Irish Biography

'A fearless investigative journalist and author.' PATTI SMITH'Determined, tenacious, intelligent, and honest in her approach.' ANNA BURNS'A fierce light, a formidable voice.' SINEAD GLEESONA memorial collection of writings by the...

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...

We all did time, staff and prisoners. Each of us had a number; each of us wanted the finality of getting out that gate.When John Cuffe entered Mountjoy as a...

For over three decades Nell McCafferty has been Ireland's most provocative and interesting activist and commentator. As a member of that brilliant 1960s generation of working-class idealists politicized by class,war...

Long before he became President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams was a civil rights activist who took part in sit-ins, marches and protests in Northern Ireland. Along with hundreds of...

NUMBER 1 BESTSELLER IN THE IRISH NON-FICTION CHARTS"Rough Beast is shocking, important and unputdownable." Roddy DoyleRough Beast is Mairia Cahill's harrowing story of her life and of what she went...

'A wit and wisdom that harkens back to an age of enlightenment' - RON PERLMAN, ACTOR'A meditation guide from a man with a mind most unlikely to be conducive to...

'The first time Shocks saw Amber coming, he lowered his head so she could wrap her arms around his nose. It was as if they understood each other's pain. Like...

This book charts the career of a man who has always been respected for his compassion, quirky way of thinking and fearless opposition to orthodox psychiatry. More importantly, he tells...

Would you, should you, ever sell your well-appointed, five-storey house near Buckingham Palace to uplift an impoverished area in rural East Africa? Kenneth King thought he should, so he did....

***'Raw, brutal and life-affirming - Marise has written a hugely important book that is as entertaining as it is illuminating.' - Sara Pascoe'I couldn't put this down. A brave, honest,...

Angels at My Fingertips takes us back to the territory that made Angels in My Hair a million selling, international bestseller. Stories of Lorna's early life in rural Ireland, of...

"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...

"When my parents signed me up to Trojan Swimming Club, they had no idea of the evil behind Gibney's interest in me. As a thirteen-year-old, who knew nothing but kindness...

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...

'Truth telling and truth recovery have seldom been as heart-breaking or necessary as in this powerful story of human vulnerability and failure - and the ultimate triumph of the human...

From the award-winning, number one bestselling author of The Cow Book.It is summer, the hay and silage have not yet been made on John Connell's farm, so he has time...

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,...

When Catherine Corless began researching the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Galway in 2010, she could not have known where her interest in local history would lead her. Uncovering...

In this reflective and enriching memoir, John Tuomey navigates the places and memories of his life over the scope of twenty-five years. First recognised for the urban regeneration of Dublin's...

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...

The sea has always been a part of Nuala Moore's life: her earliest memory is of jumping off her father's fishing boat in Dingle Harbour and swimming back to shore....

It was love at first taste for fifteen-year-old Tadhg Hickey when he drank a can of Scrumpy Jack on the night of his exam results. Straight away it provided a...

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...

The Crocodile by the Door by Selina Guinness - shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award - is a remarkable, compelling and moving memoir of a farm, a family and a...

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...

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...

'A delightful evocation of Irishness and of the author's deep-rooted love of the very fields of home' Publishers WeeklyAlice Taylor's classic account of growing up in the Irish countryside, the...

The attraction of THE VILLAGE, more perhaps than its illustrious predecessors, lies in the fact that Alice Taylor has captured it so well. Leave aside for a moment the extraordinary...

Christy Brown was born a victim of cerebral palsy. But the hapless, lolling baby concealed the brilliantly imaginative and sensitive mind of a writer who would take his place among...

The Number One Bestseller______________For over thirty years, David McDonald worked in Ireland's biggest prisons. This is his story.As a young officer, McDonald got a baptism of fire in Mountjoy. In...

'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...