Irish Biography

An Irish Times book of the year 2022 A powerful, probing book about PTSD. As a journalist Keane has covered conflict and brutality across the world for more than thirty...

Winner of the Rose Mary Crawshay Award for 2004 Shortlisted for the 2004 British Academy Book Prize Elizabeth Bowen is one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. She...

Authors in Context examines the work of major writers in relation to their own time and to the present day. Combining history with lively literary discussion, each volume provides comprehensive...

Imagine you're thirty-two, married, with two little children and you find out you're carrying a deadly cancer gene?That was me in August 2005. I discovered I had the gene Brca1,...

'Touching and nostalgic' GUARDIAN'She conjures places as vividly as feelings, and feelings as exactly as her surroundings' VOGUE 'It is the only intimate and un-angry expression of the feelings of...

I have always believed that if we choose the right dream and pursue it determinedly enough, it will come true. It is not a question of if but of when....

James Joyce remains a mysterious figure, and yet his books concern his own life: his friends, loves, and above all the city of Dublin. Professor Chester Anderson here examines Joyce...

Jonathan Swift is an infinitely intriguing figure in the literary and political history of England and Ireland. Best known as the author of GULLIVERS TRAVELS, he was an ordained clergyman...

Punk protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon. The complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogues' notorious frontman from outcast to national treasure has never been told - until now.A Furious...

The warm, rich and fascinating memoir of beloved broadcaster Tommie Gorman.When Tommie Gorman was growing up in Sligo in the 1960s, struggle was never far away but his household had...

For the Anfield faithful, Jamie Carragher represents everything that is great about Liverpool Football Club, prompting the Kop to sing 'we all dream of a team of Carraghers'. The club's...

American or Irish, Republican or Democrat: many people are one or the other, but Larry Donnelly has been all of them. Born into an Irish American political dynasty, Larry was...

Fergal Keane is one of the BBC's best known foreign correspondents. His latest work for Radio 4 was "Letter to Daniel", an emotional message to his newborn son. This work...

In October 1952 The Leader , a political and cultural magazine published an unsigned 'Profile' of the poet, Patrick Kavanagh which he considered offensive. He sued The Leader (and its...

THE PHENOMENAL MEMOIR OF A NATIONAL TREASUREAfter Kellie Harrington won gold at the Tokyo Olympics, the Irish public recognized her as not merely a sporting hero, but a deeply inspirational...

Pre-order the very first autobiography from Brendan O'Carroll______________'What forking trouble are you in now?' Mammy asked. She opened the letter and I waited.'It's nothing, just the result of your check-up.'...

A quarter of a century ago, Canon Hilary Wakeman became the Rector of a Church of Ireland parish in the far southwest of Ireland, a very different world from her...

We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others' eyes.The 32 is a celebration of working-class voices from the island...

Frank McCourt continues his life story in the brilliant, bestselling sequel to the million-selling 'Angela's Ashes'. 'Angela's Ashes' was a publishing phenomenon. Frank McCourt's critically-acclaimed, lyrical memoir of his Limerick...

Stunning reissue of the phenomenal worldwide bestseller: Frank McCourt's sad, funny, bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the 30s and in Ireland in the 40s. It is...

A stolen past, a search for the truth, two lives changed foreverBorn out of wedlock in Dublin in 1937, Phyllis grew up in a tough, church run orphanage. She thought...

How do you teach a mother to love her child, when she's still a child herself?Jeanie Doyle nurtures, teaches and cares for young and dysfunctional mums, showing them how to...

In a memoir of staggering power and candour, award-winning journalist Fergal Keane addresses his experience of wars of different kinds, some very public and others acutely personal. During his years...

On Valentine's Day in 1981, a fire in the Stardust nightclub in Dublin killed 48 young people, and left behind one orphan, Lisa Lawlor. Now, on the 40th anniversary, Lisa...

In three urgent pieces of non-fiction Anne Enright explores speech and silence in the lives of Irish women: the long silence surrounding the Mother and Baby home in Tuam which...

Winner of the 2020 Wainwright Prize, Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of Dara McAnulty's world, from spring to summer, autumn to winter, on his home patch, at...

"Walled Gardens" is a brilliant portrait of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, struggling through the post-war depression aided by drink, horse-racing and religion, and their own idiosyncratic adaptations to modern life. Seen...

As an RAF medical officer, Aidan had served in France, survived Dunkirk, and was plunged into adventures in the Japanese-American arena comparable with those of famous war heroes. Interned by...

In this account of life in post-war literary Dublin, Anthony Cronin writes of the frustrations and pathologies of this generation: the excess of drink; the shortage of sex; the insecurity...

Postman Larry Griffin vanishes during his rounds in Stradbally on Christmas Day 1929. The only clue to what happened was an abandoned bicycle on a deserted country road. The story...

In a life stranger than any fiction, Grace OMalley, daughter of a clan chief in County Mayo, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She had...

`There followed a blue flash accompanied by a ver y bright magnesium-type flare ... Then came a frighteningly loud but rather flat explosion, which was followed by a blast of...

Micheal MacGowan was born in 1865 in the parish of Cloghaneely in the Donegal gaeltacht. He was the eldest of twelve children in a poverty-stricken family, living in a thatched...

Nowhere in the annals of sport is there a family so gifted. In 1982 the seven Casey brothers were inducted into the Irish Sports Hall of Fame, the only family...

First published in 1989 No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien was the first full-length biography of Flann O'Brien. Rich in background, anecdote and social history, it...

This is a love story, set in the Irish literary world between 1986 and 2015. When they were first introduced by the poet Derek Mahon, Alannah Hopkin was an arts...

Memoir from the bestselling author of To School Through the Fields who has been described by The Observer as 'Ireland's Laurie Lee...a chronicler of fading village life and rural rituals...

Relax with Alice, sit and chat over a cup of tea, as she invites you into her life.See an old press overflowing with the linen collection of two generations, the...

Alice has known, loved, and lost many people throughout her life. Here she talks about her special people, her memory of what meant so much to her about them. She...

Born in Limerick in 1891, John Edward or 'Ned' Daly was the only son in a family of nine. Ned's father, Edward, an ardent Fenian, died before his son was...