Irish Biography

For sisters Mary Kennedy and Deirdre Ni Chinneide, spirituality has been at the centre of their lives since childhood. Their home in St Brigid's Road in Clondalkin, Dublin, was around...

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...

Her addiction to the drug took her to a place about as low as a person can go. She had grown up in Ballymun and had, like many others, succumbed...

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...

Margaret Skinnider enters and exits the history books as the female rebel who was wounded commanding a military action in the 1916 Rising. In a re-evaluation of Skinnider's long and...

In fact, two places called home ...For over sixty years, Alice Taylor has lived in the village of Innishannon, the gateway to West Cork. But her childhood was spent on...

On a solo trip with her best friend to a Wexford caravan park, a barely 18-year-old virginal (ish) Emma Doran discovers it only takes one time to change your life...

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...

The No. 1 bestselling story of one of Ireland's top homicide investigators 'Thrilling and insightful' Ray D'Arcy, RTE 'Intriguing . . . a great read . . . it's the...

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,...

'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...

A force of nature from the day she was born, Lynn Ruane grew up in a loving home in Tallaght, West Dublin. But in her early teens things began to...

"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...

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...

A GARDA, A FORCED ADOPTION, A FIGHT FOR JUSTICEIn 1984, Majella Moynihan was a fresh-faced young garda recruit when she gave birth to a baby boy. Charged with breaching An...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Claire Walsh spent her twenties living the life she thought she was supposed to live, all the while playing hide and seek with depression. As a result, the road to...

Fr Tony Coote was just fifty-three years old in February 2018 when he was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease. Just a few short months later, he found himself confined to...

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...

Nobody thought Rory O'Connor would make it - written off as 'thick' at school he struggled to find a career he felt he could succeed in. When a hot tip...

A beautiful and hopeful book for when life isn't what you expect it to be.In March 2017, Niamh Fitzpatrick's life fell apart overnight. Her beloved sister Dara was killed in...

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...

Duine de sharscealaithe na GaeilgeIn Eanair 1952, se bliana sula bhfuair Peig Sayers bas, thionscain Coimisiun Bealoideasa Eireann agallaimh lei agus i in ospideal Naomh Anna, Baile Atha Cliath. Bhi...

Tomas O'Crohan was born on the Great Blasket Island in 1865 and died there in 1937, a great master of his native Irish. He shared to the full the perilous...

'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...

'Like hanging with your funniest, sunniest, most sound, wise friend.' Marian Keyes Everything good, bad and downright mad that has shaped Vogue's life and career is laid bare in Big...