The Book Show returns to RTÉ Radio 1 on December 8th, at 7pm, with new presenter Rick O’Shea at the helm. O’Shea, an avid book lover, called it “the job of a lifetime”. “I run the largest book club in Ireland, The Rick O’Shea Book Club on Facebook, with 28,000 members. I’m a lifelong obsessive reader and have been immersed in the book world for the last five or six years, doing interviews with authors at arts festivals and book reviews on radio, so this is the logical culmination of all those things,” O’Shea said.
A broadcaster with RTÉ since 2001, he was previously on RTÉ 2FM and presented RTÉ Radio 1’s The Poetry Programme. He currently presents weekday mornings on RTÉ Gold.
Andrew Hammond is this year’s winner of the £1,000 Hubert Butler Essay Prize, for his essay on the theme Where does a citizen of the world belong? The runners-up were Noel Russell, Manus Charleton and Nigel Lewis. The judges were Prof Roy Foster, Dr Eva Hoffman and Prof Nicholas Grene.
This Saturday’s books pages feature an interview with Elizabeth Strout on the return of Olive Kitteridge by Catherine Conroy; an interview with Prince memoirist Dan Piepenbring by Peter Murphy; and grief expert David Kessler on the loss of his 21-year-old son, subject of his book, Finding Meaning.
Reviews include Anne Harris on Catch & Kill by Ronan Farrow; Paraic O’Donnell on John le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field; Orna Mulcahy on The Last Footman by Gillies Macbain; Seán Hewitt on A Letter Marked Personal by JP Donleavy; Johnny Rogan on Me by Elton John; Rabeea Saleem on Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley; Barry Pierce on Find Me by Andre Aciman; Neil Hegarty on Phil Coulter’s autobiography; Sarah Gilmartin on It Would Ne Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo; Declan Burke on the best new thrillers; and a new poem by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.
Dracul by Dacre Stoker with JD Barker is this weekend’s Irish Times offer at Eason’s. When you buy the newspaper, you can also purchase the novel for €4.99, a saving of €7.
