Irish Biography

They could prove nothing. There was no evidence that Helen O'Reilly was ever there. And how would they believe that a woman of Mamie's years could drag the body of...

I grew up in a psychiatric experiment crossed with an alcoholic experiment. . . . a place run by two people who were extraordinarily drunk and guarded by a potentially...

Bestselling author and psychologist Tony Bates has spent his career seeking to understand the lives of others. Here he turns his therapeutic eye on himself and describes the events and...

'This is the most gripping book I've read in ages ... It is beautifully written, fascinating, disturbing and often very funny.' Roddy Doyle The childhood world of Hugo Hamilton, born...

Two days after the Winter Solstice in 2019 Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a...

What is it like to be a girl, or a woman, in a male-dominated sporting world? If you play on the boys' team, more people pay attention - but you...

A poignant and introspective memoir from Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird. In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease - a man whose voice was so synonymous...

Born into a loving working-class home, Lynn Ruane's early years were idyllic, but all that changed when two shocking incidents in her teenage years shook her to her core. She...

'I have him bitched, balloxed and bewildered, for there's a system and a science in taking the piss out of a screw and I'm a well-trained man at it.' So...

The head of the Guinness family tells the true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world.In this narrative non-fiction book, Arthur Edward Guinness, the 4th...

This bibulous, drug-indulgent and anarchic rock legend was born on a small farm in Tipperary, won a scholarship to Westminster, was rapidly expelled, became a rent boy, then a central...

In June 2019, Valerie French Kilroy was brutally murdered by her husband at their home near Westport, while her three young sons lay in bed. She was the third woman...

John Moriarty was an original, a thinker, a poet, a mythologian. He was born and reared just outside the little village of Moyvane in north Kerry. Growing up on his...

Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887-1916) from Dublin was one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, the designer of the military plan and the youngest signatory of the Proclamation. A recognised...

Meet Peig McManus, an unforgettable Dublin character whose story will make you laugh and cry.-Her memoir of a 1940s' childhood is recounted with candour and wit, as she describes her...

'Raw, frank and utterly heartfelt, but full of love and joy too, one of the most moving and uplifting memoirs I've ever read.' Daisy Buchanan'Evanna's account of overcoming an eating...

'From the moment I crossed the mountain I fell in love. With the place, which was more beautiful than any place I'd ever seen. With the people I met there....

"My name is Joe Ward, from Gunnocks, Clonee, in County Meath. I have been asked to put down my recollections of the last two generations of the Ward family and...

'Searing and generous ... a blazing beacon' - Donal Ryan 'Every man and woman should read this' - Sabina Higgins'Written with honesty, power and insight' - Roisin Ingle'Immensely valuable ......

At the end of his bestselling debut, Wednesday's Child, Shane Dunphy was burnt out, and wrote of leaving his job as a child protection worker. But he returned to the...

In 1993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahon left Ireland for New York, carrying two suitcases and a ton of unseen baggage. It took years, and a bitter struggle with alcohol...

Foreword by Daniel O'Donnell Known as `the Girl from Donegal', Bridie Gallagher was Ireland's first truly international pop star. Over a fifty-year career she sang at sell-out concerts from small...

The unforgettable true story behind the Sunday Times bestselling memoir Finding Tipperary Mary.Bridget 'Tipperary Mary' Larkin faced poverty, bereavement, cruelty and abandonment many times over, yet never lost the heart...

The book is full of warm anecdotes and wry observations on the numerous literary, artistic and musical characters John Montague encountered, befriended and occasionally provoked. He recounts his personal and...

John Spillane fell in love with singing when he was a small boy and now that he has written about 200 songs and an opera, he feels he's starting to...

AS FEATURED ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS, BIG SCOTTISH BOOK CLUB AND THE ZOE BALL BOOKCLUB, A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, OBSERVER,...

In 1997, Dr Marie Cassidy arrived in Dublin from Glasgow. There to discuss a possible deputy state pathologist post with Professor John Harbison, instead she was whisked by police escort...

Peacemaker, politician, Nobel laureate: John Hume was a titan of Irish political history and a key architect of the Good Friday Agreement, bringing peace to Northern Ireland after decades of...

***Winner of the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards - Newcomer of the Year*** 'One of the year's most arresting, humbling and acute memoirs. It is a catch-in-the-throat, life-affirming work...

A memoir about death, how to grieve, and the healing power of the sea.Over the course of seven difficult years Miriam Mulcahy lost her mother, father andsister, each grief threatening...

Christy Mangan knows how hard it is to solve a murder.In his forty-year career, Mangan participated in or led over 100 murder investigations. And he set up the Garda cold...

The story of the remarkable Tom Crean who ran away to sea aged 15 and played a memorable role in Antarctic exploration. He spent more time in the unexplored Antarctic...

Storytelling kept alive the myths, legends and history of the Blasket Islands. In her old age, Peig Sayers, recounted her life to her son who recorded the tale in this...

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'An unadulterated delight...suffused with a sense of love and very, very funny' Maggie O'Farrell It's 2004 and Anne Enright, one of Ireland's most remarkable writers, has...

'Honest, vulnerable and empowering' Angela Scanlon'Poignant, profound, and moving, I have no doubt that this beautifully written book will comfort anyone who is in the process of falling apart' Louise...

A poignant and introspective memoir from Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird. In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease - a man whose voice was so synonymous...

Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness - through faith, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease...