Irish Biography

On December 7th, 1955, Kitty McInerney lay dying in a New York hospital bed. The 47-year-old Irish immigrant, suffering from severe toxemia, was preparing for an emergency c-section to give birth to her 17th child. As a Catholic priest performed her last rites, Kitty succumbed to a rare moment of quiet reflection.

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.

Death is a whisper in the Anglo-Saxon world. But on a remote island off the coast of Co. Mayo, it has a louder voice. Along with reports of incoming Atlantic storms, the local radio station runs a thrice daily roll call of ordinary deaths. The islanders go in great numbers, often with young children, to wake with their dead. They keep the corpse and the bereaved company through the long hours of the night. They dig the grave with their own hands. It is a communal triumph in overcoming the death of the individual.

In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers.

Discover the fascinating achievements of Irish Scientists who have shaped the world. Irish scientists have an esteemed history. This handy book does not provide detailed personal life histories; instead, it gives you essential concise overviews of selected Irish scientists scientific achievements – past and present – who have produced scientific theories, discoveries and innovations that changed the world and which continue to resonate today. Each of the Irish Scientists featured has left enduring footprints on the sands of time and though their impressive and important legacy will not ...

"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...

Thirty-four years ago, when they were in their 20s, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave their lives in New York City and move to Christine’s ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed the rhythms of the Earth.

This is an almost true Irish story. Murphy was a child of the newly emerging 1950's Irish middle class. He was raised in the environment of a conflicted marriage that never should have happened. While his privileged upbringing seemed idyllic to the outside world, his reality was starkly different. Life at home was always turbulent; he never knew what daily chaos would erupt.

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.

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.

Captain Jack White DSO (1879 –1946) is a fascinating yet neglected figure in Irish history. Son of Field Marshal Sir George White V.C., he became a Boer war hero, and crucially was the first Commandant of the Irish Citizen Army. One of the few notable figures in Ireland to declare himself an anarchist, he led a remarkable life of action, and was a most unsystematic thinker. This is a long overdue assessment of his life and times. Leo Keohane vividly brings to life the contradictory worlds and glamour of this mercurial figure, who knew Lord Kitchener, was a dinner companion of King Edward ...

On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland. It was a trip that would cost four lives—and change his own forever. The IRA bomb that exploded in their boat killed Knatchbull's grandfather Lord Mountbatten, his grandmother Lady Brabourne, his twin brother Nicholas, and local teenager Paul Maxwell. In telling this story, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy.

Thomas ‘Buck’ Whaley was one of the greatest adventurers in Irish history. In 1788 he made an extraordinary 10-month journey from Dublin to Jerusalem for a wager of £15,000, equivalent to several million today. Nearly shipwrecked in the Sea of Crete, he almost died of plague in Constantinople, narrowly avoided a pirate attack, was waylaid by bandits, and met an infamous Ottoman governor known as ‘the Butcher’. On his return, he became an overnight celebrity before suffering a catastrophic series of gambling losses that exiled him first to continental Europe (where he attempted to ...

Mary McAleese, President of Ireland, succinctly captured the character of Brendan O’Regan as follows: ‘a true visionary who leaves a legacy that permeates throughout all levels of economic, social and cultural life in Ireland’. This authoritative biography of O’Regan sets out that legacy in a well researched and compelling narrative. It is essential reading for anyone seeking a well-founded and original perspective on the evolution of Irish industry, aviation and tourism over the last seventy years. It also provides an assessment of O’Regan’s important, but largely unheralded, ...

In this penetrating study narrated by leading British voice artist Tanya S. Bartlett, Michael Norris tells the complete story behind Dickens' writing of the book. Norris dives deep into his topic to discover the altruistic angels and monetary demons which drove Dickens, the public debates and rancor which informed him, and the terrible childhood memories which both haunted and inspired him.

In Albert Reynolds: Risktaker for Peace, Conor Lenihan takes the reader on a journey through the former Taoiseach’s fascinating life. From his early days in Roscommon, Reynolds’ determination and hard work saw him rise from a humble clerical job with Irish Rail to become one of Ireland’s best-known showbiz promoters. But it is as creator of the template for peace on the island of Ireland that he, deservedly, will be best remembered. Reynolds’ extraordinary progress from the cut-throat world of business to local politics, and, ultimately, government ministries, was driven by the ...

In 2006 at Belfast Crown Court, William James Fulton, a principal in the outlawed Loyalist Volunteer Force, was jailed for life and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years after the longest trial in Northern Ireland’s legal history for the Rosemary Nelson killing. This unique story is told by former undercover officer Mark Dickens who was part of an elite team of undercover detectives who took part in "Operation George", one of the most remarkable covert policing operations the world has ever known.

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.

From her earliest days as a junior doctor to becoming one of Ireland's leading specialists, she shares extraordinary stories of the children she's treated, the families who've loved them, and the moments when life hung by a thread. It is about how the healing begins with a doctor bearing witness and being present. It is about what it means to offer hope when certainty is gone.

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.