifting. However, the analysis of what Jesus would think of the church as it is now, with its rules and exclusions, is less so.
This is a book which will raise the hackles of conservatives and meet with approval from progressive elements within the Catholic Church. – Eamon Maher
A People Betrayed : A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Spain 1874-2018
by Paul Preston
William Collins
This masterful and copiously end noted work by a renowned Hispanist details dizzying levels of corruption in Spain from the 19th century to the Franco dictatorship to the "triumph of democracy" in the 1980s to the present.
The book, which is essentially a history of modern Spain through the prism of corruption, stupidity and venality, pulls no punches - prelates, monarchists, fascists,republicans all have had their noses in the trough and demonstrated incompetence to Spain's great detriment. Special consideration is reserved for Franco whose personal fortune the author records as 400 million euros in 2015 values at his death in 1975. King Juan Carlos was so scandal-ridden that he was forced to abdicate in 2014 and his gargantuan greed is still being revealed. – Frank MacGabhann
Mary Hayden: Irish Historian and Feminist 1862-1942
by Joyce Padbury
Arlen House
In this biography, Padbury outlines the commitment of a formidable academic scholar, whose life spanned from the late Victorian era to the birth of the Irish Republic, and her contribution to education and women's rights. Her commitment to feminism – a term not in use until almost thirty years after her birth – saw instrumental changes to our society.
This included her campaigning for the fair representation of women in the Irish Constitution. Her name, however, is often forgotten alongside for female contemporaries, the likes of Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and it suggested that this is due to her absence in the Republican movement, (though a keen promoter of Irish national identity). Nonetheless her story is one that deserves to be told.
As Padbury remarks, "Hayden's own life provided a credible model for the next generation, the young women of the early twentieth century". – Brigid O'Dea
The Beasts They Turned Away
by Ryan Dennis
Epoque Press, €11.99
Íosac Mulgannon is a man at the end of his tether. An aging farmer, brutalised by his calling and the landscape of his birth, he is charged with the care of a mute child, a burden he must take up amidst the suspicions of a superstitious and claustrophobic community.
This is Ryan Dennis’s debut novel, a tale that weaves the mythic and the domestic to create a kind of parable for our time, perhaps for any time. Focusing on themes of anger, loss, aging, and family, The Beasts They Turned Away is both lyrical in its narration and visceral in its representation of hardship, suffering and the joy to be found in the everyday magic of life.
Dennis's use of the present tense creates a kind of relentless tension as with each page, the reader is drawn further and further into the increasingly mythic world his characters inhabit. Replete with symbolism and imagery, this is a demanding debut, dense and dark, but ultimately rewarding in its strange beauty. – Becky Long
