Irish Biography

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...

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...

'Life had brought me to the edge of myself and here I was feeling like I was on the edge of the world.'After moving back to her homeplace on the...

In 1993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahon left Ireland for New York, carrying $500, two suitcases and a ton of unseen baggage. It took years, and a bitter struggle with...

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019'[A] painfully intense, courageous and gripping account of [Fanning's] journey to the underworld of madness and back. This is a brave and instructive book.'...

As a Facebook moderator, Chris Gray made a living looking at graphically violent images and reviewing some of the internet's most toxic debates. Following a short training induction, he was...

Riverdance exploded across the stage at Dublin's Point Theatre one spring evening in 1994 during a seven-minute interval of the Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Ireland. It was a watershed...

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...

'In my life, I've lost a twin, had an adored sister-in-law suffer a fatal asthma attack at just 31, my brother was murdered, a cherished brother-in-law died in his 40s...

Nuala O'Faolain's first memoir Are You Somebody? became a literary sensation and an international bestseller when it was first published by New Island Books in 1996. It launched a new...

'Her highly personal and reflective memoir ... is a must-read for anyone who cares about our role in a changing world' Barack Obama THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE...

In the pieces brought together in Writing Home, Polly Devlin OBE, most bewitching of writers, covers subjects that range over her whole life and thought. She writes about places: about...

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 path I have travelled, the things I have done and the people I have met in crisis situations have given me a window into those qualities that make us...

'Derry Girls meets David Sedaris' Elske Rahill 'The writing is full of energy and originality' Irish Times Growing up on the Falls Road in 1990s Belfast, Alix O'Neill has seen...

'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...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING - HIGHLY COMMENDED'Remarkable' Robert Macfarlane'Beautiful' Amy Liptrot'Powerful, unflinching . . . Part hymn to nature, part Troubles memoir' GuardianKerri ni Dochartaigh was...

Fifteen funny and perceptive essays about one woman's messy path to finding her footing in another country, by Irish comedian, author, actor and podcaster Maeve Higgins.Maeve Higgins was already a...

Walter Ellis grew up in East Belfast. His father was a commercial traveller, his mother a housewife. He and his sister were not abused as children. Ellis was never forced...

2005 is a key year for anniversaries of events that shaped Europe and Ireland. The Collins Press joins the commemorations with the reissue of this epic war memoir, introduced by...

'There's great power in talking, but there's greater power in laughing. Even the best doctor in the world would be hard pushed to find a treatment with better medicinal properties...

Robbie is a simple man who leads a simple life: he is a husband, a father, and a journalist, living and working in Dublin. However, his carefully crafted life has...

When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent at Roscrea in Co. Tipperary to be looked after as a fallen...

For many of its participants, the Second World War was the most intense period of their lives - with horizons widened by grief, strangeness and excitement. Peter Ross, graduated from...

'The prospect of taking over the 'Regarding Ireland' column scared me witless. If they'd changed the title to 'Regarding Reality TV' or even 'Regarding Roisin', I might have been slightly...

A powerful account of an obsessive love affair from the bestselling author of 44: A Dublin MemoirWhen Peter Sheridan's father died unexpectedly, the loss devastated his close-knit family. However, despite...

The Number One Irish bestseller and 2014 Irish Book Award-winner, this is the searingly moving and empowering story of Majella O'Donnell, wife of Irish singer Daniel O'Donnell. It begins with...

'Reflections on a Life' offers short excursions into autobiography, informal evocations of particular incidents, times and places, and sharply-etched memories of individual people who have left an imprint on the...

Eamonn Holmes is one of the most popular TV presenters in the UK. For twelve years he was the main anchor at GMTV drawing daily audiences of six million viewers....

In 1995, Sophia McColgan's father was sentenced to prison for the serial rape and abuse of his children over many years. He had first raped Sophia when she was only...

Although they have become more frequent in recent years, Irish political memoirs are still relatively rare. Even rarer still are political memoirs that still are frank, newsworthy and fun, like...