Reviews

For the last four years, the dome of the Four Courts in the heart of Dublin's legal quarter has been obscured by scaffolding, a bleak reminder of the damage it sustained in the opening salvo of the Irish Civil War nearly a century ago. Though most lawyers have seen first-hand the building's enduring

Director Joe Berlinger's new Ted Bundy biopic arrives in cinemas and on Sky Cinema today amid a storm of controversy over its casting of former teen heart-throb Zac Efron as the notorious murderer, rapist and necrophile who killed at least 30 women in the 1970s. The film, described by Berlinger as a

Graham Ogilvy is disappointed by Mike Leigh’s newly released epic Peterloo. Peterloo, the brutal massacre inflicted on a Manchester crowd demanding political reform in 1819, was a milestone in the lengthy and, some would say, continuing, struggle to establish democracy in Britain and one of th

Dublin solicitor Wendy Lyon examines the new book by sex workers and activists Juno Mac and Molly Smith ahead of its Irish launch events in Cork tonight and Dublin tomorrow. From its striking cover – designed to resemble the outside of a Soho sex shop – and provocatively punny title, one

It’s hard to believe only ten years have passed since touch screen phone keyboards entered the mainstream, sweeping away the misery of millions who otherwise had to type messages with a number pad. Unfortunately for BlackBerry and its iconic QWERTY keyboard, the touch screen revolution also h

The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken Kapil Summan, assistant editor of our sister publication Scottish Legal News, reflects on the presumption of innocence in one of the best legal books of modern times.

Following the conclusion earlier this week of the five-year-long National Socialist Underground (NSU) trial in Munich, In the Fade (German: Aus dem Nichts) from German-Turkish director Fatih Akin makes particularly timely viewing. Based very loosely on the string of racist murders committed by the N

No Stone Unturned, director Alex Gibney's ground-breaking documentary on the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, has taken local cinemas by storm since its public début last Friday. In nearby Downpatrick, all tickets for weekend showings sold out. It has caused a stir for doing what official inquiri

Crossing the Threshold tells the inside story of the marriage equality movement by way of a compilation of 23 testaments from the activists who helped lead the campaign to victory in the summer of 2015. It is an important book of record which documents the internal workings of the movement; in that

Fifty years on from the riots that rocked Detroit in 1967, director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) brings alive one of its most infamous and disputed incidents in an intense and powerful cinematic polemic against racial injustice. We see enough of the rioting to place the film i

Tartan is back in In The Tartan Turban John Keay seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of 19th century adventurer Alexander Gardner, a Scots-American who committed feats of travel far ahead of his time, traversing as he did “remotest Kafiristan” and Bam-i-Dunya, the Roof of the World – to the d

The title of this book refers to an incident in April 1945. In response to the denial by SS Guards that there were any Anglo-American prisoners being held at Ravensbrück concentration camp, Mary Lindell, the subject of what might be loosely termed a biography, bravely stepped forward and produced a

The Ruler's Guide by Chinghua Tang In 626CE Li Shimin murdered his brothers and forced his father to abdicate the throne of China’s nascent Tang dynasty, ushering in the country’s golden age and becoming Emperor Tang Taizong, the greatest of China’s Sons of Heaven.

Border by Kapka Kassabova This is a magical book and one of the very, very few to open up the wild and forgotten lands of ancient Thrace that straddle that corner of Europe where Turkey meets Bulgaria and Greece.

Anyone who wants to understand modern Russia and the collective sense of humiliation felt by the Russian people should read this powerful collection of interviews, mainly with Sovoks, those Russians brought up in the Soviet era and who lived through the transition of the crumbling one-party state in