Irish Biography

You could say that Frank McNally is a travel writer - he writes while the world travels by!For almost twenty years, Frank's name has occupied the byline of the ever-present...

'Moving and insightful' - Rosanna DavisonRemarkably honest, brutally heroic and darkly humorous memoir following a devastating diagnosis of early onset Parkinson's disease.Twitch is a frank and funny memoir about picking...

Her addiction to the drug took her to a place about as low as a person can go. She had grown up in Ballymun and had, like many others, succumbed...

For almost forty years, Paul Williams has chronicled the life and crimes of some of Ireland''s most notorious godfathers, killers and thieves. In Crooks he brings his readers for a...

'I read Bessborough in one sitting, veering from fury to devastation within a matter of pages. A vitally important book.' Louise O'Neill'Vivid and powerful' CAELAINN HOGAN'I loved this book for...

The Crocodile by the Door by Selina Guinness - shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award - is a remarkable, compelling and moving memoir of a farm, a family and a...

In 1997, Dr Marie Cassidy arrived in Dublin from Glasgow. There to discuss a possible deputy state pathologist post with Professor John Harbison, instead she was whisked by police escort...

I grew up in a psychiatric experiment crossed with an alcoholic experiment. . . . a place run by two people who were extraordinarily drunk and guarded by a potentially...

***Winner of the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards - Newcomer of the Year*** 'One of the year's most arresting, humbling and acute memoirs. It is a catch-in-the-throat, life-affirming work...

Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness - through faith, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease...

Storytelling kept alive the myths, legends and history of the Blasket Islands. In her old age, Peig Sayers, recounted her life to her son who recorded the tale in this...

Following the sudden death of his father in 2016, Dara Waldron found himself disoriented in a world that had once filled him with wonder. A year later, a chance encounter...

'Outstanding' JOHN PRESTON | 'Extraordinary' THE TIMES | 'Superb' ANDREW ROBERTS | 'Vivid and compelling' IRISH TIMES | 'Psychologically shrewd' IRISH INDEPENDENT | 'A page-turning finale' HISTORY TODAYCelebrated reformer and...

Ballybunion to the River Kwai is the remarkable story of Don Kennedy's harrowing experience as an Irish prisoner of war under the Japanese from 1942-45. Vividly narrated by Don's son...

The book shows Michael's 'logical opportunism' in action, and explains how the Smurfit culture and systems provided a world-beating competitive advantage. 'It is up to others to judge how well...

Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887-1916) from Dublin was one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, the designer of the military plan and the youngest signatory of the Proclamation. A recognised...

'Mary Kennedy's new book is part memoir, part spiritual guide, part self-help book. It's like the gift of a Christmas visit from a friend' RTE GuideA sense of home, and...

Angels at My Fingertips takes us back to the territory that made Angels in My Hair a million selling, international bestseller. Stories of Lorna's early life in rural Ireland, of...

'From the moment I crossed the mountain I fell in love. With the place, which was more beautiful than any place I'd ever seen. With the people I met there....

'Searing and generous ... a blazing beacon' - Donal Ryan 'Every man and woman should read this' - Sabina Higgins'Written with honesty, power and insight' - Roisin Ingle'Immensely valuable ......

'Harding writes like an angel' Sunday TimesTalking to Strangers, from the No.1 bestselling author of Staring at Lakes, Hanging with the Elephant and On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist is a...

AS FEATURED ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS, BIG SCOTTISH BOOK CLUB AND THE ZOE BALL BOOKCLUB, A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, OBSERVER,...

A memoir about death, how to grieve, and the healing power of the sea.Over the course of seven difficult years Miriam Mulcahy lost her mother, father andsister, each grief threatening...

'Sublime' - Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers'A book about the raw, riotous, brutally beautiful act of being alive.' - Kerri ni Dochartaigh, author of Thin PlacesAlice Kinsella was in...

The attraction of THE VILLAGE, more perhaps than its illustrious predecessors, lies in the fact that Alice Taylor has captured it so well. Leave aside for a moment the extraordinary...

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...

Tomas O'Crohan was born on the Great Blasket Island in 1865 and died there in 1937, a great master of his native Irish. He shared to the full the perilous...

'The path I have travelled, the things I have done and the people I have met in crisis situations have given me a window into those qualities that make us...

'I have him bitched, balloxed and bewildered, for there's a system and a science in taking the piss out of a screw and I'm a well-trained man at it.' So...

A GARDA, A FORCED ADOPTION, A FIGHT FOR JUSTICEIn 1984, Majella Moynihan was a fresh-faced young garda recruit when she gave birth to a baby boy. Charged with breaching An...

St. Bernadette's impoverished childhood, her work as a shepherdess, visions of Our Lady, harsh treatment as a nun, and tragic death at the age of 35 are recalled in this...

WINNER AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2025'Fascinating - a great read' - Miriam O'Callaghan'Brilliant, absolutely terrific' - Matt CooperWith a foreword by Richie SadlierFrom the heartbreak of losing his mother...

'Since I've had my first book published, I've earned more from cleaning than from writing. The home economics don't add up.' HOME ECONOMICS is Caitriona Lally's humorous, thought-provoking memoir of...

For sisters Mary Kennedy and Deirdre Ni Chinneide, spirituality has been at the centre of their lives since childhood. Their home in St Brigid's Road in Clondalkin, Dublin, was around...

Born prematurely, weighing less than a bag of sugar, Oisin Murphy's life has always been one of struggle. From a young age he found communion with horses. Mesmerised by their...

The head of the Guinness family tells the true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world.In this narrative non-fiction book, Arthur Edward Guinness, the 4th...

While there have been biographies of anti-Treaty male figures such as CathalBrugha, Eamon de Valera and Harry Boland, there has been limited in-depthanalysis of on women on the anti-Treaty side....

John Moriarty was an original, a thinker, a poet, a mythologian. He was born and reared just outside the little village of Moyvane in north Kerry. Growing up on his...

For over three decades Nell McCafferty has been Ireland's most provocative and interesting activist and commentator. As a member of that brilliant 1960s generation of working-class idealists politicized by class,war...