Secondhand Irish Biography Books

An Post Irish Book Award Winner'An inspiring vision' Manchan Magan'The stories are absorbing, the writing charismatic and the ideas thought-provoking' Irish IndependentOn the Beara peninsula in West Cork, a temperate...

Pat Spillane is one of the best-known sportspeople in Ireland. Selected for the GAA's Team of the Millennium and winner of eight All-Ireland senior football medals, he is one of...

A poignant and introspective memoir from Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird. In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease - a man whose voice was so synonymous...

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...

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...

Brian Keenan went to Beirut in 1985 for a change of scene from his native Belfast. He became headline news when he was kidnapped by fundamentalist Shi'ite militiamen and held...

Alice Taylor remembers her childhood home - the farm with all its tools and animals, the home with its equipment for living, its daily challenges, constant hard work, and its...

A classic memoir from Ireland's favourite storyteller. Here Taylor follows To School Through The Fields with these equally captivating recollections of family life in pastorial County Cork. Infused with wit...

This entertaining and lively memoir describes the characters, landscapes and formative events during Ireland's remarkable late twentieth century renaissance. Starting with a nostalgic reflection on his upbringing in a historically...

Meet Peig McManus, an unforgettable Dublin character whose story will make you laugh and cry.-Her memoir of a 1940s' childhood is recounted with candour and wit, as she describes her...

'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...

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.'...

A memoir of growing up in New York in the 1930s and in Ireland in the 1940s. McCourt tells of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums...

The world is a mess and bestselling author and comedian Tara Flynn is raging. Well, sometimes. Mostly she's shocked, bemused, irreverent and wondering where the kindness went. Depends on the...

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...

This autobiography describes the first ten years of the life of Christy Kenneally, a working-class Cork northsider who lost his mother when he was five years old. The book captures...

'A little gem of a book' Brendan O'Connor'Quietly devastating ... A touching testament to the relationship between one man and his dog' Business Post Tom Inglis and his Wheaten terrier...

By age seven, Rebecca Quin, now known in the ring as Becky Lynch, was already defying what the world expected of her.Raised in Dublin, Ireland in a devoutly Catholic family,...

'Good Times and Bad' recalls Seamus Martin's colourful life and tells fascinating stories about his childhood in a working class family. They moved house frequently from Dublin to Derry to...

"Marie Duffy is one of the best choreographers in the world. She has been my dance master and right-hand person since 1996. She is like my twin sister. I will...

This is a novel based on the life of Erwin Shrodinger, one of the giants of 20th-century scientific thought. Neil Belton concentrates on the time Shrodinger spent living in Ireland....

* `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...

Charlie Bird has been at the heart of every big news event over the last twenty-five years, breaking exclusive stories and interviewing presidents and prime ministers. In his autobiography he...

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...

Born a bastard to a teenage mother in the slums of 1950s Dublin, Martha has to be a fighter from the very start.As her mother moves from man to man,...

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...

Well-known DJ Nikki Hayes has lived most of her life with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a serious mental disorder marked by a pattern of ongoing instability in mood, behaviour, self-image...

On the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, the destitute children swarm and the rich turn a blind eye. To these needy children "Mama Tina" has become an irrepressible, unorthodox...

Sunday Times Memoir of the Year 2019RTE Radio 1 Listeners' Choice Award Winner 2019 - An Post Irish Book AwardsWhen Vicky Phelan delivered an emotionally charged statement from the steps...

How do you teach a mother to love her child, when she's still a child herself?Jeanie Doyle nurtures, teaches and cares for young and dysfunctional mums, showing them how to...