Peacebuilding a shared Northern Irish society
Book review: Ordinary Lives by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News 8 January 2009 In recent years there has been an influx into Northern Ireland of new arrivals from east European countries, as well as more familiar western places of Portugal and Spain. The British Council organised the Ordinary Lives project, which explores stories of... Continue Reading →
Sophie Scholl and the White Rose (978-1851685363), by Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn, is a superbly well researched and presented account of an act of honour and bravery by conscientious young German students, who dared to stand up against the mind numbing machine of Nazism and the Nationalist Socialist movement during World War II. In 1989, I visited an exhibition... Continue Reading →
Michael Faulkner, son of Brian, loses his Sante Fe style furniture business and home in Scotland. Retreats to family cabin on an otherwise uninhabited small island in Strangford Lough, Ards Peninsula, Northern Ireland. This is reading through a couple's challenging times, that part of the wedding vows that read, "for better or worse". There are plenty of happy... Continue Reading →
I had the privilege of participating in a study abroad programme while enrolled at Boston University. I attended St Catherine's College, Oxford for the Michaelmus term, 1989. I experienced the peculiarities and uniqueness that is Oxford. No one describes this better than Rosa Ehrenreich in A Garden of Paper Flowers. I immediately identified with her reactions to the arcane customs, traditions... Continue Reading →
There's no denying the fighting spirit of the Scots-Irish, particularly as James Webb describes the defence of the frontier in the Appalachian Mountains. However, Webb goes too far in defining this attribute as somehow ethnically unique. Webb also overplays the Scots-Irish role in the American War of Independence. One giveaway passage is, "Although the trained minds of New England's Puritan culture... Continue Reading →
Did a radio piece for BBC Radio Ulster’s books programme, to review two recent biographies: Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life, and Dean Godson’s, Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism. My Life has been dismissed by some as an exercise in some sort of cathartic releasing of guilt, or of exorcising the demons... Continue Reading →
Good for accuracy, not so good for background Making Sense stays true to its objective, to tell 'a straightforward and gripping story ... in an accessible way'. It is a straightforward read. But is it a good read? Yes, if you don't want to be bogged down with pre-Troubles history (too simplistically outlined in the... Continue Reading →
A good text to start with on Jesus the man I wanted to read Son of God because of the tie-in with the BBC televised programme of the same name. Surprisingly, the book was not to be found in my local BBC shops or bookshops at the time the programme aired. (Who to blame: BBC or... Continue Reading →
A tour des forces study of consociational democracy This is quite a comprehensive comparative study of those countries acclaimed to be practising consociational democracies. The prose is highly academic (in tradition of Routledge), and is not recommended for those without a sound understanding of the consociational model. For this, Lijphart's Democracy in Plural Societies (1977) is... Continue Reading →