Irish Biography

Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, after more than a decade away, he finds himself back on the farm. Connell records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day - cleaning the barns, caring for the herd, tending to sickly lambs, helping the cows give birth. Alongside the routine events, there are the unforeseen moments when things go wrong: when a calf fails to thrive, when a sheep goes missing, when an argument between father and son erupts and things are said that cannot be unsaid.

Discover the remarkable life of Brian Boru.... Ireland is a country steeped in history, myth, and legend. During ancient times a long line of kings reined over this fairytale land, and one of those kings was a man named Brian Boru. Ruling the Emerald Isle from 1002 to 1014, Brian’s tenure is indeed so immersed in mythology that it is sometimes hard to glean the fact from the fiction. But Brian Boru himself was not the product of a fanciful tale - he did indeed exist in the flesh.

Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.

John Creedon’s scenes from an Irish childhood paint a colourful and sometimes hilarious picture of a changing Ireland and the growing pains of boyhood. Set in a city-centre household bustling with humanity, the cast includes a dozen children and another dozen adults, including aunts, an American writer, an African doctor, and a Scottish bookie. The streets outside overflow with brewery horses, beat clubs, dance halls, nuns, priests, a Turkish delight shop and a pub where a child could sit up on a high stool and smoke his cigarette in peace.

Saints have over the years inspired many tales that go beyond what we know about them. These pious fictions are delightful and can even be instructive. For the lovely legends of the saints that have come down to us reflect not only the holiness but also the gaiety of the saints. These Irish legends are in that tradition. Patrick, Brigid, Columcille—“the three brightest jewels in Ireland’s crown”—are here, and Canice, Finbarr, Cormac, Finnian, Brendan, Gall, and others.

A real-life fairy tale: Michael Jackson and me is a memoir by Irish fan Talitha Linehan, in which she describes seeing Michael perform at 17 HIStory concerts, meeting him at hotels and venues across Europe, the US, and Asia, spending a day with him at Neverland Valley, and becoming a daily presence around him during his final years. The book includes never-before-published photographs of Michael and Talitha, and messages he wrote to her, from her private collection. “You're my fairy tale, Michael.” “Oooh,” said Michael, and he brushed my cheek with his hand, making me flutter. This ...

Terry Pratchett has earned a place in the hearts of listeners the world over with his best-selling Discworld series - but in recent years he has become equally well-known and respected as an outspoken campaigner for causes including Alzheimer's research and animal rights. A Slip of the Keyboard brings together for the first time the finest examples of Pratchett's nonfiction writing, both serious and surreal: from musings on mushrooms to what it means to be a writer (and why banana daiquiris are so important).

From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.

As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived.

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children

Between the years of 1762 and 1763, James Boswell kept a journal of his time in London. During his time, he met the renowned writer, moralist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, with whom Boswell would form a close relationship. This account, told with much detail and candor, was one of the various journals written by Boswell, but it is the journal that has undergone the least amount of censorship, leading it, and the racy material within, to be deemed a best seller upon publication.

Described by Padraig Pearse as the “greatest of the Fenians”, John Devoy was born before the Famine and lived to see the Irish tricolour flying from Dublin Castle. The descendent of a rebel family, he was an avowed Fenian who went into exile in New York in 1871. Over the next half-century he was the most-prominent leader of the Irish-American nationalist movement. Every Irish leader from Parnell to Pearse sought his counsel. He organised a dramatic rescue of Fenian prisoners from Australia, rallied Irish America behind the Land War, served as a middle man between the Easter rebels and ...

It's Belfast, 1975. The city lies under the dark cloud of the Troubles, and hatred fills the air like smoke. But Tony Macaulay has just turned 12 and he's got a new job. He's going to be a paperboy. And come rain or shine - or bombs and mortar - he will deliver. Paperboy lives in Upper Shankill, Belfast, in the heart of the conflict between Loyalists and Republicans. Bombings are on the evening news, rubble lies where buildings once stood, and rumours spread like wildfire about the IRA and the UDA.

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.

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”.

On the streets of the tough Dublin inner-city neighbourhood where he grew up, Gerry Hutch was perceived as an ordinary decent criminal, a quintessential Robin Hood figure who fought the law—and won. To the rest of the world he was an elusive criminal godfather called the Monk: an enigmatic criminal mastermind and the hunted leader of one side in the deadliest gangland feud in Irish criminal history.

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.

Growing up in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia, Suad Aldarra felt stifled. The daughter of Syrian parents, she railed against the extreme strictures placed on women in Saudi society at the time and the rising prejudice her family faced as migrants. When the opportunity arose to study software engineering at Damascus University, she jumped at the chance to move to the city she loved for a degree of freedom she'd never known. But when the war started, everything changed.

Edna O'Brien depicts James Joyce as a man hammered by Church, State and family, yet from such adversities he wrote works 'to bestir the hearts of men and angels'. The journey begins with Joyce the arrogant youth, his lofty courtship of Nora Barnacle, their hectic sexuality, children, wanderings, debt and profligacy and Joyce's obsession with the city of Dublin, which he would re-render through his words.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright in the late 19th century. His controversial plays were riddled with mockery of social status, cleverly covered by the use of comedy. Wilde may have paved the way for people living a little off the center line. Full of flash and flare, he wrote some of those colorful traits into his literature. Take a journey into the world of Oscar Wilde, and find out just how individualistic he was.