Irish Biography

Not another memoir of childhood? Well, yes actually. Not another regressive desire to capture a golden weren't-we-poor-but-happy age? Well, no. Nor a pursuit of misery and repression either. This is...

"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...

This is the story of John McGahern's childhood; of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature and his ambition to become a writer....

One day, years after he's moved away from his childhood home in rural Ireland, Dermot Healy returns to care for his ailing mother. Out of the blue she hands him...

Written in an engrossing novelesque style, yet with nothing fictional included, the book recounts, with engaging honesty, the arc of one human journey in a Belfast-based therapy from 1988-1997. To...

'This story is the result of long hours of delving into the pasts of my nanny and my ma. I hope it will give some insight into the experiences of...

For most of her life, Stefanie Preissner was a people-pleaser. From hair-raising sleepovers and endless offers of cake to unwanted second dates and unrealistic work demands, she said yes 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...

In Running from the Shadows Stephanie Hickey tells, in her own words, how she survived abuse at the hands of a trusted family member and of how running, a simple...

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...

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...

* `The Loneliest Boy in the World - he has only seagulls as playmates.' 1949 newspaper article * Gearoid Cheaist O Cathain had a unique childhood - he was the...

LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021'One of the year's funniest books' i Paper'Funny, smart, soulful and sometimes devastating ... It made me laugh and cry' EMILIE PINE, author of...

This timely memoir by one of the most prominent Catholic nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland is a primary source for the social and political history of the province, from the...

In the 1970s Alice Leahy left nursing to work and live in a Dublin homeless shelter. This is the story of her life and life choices, from an empowering childhood,...

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...

'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...

In his talks to communities throughout the length and breath of Ireland, John Lonergan finds himself coming back to one theme: the importance of kindness. It is an unexpected theme...

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...

In 1946, twenty-six-year-old Bridget Dolan walked up the path to the front door of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Alone and pregnant, she was following in the footsteps of...

Homeless at 13, pregnant at 14: life was not working out the way young Deborah Somorin had hoped. And yet, Deborah is now a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young,...

A special commemorative edition with an introduction by acclaimed author June Caldwell. Are You Somebody? is the incredibly candid story of Nuala O'Faolain, born one of nine children into the...

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...

Betsy Cornwell left home with her baby on his first birthday, checking into a hotel under a false name so her husband could not track them down. Over the long...

Lady Lavery has been remembered for the numerous portraits by her husband, the painter Sir John Lavery, celebrated in 'The Municipal Gallery Re-visited' by W.B. Yeats. This first biography of...

Terry Prone once thought plastic surgery was for the vain, the self-regarding and the rich. She thought herself the person least likely to submit to the plastic surgeon's scalpel. But...