Secondhand Irish Biography Books

A powerful and moving autobiography from a gifted writer who has been compared to Joyce and Yeats.'A book of sheer wonder. As an author he competes as an equal with...

The Ireland of the inter-war years was an island of remarkable contradictions. In spite of the highly moralistic attitude of Church and State, including an official censorship of publications, there...

In July 2019, Blathnaid Raleigh travelled from Mullingar to Galway to join in the festivities of the Galway Arts Festival. She and her friends found themselves in the company of...

The Race offers an exhilarating, behind-the-scenes look at the cut-throat world of elite athletics. With vivid recall, David Gillick, one of Ireland's most celebrated 400m sprinters, describes the sacrifices, triumphs...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Call it a miracle, fate, pure luck, or just another day in the city where nothing is usual, but in 1991 Jimmy Breslin narrowly escaped death - which inspired him...

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...

Offers an introduction to the life and ideas of one of Ireland's great thinkers and patriots - AE Russell. This book studies the man that was AE through his thoughts...

'Her highly personal and reflective memoir ... is a must-read for anyone who cares about our role in a changing world' Barack Obama THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES...

Written in a style familiar to his millions of listeners, rich with warmth and irony, MUSTN'T GRUMBLE is Terry's definitive autobiography. Not only does he introduce the reader to post-Emergency...

Every family has a story ... for Liam O'Connor that story goes back to his great-grandparents, William and Norry Kennedy. Using the threads of his family's past to weave a...