Secondhand Irish Biography Books

Goldberg played a pivotal role in the social, economic and cultural development of Cork and in changing attitudes towards Ireland's Jewish community. This title provides a fascinating look at an...

In a life stranger than any fiction, Grace OMalley, daughter of a clan chief in County Mayo, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She had...

On St Patrick's Night, 1961, Liam Clancy, with his brothers, Paddy and Tom, and their friend Tommy, made their debut musical appearance on the American television programme, the "Ed Sullivan...

Eden Halt describes a childhood spent on a remote coast of Northern Ireland, in the shadow of the Second World War. With his father absent in the African campaign, a...

In this long-awaited bioraphy, Wilde the legendary Victorian - brilliant writer and conversationalist, reckless flouter of social and sexual conventions - is brought to life. More astute and forbearing, yet...

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...

Desmond Doyle, 29 a painter and decorator, is married with six children and living in the infamous Fatima Mansions in Dublin in 1953. One day he comes home to find...

One fine April day, Mary Ann Kenny's husband died suddenly while jogging near their family home. In the months that followed, Mary Ann - who had no history of mental...

Patrick Deeley's train journey home to rural East Galway in autumn 1978 was a pilgrimage of grief: his giant of a father had been felled, the hurley-making workshop silenced. From...

'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...

'I entered Goldenbridge orphanage in my Communion outfit. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing there.'At age seven, Bernadette Fahy was delivered with her three brothers to Goldenbridge...

The harrowing true story of a travelling Irish family bonded by love, broken apart by life, and then betrayed by their carers in a cruel convent in Ireland. "For those...

'I feel my story had to be told. So much evil was done there was a voice inside me shouting, "Justice".' With no one to confide in, Kathy suffered in...

Desmond Doyle, 29, a painter and decorator, is married with six children and living in the infamous Fatima Mansions in Dublin in 1953. One day he comes home to find...

A biography of Sam Hanna Bell, the Ulster broadcaster and writer, based on Bell's personal papers and the reminscences of family, friends and colleagues. Born in Glasgow of Ulster emigrant...

A stroke of luck.

A Sunday Times Bestseller March 2022 (Ireland)Soon, the lockdown would start. People would die alone, without any proper ceremony. Charlotte's death would be washed away, the first drop in a...

Maeve Higgins used to think she'd live in Ireland forever. She used to think a lot of crazy things, like 'macadamia nuts are a light snack'. Then the stunning and...

Kathy O'Beirne's earliest memories are of being battered and sexually abused. Unable to confide in anyone about the beatings she regularly received from her father or about the boys who...

#1 Irish Times Bestseller!A book about hope when the world was collapsing Irish TimesA modern travel tale, part personal pilgrimage, part political quest that captures the power of human resilience"McKiernan...

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....

'Touching and nostalgic' GUARDIAN'She conjures places as vividly as feelings, and feelings as exactly as her surroundings' VOGUE 'It is the only intimate and un-angry expression of the feelings of...

In this biography, Margaret Ward gives the reader a portrait of Maud Gonne as a significant figure in Irish politics and as a remarkable woman. She dispels the popular myth...

When he retired in 2018 Pat Marry had been instrumental in solving dozens of serious crimes, including many murders.But as a newly qualified garda in 1985, Marry had no idea...