Irish Biography

Very funny, quirky and touching, A Single Headstrong Heart describes in a first-person narrative the author's childhood up to the early years of his career as a journalist and his...

Accidentally buying a derelict 22-room villa in the Italian countryside? What could possibly go wrong?When Rosie Meleady's landlady doubles her rent in cold, wet, overpriced Ireland, she packs up her...

This is the first paperback edition of Antoinette Quinn's acclaimed biography of Patrick Kavanagh, the most important Irish poet between the death of Yeats and the rise of Heaney.From the...

Wilde the writer is known to us from his plays and prose fiction, but apparently it was in his conversation that his genius reached its summit. His talk is lost...

Approximately 400,000 people in Ireland suffer from depression at any one time. In A Life Interrupted, Malachy Walsh gives a courageous and frank account of his 25-year battle with hereditary...

A smuggler and a deserter, Darran Anderson's grandfathers skirted the Second World War on the fringes of legality. Darran's father survived the height of the political violence in Northern Ireland...

Thomas was born into a family of twelve children in Ballyfermot. He had a grim childhood, he was bullied and humiliated at school, and all the time Thomas was hiding...

A full and revealing biography of one of the century's greatest English writers and an icon to a generation. Dame Iris Murdoch has played a major role in English life...

With this volume, John Bayley completes his trilogy, looking back on the years in sickness and health which he and Iris spent together, and attempting to come to terms with...

Colm Toibin's Lady Gregory's Toothbrush is a beautiful insight into the life of outspoken Irishwoman, Augusta Gregory.A remarkable figure in Celtic history, she was married to an MP and land-owner,...

Of picking, washing and cleaning my pretty little toes, which he took great delight in, and in which pleasurable, innocent, and inoffensive pastime he as often spent hours; twas the...

'Of picking, washing and cleaning my pretty little toes, which he took great delight in, and in which pleasurable, innocent, and inoffensive pastime he as often spent hours; 'twas the...

After more than three years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch died in January 1999. Early that month she was taken to a home for...

This fascinating memoir traces one man's experiences of priesthood in Ireland over half a century from formation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, to ordination in 1956, through doctoral...

A uniquely-crafted memoir of the author's early childhood (1967-1972), the third oldest in a working-class Catholic family from the Brandywell in Derry. Written with the authentic voice of a child,...

A Sunday Times Book of the YearAs featured on the BBC Radio 2 Book ClubDr James Barry: Inspector General of Hospitals, army surgeon, duellist, reformer, ladykiller, eccentric. He performed the...

In spring 2006 David Latimer's church, First Derry Presbyterian, was paint bombed yet again. David's usual reaction was to keep his head down and say nothing, but this time he...

In September 2013, on the Late Late Showin front of an audience of more than half a million, Majella O'Donnell had her hair shaved off and raised a phenomenal 600,000...

For years Gareth O'Callaghan, one of Ireland's most popular broadcasters, suffered severe depression. No one guessed that as soon as he was off air, he would retreat to his bed,...

When Shane Dunphy starts work at Little Scamps creche, he has no idea what he has let himself in for. He had not worked in an early years setting for...

*Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2024, Irish Book Awards**A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year*'Remarkable: touching, tragic and terribly human' Sunday Times'Enthralling ... close to perfect ... it will speak...

*The Sunday Times bestseller - now in paperback*By age seven, Rebecca Quin, now known in the ring as Becky Lynch, was already defying what the world expected of her.Raised in...

His devoted uncle, an expert boatman and fisherman, raised and introduced Martin Quigley to trout and salmon angling, and to life, in their backyard river at the shaping age of...

Doing my Bit for Ireland is Margaret Skinnider's autobiography, focusing mostly on the time period shortly before and after the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. In it, she details her...

When he retired in 2018 Pat Marry had been instrumental in solving dozens of serious crimes, including many murders.But as a newly qualified garda in 1985, Marry had no idea...

'Witty, shocking in parts and written with real heart ... has something to say to everyone' Sunday Times'Honest, witty and poignant observations on life that are both heart breaking and...

'Witty, shocking in parts and written with real heart ... has something to say to everyone' Sunday Times'Honest, witty and poignant observations on life that are both heart breaking and...

_______________'A triumph of scholarship and sympathy... one of the great post-war biographies' - Independent'A landmark in scholarly criticism... Knowlson is the world's largest Beckett scholar. His life is right up...

Fifteen funny and perceptive essays about one woman's messy path to finding her footing in another country, by Irish comedian, author, actor and podcaster Maeve Higgins.Maeve Higgins was already a...

Walter Ellis grew up in East Belfast. His father was a commercial traveller, his mother a housewife. He and his sister were not abused as children. Ellis was never forced...

2005 is a key year for anniversaries of events that shaped Europe and Ireland. The Collins Press joins the commemorations with the reissue of this epic war memoir, introduced by...

'There's great power in talking, but there's greater power in laughing. Even the best doctor in the world would be hard pushed to find a treatment with better medicinal properties...