Irish Biography

In 1979, 24-year-old Maura O'Halloran moved to Japan and became the first woman ever admitted to Toshoji Temple. Soshin-san (O'Halloran's monastic name) labored through three intense years of work and study in preparation for becoming a dharma teacher. Her life ended abruptly during a trip to Thailand, and today Soshin-san is revered as a Buddhist saint. The material in this program is from her private and heartfelt journals and letters.

Maud Gonne, the legendary woman known as the Irish Joan of Arc, left her mark on everyone she met. What motivated this extraordinary person? Kim Bendheim has long been fascinated by Maud Gonne’s perplexing character, and here gives us an intensely personal assessment of her thrilling life. The product of much original research, including interviews with Gonne’s equally vivid, unconventional descendants, The Fascination of What’s Difficult is a portrait of a powerful woman who, despite her considerable flaws, continues to inspire.

Sinn Féin is the most popular political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. A movement once synonymous with a paramilitary campaign is on the brink of taking real power through purely democratic means. But if Sinn Féin has mastered the art of electoral politics, it remains strangely opaque. Who really runs the party? How is it funded? And what can we expect of it as a party of government? Aoife Moore, Irish Journalist of the Year in 2021, explores these and other burning questions in The Long Game.

Janessa: I’ve been in love with Seamus since the day I met him, even though I’d been fourteen at the time. Now that I’m an adult, I’m ready to go claim my man. Maybe I was stupid thinking he’d wait for me, or maybe I just really wanted a fairytale ending. Seeing another woman in his arms hurt like hell, so I ran…straight into trouble.

Stops Along the Way tells tales of 10 red-headed Catholic children raised on a farm in the ’60s, just 70 miles from our nation’s capital, yet so rural that they could be welcomed by both the KKK and a diminutive black man who would become part of the family; attending high school in the ’70s in another country on another continent alone with two brothers, free to explore mysterious castles and watch gripping bullfights while enrolled in a school built in the Middle Ages.

"As you read this book you will be in the company of someone whose childhood was interwoven into the fabric of West Cork and who still loves the soul of his own place" - Alice Taylor, international best-selling author of "To School Through The Fields" In Klondike House, John Dwyer recounts his memories of growing up on the remote but beautiful Beara Peninsula in West Cork, Ireland. The author's vivid and colorful stories describe his hard but happy life as part of an isolated but close-knit community, such as: - Early school days spent in a building with no running water or electricity - An...

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is Seamas O'Reilly's memoir of growing up as one of 11 children in rural Northern Ireland in the 1990s after the death of their mother when Seamas was five. He delves into his family - his pleasingly eccentric, reticent but deeply loving father; his rambunctious siblings, intent on enforcing a byzantine age-based hierarchy; and the numerous bewildering friends, relations and neighbours who blew in and out to 'help'.

Irish-American Autobiography opens a new window on the shifting meanings of Irishness over the 20th century, by looking at a range of works that have never before been considered as a distinct body of literature, from celebrity memoirs from athletes like boxer John L. Sullivan and ballplayer Connie Mack - written when the Irish were eager to put their raffish origins behind them - to the painful diffidence of priest autobiographers.

It’s 1850. A stocky, red-haired Irish teen steps onto the docks of Corpus Christi, Texas, with two of his uncles. Escaping the famine and unrest of County Kildare, Ireland, he has brought with him a plow and a spirit of adventure. Over the next 62 years, Nicholas Dunn would carve a new life from the vast, unforgiving South Texas frontier. Nicholas Dunn: The Making of a Texas Legend is the biography of a man whose experiences could easily have graced dime-store novels and is the stuff of celluloid epics.

Making Oscar Wilde reveals the untold story of young Oscar's career in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Set on two continents, it tracks a larger-than-life hero on an unforgettable adventure to make his name and gain international acclaim. Combining new evidence and gripping cultural history, Michele Mendelssohn dramatizes Wilde's rise, fall, and resurrection as part of a spectacular transatlantic pageant. With superb style and an instinct for storytelling, she brings to life the charming young Irishman who set out to captivate the US and Britain with his words.

