Secondhand Irish Biography Books

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....

'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...

Dr RB McDowell is a legend. To graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, he is a symbol of their years at university, the enduring source of endless amusing anecdotes and memories....

He claimed he couldn't talk about his work, but Samuel Beckett proves remarkably forthcoming in this text, which documents the 30-year working relationship between the playwright and Alan Schneider, his...

"Dignity was our most valuable possession". Joe Duffy is a household name in Ireland. As the presenter of RTE Radio One's "Liveline" programme, he takes the pulse of the Irish...

For years the author of In Time's Eye was known only to his devoted followers in The Irish Times as 'Y'. In this book 'Y' reveals himself as Douglas Gageby,...

At the heart of Once Upon a Hill are the author's grandparents, Jack and Kate, whose sedate old age belies the turmoil of their early life together, and apart -...

For every woman who's ever looked in the mirror and felt crap: a funny, filthy and uplifting account of one woman's quest to leave body insecurity behind.Jules Coll was a...

Much of Mark Mehigan's twenties read like a 'how-to' manual: How to get very drunk without raising people's suspicions you might be an alcoholic. Although outwardly successful, nearing 30 he...

At the age of nine, the author was knocked on the jaw in her school playground. What her family initially thought was a toothache brought on by the accident, turned...

The Third Daughter begins in 1940s Limerick, where the O'Mara family were merchant princes of the city. The story follows the family fortunes from middle-class comfort to genteel poverty as...

When Kay O'Gorman started writing this book, every word she put down was infused with shame and guilt. How could this devoted mother, whose whole world was her family, have...

West Cork is a magical place. We Irish know this, as do the international celebrities who have been attracted by its beauty and security. The countryside has remained unspoiled and...

This is the first volume of the authorized three-volume life of George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, wit, socialist, vegetarian and polemicist. It covers the first 41 years of his life,...

Cal McCrystal takes the reader on two overlapping, very poignant journeys in Northern Ireland. One journey traverses the years and experiences of his childhood, and the other retraces some of...

The letters from 1926-1950 complete the four-volume edition of Shaw's correspondence. The book covers the final quarter-century of the dramatist's life, a period in which Shaw had reached the pinnacle...

This autobiography includes stories of village life in Co Wicklow between the wars, and of schooldays in Kilkenny and of the cosily eccentric Trinity College during the 1940s. Yet even...

The past they tried to hide.His mother died from cancer in 1955. His father committed suicide shortly thereafter. Paddy Doyle was sentenced in an Irish district court to be detained...