Irish History

'For at least four, and maybe eight, days they had lived in darkness. Squeezed into gaps among the furniture, they must have had difficulty moving around to keep cramped limbs...

The story of the life of Henry Joy McCracken is fused with the history and environs of eighteenth-century Belfast. Of stout Presbyterian stock, McCracken's family were the founders of the...

From one of Ireland's best known and most listened to radio programmes comes a wonderful selection of new writing. Originally broadcast by Sunday Miscellany on RTAe Radio 1, these essays,...

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...

The Irish Civil War ended in 1923. Eighty years on, documentary-maker Tom Hurley wondered if there were many people left from across Ireland who experienced the years 1919 to 1923,...

In 1961, during the United Nations intervention in the Katanga conflict in the Congo, central Africa, a company of Irish UN troops was forced to surrender to troops loyal to...

This is a book about greed. It is a blow-by-blow account of the rise of corruption in Irish politics and planning, focusing in particular on the unholy alliance forged between...

The Instant Top 5 Irish Times Bestseller From the creator of The Irish History Podcast comes a fascinating look at Irish history through the lens of murder. In A Lethal...

In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would...

The definitive book on the Great Famine from Ireland's greatest historian, combining the latest research and fresh insights. The Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration...

Captain J.C. Bowen-Colthurst, originally from Cork, served with the British Army in the Boer War, in Tibet and in the Great War. Having been wounded, he returned to Ireland and...

One week in May 1916, seven Irish women became widows. When they had married their husbands they had embarked on very different lives. They married men of the establishment; one...

Written about by novelists and poets, the "Big House" has been a part of the Irish landscape for over 400 year. This anthology portrays life in the big house in...

A few minutes after noon on the 24th April, 1916, Patrick Pearse stepped outside the newly occupied GPO on Sackville Street with a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish...

In 1828, the Mary Russell sailed into Cork Harbour from the West Indies. Seven crewmen lay in the main salon, brutally murdered by the captain. Daniel O'Connell, engaged for the...

In 1892 hunger, poverty and desolation were endemic in the area around Foxford in County Mayo in the aftermath of the great famine and the Land War. It was in...

With more than 5,000 original articles written by over 900 different contributors and in excess of 700 illustrations, mainly in colour, "The Encyclopaedia of Ireland" is unique. Unique in scope,...

An account of the events, personalities and repercussions of the Irish rebellionThe Easter Rising began at 12 noon, 24 April, 1916 and lasted for six short but bloody days, resulting...

Sex in the City explains how the organised prostitution rackets work in this country. It does so through the lives and activities of the main people involved. It maps the...

In Vanishing Ireland II, the follow up to the bestselling Vanishing Ireland I, we take another journey down memory lane and, through a unique collection of portrait interviews, we look...

St Patrick is one of the best-known and best-loved saints in the world. His life and legacy is deeply ingrained in Irish history and society, as the annual 17 March...

From the beginning in 1759 when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on a run-down Dublin brewery to the present when over 10 million glasses of Guinness[registered] beer are drunk...

When the Free State army captured Limerick city in mid-July 1922, Republican forces retreated south towards Cork and made their next determined stand around Kilmallock. This area barred the way...

During the War of Independence, faced with an armed insurrection it couldn't stop, the British government introduced increasingly harsh penalties for suspected republicans, including internment without trial. This led to...

For much of Ireland's history her people have been emigrating and the Irish Diaspora today is estimated to be over 100 million people, many times larger than the current population...

The SAS describes its attitude to the use of lethal force as 'Big boys' games, big boys' rules'. Anyone caught with a gun or bomb can expect to be shot....

The first of a six book series on titles on the Military History Of The Irish Civil War, this is an in-depth study of the battle for Limerick city.The story...

"Contemporary Ireland: A Sociological Map" provides a very readable, in-depth description and analysis of the transformations that have taken place in Ireland over the past ten years during the heyday...

Tim Pat Coogan writes an account of the Rising by introducing the major players, themes and outcomes of a drama that would profoundly affect 20th-century Irish history. The day-to-day events...

Tax & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll is the story of how an influx of British pop stars in the early 1980s was a significant catalyst in the miraculous transformation of Ireland...

Branded as 'Bandit Country' by the British government, South Armagh was the heartland of the Provisional IRA. It was the rebel Irish stronghold where Thomas 'Slab' Murphy reigned supreme, bomb...

In 1500, most of Ireland lay outside the ambit of English royal power. Only a small area around Dublin was directly administered by the crown. The rest of the island...

Born in Cloughjordan in Co. Tipperary, MacDonagh was a poet and playwright, an educator and political activist. Appointed to the IRB Military Council he became a member of the Provisional...

On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Taylor tells for the first time the gripping story of Operation Chiffon, the top-secret intelligence operation that helped bring peace...