Irish Biography

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...

'This is an important slice of living, breathing agricultural history written with absolute honesty by an insider who has the rare quality of being able to see it from the...

'A really vivacious account of frayed family relationships across decades and around the world' Financial Times PodcastQuick-witted, charismatic and generous; angry, vicious and hurt; in pubs all over Cork City,...

'Incredibly moving' --Anne Enright, winner of the Man Booker PrizeAn Affair with My Mother by Caitriona Palmer: a moving and gripping story of love, denial and a daughter's quest for...

'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...

Stories to inspire.Stories to connect.Extraordinary moments in which women's lives changed forever.Exhilarating, heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring, The Day That Changed My Life is a remarkable collection of stories of Ireland's...

'Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of nature' IRISH TIMESWhen they were in their twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave...

'Like nothing else you will read' Hilary MantelTop 25 History Books of the Year, The Times - the perfect gift for book lovers this Christmas!Every day a beloved father dies....

Patrick 'Paddy' Reilly is an Irish folk singer and guitarist. Born in Rathcoole, County Dublin, he is one of Ireland's most famous balladeers and is best known for his renditions...

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 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...

In 1983 an off-duty prison officer was shot by the IRA in cold blood on a Dublin street. Over 40 years later, no one has been convicted of his murder....

Very funny, quirky and touching, A Single Headstrong Heart describes in a first-person narrative the author's childhood up to the early years of his career as a journalist and his...

Accidentally buying a derelict 22-room villa in the Italian countryside? What could possibly go wrong?When Rosie Meleady's landlady doubles her rent in cold, wet, overpriced Ireland, she packs up her...

This is the first paperback edition of Antoinette Quinn's acclaimed biography of Patrick Kavanagh, the most important Irish poet between the death of Yeats and the rise of Heaney.From the...

Wilde the writer is known to us from his plays and prose fiction, but apparently it was in his conversation that his genius reached its summit. His talk is lost...

'Captivating' Manchan Magan'Sublime' Eoghan Daltun'An earnest and uplifting blend of biography, almanac, travelogue and conservation call-to-arms' The Irish TimesSean Ronayne always knew he was different. Nicknamed 'nature boy' by the...

Approximately 400,000 people in Ireland suffer from depression at any one time. In A Life Interrupted, Malachy Walsh gives a courageous and frank account of his 25-year battle with hereditary...

A smuggler and a deserter, Darran Anderson's grandfathers skirted the Second World War on the fringes of legality. Darran's father survived the height of the political violence in Northern Ireland...

Thomas was born into a family of twelve children in Ballyfermot. He had a grim childhood, he was bullied and humiliated at school, and all the time Thomas was hiding...

A full and revealing biography of one of the century's greatest English writers and an icon to a generation. Dame Iris Murdoch has played a major role in English life...