Mike Hanrahan, cook and teacher, songwriter and musician, takes us back stage and into the kitchens of a bohemian, international and surprisingly foodie group of Irish household names, including Ronnie Drew, Finbar Furey, Maura O’Connell, Leslie Dowdall, Pat Shortt, Eleanor Shanley and Sharon Shannon. Mike penned hit singles ‘Beautiful Affair’ and ‘Walk Away’ for Stockton’s Wing, from which a world of touring and behind-the-scenes escapades began.

How much do you know about the organized crime involvement of Irish descendants in the United States? How much do you know of the impact of British rule in Ireland? Religious conflicts? The backing of parliamentary and paramilitary groups by criminal gangs? Gun-running and drug-smuggling? A History of Irish Organized Crime is the perfect book to help you develop your knowledge and learn about social history, including the current impact of Brexit on the Irish border “backstop”.

Who ever heard of an Irish Jew? Set during World War II and the Holocaust era, Emerald Ark, Memories of a Jewish Irish Youth, a memoir, shares the story of an adventurous and uncommon life — the life of Theo Garb. Born in Manchester, England, in 1929, Theo grew up an Orthodox Jew in Dublin, Ireland. His parents, Wolf, a larger-than-life figure, and Rachel, have their hands full with Theo and elder brother, Abe, as they mature into adulthood and stray from Orthodox observance.

Protagonist and first-person narrator Alicia McMahon begins her memoir later in her life with a description of her vision to produce a tribute book for her ailing Nana Murphy. Her nana still lived in the village she grew up in - Foynes, County Limerick, Ireland. This leads to a very poignant conversation between Alicia and her Nana, a few months later. Alicia then explains how life was growing up in a little parish in Ireland and shares her stories from hardships to shenanigans.

On 1 November 1920, eighteen-year-old UCD medical student Kevin Barry was hanged in Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail for his role in a bungled IRA operation in which three British soldiers were killed. To this day, he remains a vibrant and celebrated icon of patriotic, idealistic death, his name synonymous with youthful republican sacrifice. His life was short, but Kevin was more than a hapless teen swept away in the revolutionary maelstrom of the time. Here, Professor Eunan O’Halpin, a grand-nephew of Barry, accesses exclusive family records and other archives to explore Kevin’s republicanism ...

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of all George Orwell's greatest non-fiction: three full-length books, a collection of his most well-renowned essays and the complete collection of his poetry.

Best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie offers incisive, often humorous takes on literature, culture, and world events in this New York Times Notable Book. In these stimulating pieces, Rushdie addresses a variety of subjects, including the death of the novel, India, soccer, and the Rolling Stones.

In his essay about the life of Irish writer John McGahern, Tóibín reveals the tones of melancholy and amusement within both art and the artist. In his extraordinary essay on his cancer diagnosis, Tóibín unpicks the word 'battle', and illuminates the distress, horror and blankness of his experiences. From the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists, to the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances and tied up with dictators and politics, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as in Marilynne Robinson's fiction.

"Fudge" is the kindest nickname given to a half-Black child born smack in the middle of a family of eight children who were not only White, they were Irish. This memoir shares experiences of one of more than 1,000 mixed-race children, many of whom grew up conflicted about their racial identity and feeling abandoned by their Black American military fathers stationed throughout Great Britain during World War II.

Annie Monahan was arguably the most successful "black widow" of the early twentieth century, when you factor in the time it took for authorities to finally catch up with her. She had killed three husbands and her own niece, garnering sizable payouts from life insurance companies as she acted as a beneficiary in all of the cases. She performed these acts of murder in the sleepy town of New Haven, Connecticut, dealing with police who always seem to be one step behind her.