Irish Biography

Revealed for the first time here is the correspondence that Percy French, one of Ireland's most influential songwriters, wrote to his fiancee and second wife-to-be, Ettie Sheldon, between May 1892...

Set in 1950s rural Ireland, Rathcormick is an engaging tale of a large and happy family: a stern and domineering Papa, a warm and practical Mama, their two daughters and...

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...

The definitive inside account of the 2016-20 coalition government.Cabinet minister Shane Ross reveals the bitter internal battles fought with the old Blueshirts, the crises when the coalition came close to...

How a typical Irish emigrant rose to a position of influence at the highest levels of US and Irish politics.A remarkable firsthand account of an Irish emigrant who began as...

Radio Caroline was an iconic pirate radio station, immediately capturing the imagination of millions of people when it started broadcasting rabble-rousing, cutting-edge music to Britain and Ireland from international waters...

From Dublin to Beirut, Guantanamo Bay to Iraq - and all the way back - Tom Clonan takes the reader on a very personal journey through the Global War on...

Aesthete, dandy, poet, dramatist and philosopher Oscar Wilde's wit and charm dazzled society in London, America and Paris in the late 1880s. But the year 1895 brought Wilde literary triumph...

Bernard O'Shea is a lucky man. He owes his life to his long-suffering wife, Lorna. She has nicknamed him 'The Feckin' Eejit' because of the ongoing crises he puts her...

Liam Lynch joined the Irish Volunteers after the Easter Rising of 1916 and quickly rose through its ranks. He reorganised the Cork Brigade in 1919 and in 1921 became the...

Walking alone in the streets of the world, Paul Durcan has taken the listener on an exhilarating journey. From Enniscorthy to New York, from Irishtown to Iraq, the "news of...

Very funny and genuinely moving, THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND is an inspiring portrait of the unique and improbable friendship between Christopher Robbins, then an impoverished writer in his twenties, and...

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...

When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent of Roscrea, Co. Limerick, to be looked after as a fallen woman'...

David Thomson's memoir of his ten years spent as a tutor in Ireland picks up the thread of "Nairn in Darkness and Light", the story of his Scottish childhood. In...

'Vivid and compelling and so moving... Kit's depiction of her parents' dynamic is both painful and comforting to read' Marian KeyesAS BROADCAST ON BBC RADIO 4From the award-winning author of...

Law and justice are not always one and the same. On the 27 November 1980, Peter Pringle waited in an Irish court to hear the following words: 'Peter Pringle, for...

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...

For more than 30 years, Gay Byrne has broadcast on Irish radio and television. He tells his life story of growing up in Dublin and how he became a household...

'This is a book about the comfort and sustenance that can be got from gardening and from the earth, about the wonderful pleasures and fulfilment that I get from my...