Irish - All Irish Books

I warn society against the child who has been hurt Peter Tyrrell A tormented childhood in Letterfrack industrial school with the Christian Brothers left an enduring mark on Peter Tyrrell....

When seventy-year-old Maura Murphy discovered she had cancer, she left her husband of fifty years and started writing her memoirs. Born 'chronically ugly and as cross as a briar' into...

At the heart of Once Upon a Hill are the author's grandparents, Jack and Kate, whose sedate old age belies the turmoil of their early life together, and apart -...

This autobiography, a sequel to Nostos, concludes the story of John Moriarty's life in Connemara during the 1980s and subsequent return to his native Kerry. He writes with compelling detail...

When Deirdre Purcell turned sixty, she cheered. Never again would she have to fit into a size ten dress, and while her dream of crossing the US on a Harley...

Somerville and Ross were two extraordinary Irish writers. Cousins and products of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy world, they reacted both with and against their environment to present in their books a...

Dr Flower spent a considerable amount of time between 1910 and 1930 living amongst the 150 inhabitants of the Great Blasket Island. He tells of the adversities and frugality of...

John B. Keane is one of Ireland's most popular playwrights. With his plays now reaching the cinema, his work has become known to an international audience. 30 years after John...

For years the author of In Time's Eye was known only to his devoted followers in The Irish Times as 'Y'. In this book 'Y' reveals himself as Douglas Gageby,...

Tom Hayden first realized he was 'Irish on the inside' when he heard civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland singing 'We Shall Overcome' in 1969. Though his great-grandparents had been...

Rio Hogarty's story of her life in fostering, A Heart So Big, combines the heart-warming nostalgia of Mollie Moran's Aprons and Silver Spoons with heart-breaking stories of children whose lives...

Nora Joyce is commonly portrayed by the literary world as an illiterate, coarse chambermaid and no match for her husband's genius. This biography studies Nora's life before, with, and after...

What's it all about? Why am I here? Is there a God? Why do bad things happen? What happens when we die?On RTE's The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne has...

'I have put my genius into my life but only my talent into my work'. So said Oscar Wilde of his remarkable life - a life more complex, more erotic,...

"Dignity was our most valuable possession". Joe Duffy is a household name in Ireland. As the presenter of RTE Radio One's "Liveline" programme, he takes the pulse of the Irish...

Alice Taylor remembers her childhood home - the farm with all its tools and animals, the home with its equipment for living, its daily challenges, constant hard work, and its...

Brian Keenan went to Beirut in 1985 for a change of scene from his native Belfast. He became headline news when he was kidnapped by fundamentalist Shi'ite militiamen and held...

A classic memoir from Ireland's favourite storyteller. Here Taylor follows To School Through The Fields with these equally captivating recollections of family life in pastorial County Cork. Infused with wit...

Eileen Battersby is the chief literature critic of The Irish Times and is, in the words of John Banville, 'the finest fiction critic we have'. But her first full-length book...

Irish cottages, the pleasures of walking in autumnal woods, a hens' hatching house and a country garden: these are just some of the elements in this varied patchwork quilt of...

Dr RB McDowell is a legend. To graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, he is a symbol of their years at university, the enduring source of endless amusing anecdotes and memories....

This is the autobiography of actor, storyteller and seanchai, Eamon Kelly. It takes its title from the fact that the young Kelly was apprenticed to his father, a wheelwright and...

On the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, the destitute children swarm and the rich turn a blind eye. To these needy children "Mama Tina" has become an irrepressible, unorthodox...