Irish Biography

W.M.("Bertie") Smyllie was editor of The Irish Times from 1934 until his death in 1954 and remains one of the legendary figures in Irish journalism. Short-sighted, massively overweight, given to...

John Quinn presents a comprehensive selection of entertaining, thought-provoking and insightful programmes taken from many of his RTE radio series, spanning a twenty-five-year period. Writers, philosophers, entertainers, educationists, activists, politicians,...

In the late twentieth century, Irish poetry achieved an historic quality, a golden era to compare with the verse of the Elizabethan and the Romantic periods. A Poet's Life is...

First published in 1949, this biography of W.B. Yeats attempts to help readers to understand some of his obscure poems, to see the interrelationships between work written at different times...

Francis Stuart (1902-2000) was the author of 25 novels, including "Black List", "Section H", and was critically acclaimed by W.B. Yeats, Laurence Durrell, and J. M Coetzee, among others. He...

In Full On, ex-government minister, businessman and broadcaster Ivan Yates recounts a fascinating political and personal story. From his early days in Enniscorthy to his youthful entry into national politics...

In the third installment of Martha Long's real-life account of abuse, deprivation and cruelty at the hands of her parents and the establishment, Martha is now sixteen, her time at...

Born and bred in the tough inner city slums of Summerhill in Dublin, Bill Cullen was one of fourteen children. A street seller from the age of six, Bill left...

'Ronan is emblematic of how Ireland has changed.' - Panti Bliss At just under six foot in his socks and weighing in at fourteen stone, Ronan Brady is a solid...

Lyn Madden worked for twenty years as a prostitute, mostly in Dublin. Her career ended the night that she watched, her lover and pimp, John Cullen throw a firebomb through...

Once every blue moon a book is written on parchment and in dried blood. Here Huckleberry Finn meets Dylan Thomas on Achill Island, a lost world of corncrakes and ragamuffins.

In the summer of 1939, as a two-year-old in London, I was given away by my parents to a Chelsea friend and taken on the Irish Mail to Dublin. Thus...

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...

Following last year's bestselling collection of interviews from the RTE TV series The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne is back with more big questions - and more interesting answers.With Peter...

10... 9... 8... 7... 6... That's about as far as you get, counting backwards, as you wait for surgery to begin - and that's all most people know about what...