Journalism: A look back in words and pictures at what we did and how we did it.
Time seems to move faster as the years roll relentlessly on. Trying to take stock and retain the memory of a simple occasion requires a particular kind of provocation. That is what this book provided for me. As I turned the pages I found myself reading an article which I thought I had forgotten. It now stared up at me, reproaching both my memory and myself. Among the pages are sequences of photographs that capture moments with their own poignancy.
The pomp and pageantry of the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II is comprehensively covered by pieces from Paddy Agnew and Kathy Sheridan in Rome and Daniel McLaughlin in Warsaw. His life dominated the end of the last century and with it the collapse of communism, first in the Soviet Union and then rapidly across central Europe. John Paul II was an extraordinary man, whose integrity and righteous devotion to the Catholic faith and to its institutional church, were indivisible. Was that combination of loyalties the barrier that has prevented the Vatican from reacting openly and honestly to the horrors of the toleration and cover-up of child sex abuse by some priests across the world? The silence of Rome on the revelations in Ferns is a case in point. The death of the Pope prompted the recycling of images of the youth Mass in Galway in 1979 where Bishop Eamon Casey and Fr Michael Cleary stood alongside John Paul II as he exhorted the young people of Ireland to live good lives.
Kitty Holland's fearful description of how she struggled with the non-marriage of her loving and loved parents is remarkable. How could she reveal, or even own up to, being a child out of wedlock at a time when all around her were locked into orthodox families? Viewed now from the comfort of tolerance and diversity in our rapidly changed Irish society, it is useful to be reminded of another time. Social change did not occur organically, it was driven until the extreme became mainstream.
The thoughtful face of Michael Kelly, the former secretary general of the Department of Health, recalled his move, forced by Minister for Health Mary Harney, in the wake of the nursing home charges controversy when her predecessor should have taken the honourable course of resignation, as David Blunkett did across the water in Britain.
But we do things our own way here.
The 254 pages in this book cover a year's worth of reporting and commentating. Tom Humphries's description of the epic hurling semi-final between Galway and Kilkenny reminds me, as if anyone could forget, that sports reporting is in a literary category all its own and Humphries is perhaps its best exponent.
The photograph and Nuala Haughey's report on how the Palestinians were able, after so many years, to savour the delights of bathing in the Mediterranean Sea along the Gaza Strip, provokes me to reflect to how lucky I am to be alive and living in this part of the world. The departure of the Jewish settlers from that contested piece of territory, which we still call, on occasion, The Holy Land, is but a small part of the peace process that they have yet to complete.
This book is a celebration of life, of the stimulation of so many diverse and interesting things that are happening in the world. The conveyance of this message, both visual and literary, is elegantly produced. It is a reconstruction of the year just past that includes large amounts of newspaper reporting. For those who were away for a short while, or are forever gone from this isle, it is a wonderful gift of memory and time. This is what happened here, to us, and this is how we reacted to what occurred everywhere else. This is what we did and how we did it. Journalism is for daily consumption, its product no longer used for wrapping fish and chips but recycled in green bins. Yet the recycled pieces in this book have a timeless quality that will delight.
Ruairi Quinn is a Labour Party TD. His memoir, Straight Left: A Journey in Politics, is published by Hodder Headline Ireland
The Irish Times Book of the Year 2005 Edited by Peter Murtagh Gill & Macmillan, 254pp. €26.99