Secondhand Irish Biography Books

'The prospect of taking over the 'Regarding Ireland' column scared me witless. If they'd changed the title to 'Regarding Reality TV' or even 'Regarding Roisin', I might have been slightly...

Malachy McCourt, actor, gadfly and raconteur follows up his international best sellerA Monk Swimming with this, the second instalment of his hilarious memoirs. Malachy McCourt grew up in Limerick amid...

Julia Kelly met a charismatic and successful artist, Charlie Whisker, while she was working on her first novel. He was twenty years older than her. Their relationship was passionate and...

Malachy McCourt grew up in Limerick amid death, squalor, poverty and abuse. When he went to America as a young man, he took with him a gargantuan appetite for what...

An entrancing story of a charmed childhood on a farm in the West of Ireland during the 1930s and early 1940s. An Irish country Childhood is a tale of times...

In 1846 the Crokers, a Presbyterian landlord family, flee famine-stricken West Cork aboard the Henry Clay, survive shipwreck and land in New York. There they are confronted with the grim...

Based on personal testimony, this book was written to show what the term "domestic violence" really means to the thousands of women, children - and sometimes men - who suffer...

'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...

For years Gareth O'Callaghan, one of Ireland's most popular broadcasters, suffered severe depression. No one guessed that as soon as he was off air, he would retreat to his bed,...

Tim Cramer describes himself as 'an unrepentant Corkman' with an abiding love of the city, its hinterland and its people. Fortunate to grow up in an idyllic urban/rural environment, he...

From humble beginnings in Romania, Josef Cretzan went on to become one of the most accomplished glass blowers of the 20th century. For 37 years his knowledge and skills were...

In 1825 26 year old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her house in rural Tipperary. At first, some said that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a nearby...

A searing coming-of-age memoir set in an unfamiliar world: Irish South Boston. Michael MacDonald brings us a poor and intensely insular neighbourhood which its residents agree is the "best place...

'On Skellig Michael, thousands of birds appear and disappear, erecting towers, coming together in wings of movement which build and unravel over the empty sea. Often, no one else is...

Born into a middle-class family in 1930s Dublin, Tim Pat Coogan grew up against a background of highly charged political activity in Ireland. He went on to play a vital...

Every time I write about my heart, I write about walking. Every time I write about walking, I write about my heart. What is it like to be born with...

Sean MacBride (1904-1988) was at different times the Chief of Staff of the IRA, a top criminal lawyer, Irish Foreign Minister, and a founder of Amnesty International, of which organisation...

Nora Ephron meets Bram Stoker in Sophie White's vivid and ambitious literary non-fiction collection. White asks uncomfortable questions about the lived reality of womanhood in the 21st century, and the...

'"Mrs Byrne, you've a beautiful, very pale, ginger-haired baby boy with a wonky eye." As she was handed me by the midwife, my mother wept for all the wrong reasons....