A Road to Rome by Ivan Oliver (Gracewing, £14.99). Ivan Oliver, who worked as a civil servant, academic and Scottish crofter, wrote this personal “apologia” before he died in 2015. It tells the affecting story of his and his wife’s conversion, their experience of his terminal illness and his newly discovered love for the Faith: its liturgy, music, symbolism, social and moral teaching, and the challenge of the new evangelisation. This is a book that will appeal to anyone who is on a similar spiritual path and who will relish encountering a work that is wise, informative, reflective and highly readable.
A Year of Mercy edited by Kevin Cotter (Gracewing, £12.99). This book is organised with a reflection for each day of the year, taken from homilies, talks and addresses by the Holy Father that include the theme of God’s merciful love. As Kevin Cotter, the editor of this selection advises, readers should put themselves in the presence of God, appeal for his assistance, read over the relevant day’s passage, reflect on it, hand over these reflections to God and then conclude with a prayer. It is a tried and tested formula, well worth adopting.
Kick by Paula Byrne (William Collins, £20). This book, subtitled The True Story of Kick Kennedy, JFK’s Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth, provides a lively account of this Kennedy girl, who married the heir to the Duke of Devonshire against much maternal opposition. Readers glimpse the Kennedys’ upbringing: taught to compete and to excel and surrounded by privilege and wealth, they were raised by a strict but emotionally distant mother and a philandering buccaneer for a father. The war brought its own tragedies to this glamorous future first family of America. “Kick” emerges as charming, lively – and doomed.
The Empire at the End of Time by Frances Courtney Kneupper (Oxford University Press, £48). During the 15th century, apocalyptic prophecies were all the rage in the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire. The Last Days were coming and the wielders of power were advised to brace themselves for chaos and destruction. Kneupper analyses a broad range of texts that secured large audiences, across the social spectrum, between 1380 and 1480. They are, she writes, “spectacular examples of medieval imagination” and reveal so much about the era’s hopes and anxieties.
Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871 by John Merriman (Yale, £10.99). Historians continue to squabble about the causes and consequences of this remarkable event. All admit that the plight of a besieged and starving populace was a glaringly obvious factor. But should we focus on political mismanagement by the powers-that-were or tie everything into some grand historical narrative or philosophical agenda? Merriman’s fluent and well-researched book provides an excellent narrative and deploys nuanced interpretative lenses which will help you to decide for yourself.
