Irish Biography

Sunday Times Memoir of the Year 2019RTE Radio 1 Listeners' Choice Award Winner 2019 - An Post Irish Book AwardsWhen Vicky Phelan delivered an emotionally charged statement from the steps...

An Irish Times book of the year 2022 A powerful, probing book about PTSD. As a journalist Keane has covered conflict and brutality across the world for more than thirty...

'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...

After a failed suicide attempt and recovery in the mad house, Martha is heading for France to be reunited with the one true love of her life. Father Ralph Fitzgerald...

At a crossroads in her life, Grainne Lyons set out to travel Ireland's west coast on foot. She set a simple intention: to walk in the footsteps of eleven pioneering...

Winner of the 2020 Wainwright Prize, Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of Dara McAnulty's world, from spring to summer, autumn to winter, on his home patch, at...

`There followed a blue flash accompanied by a ver y bright magnesium-type flare ... Then came a frighteningly loud but rather flat explosion, which was followed by a blast of...

This is a love story, set in the Irish literary world between 1986 and 2015. When they were first introduced by the poet Derek Mahon, Alannah Hopkin was an arts...

When Ronan Smith was in his twenties, his father, the theatre impresario Brendan Smith, developed obvious signs of early onset Alzheimer's disease but steadfastly refused to acknowledge it. Brendan ran...

'A great read' Brendan O'Connor, RTEIn nearly three decades as a performer, Tommy Tiernan has never wanted to play it safe. So, when it came to doing a chat show,...

'Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of nature' IRISH TIMESWhen they were in their twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave...

Alice Taylor takes a look back at the well-used schoolbooks she used in her youth in the 1940s and 1950s. Flicking through the pages of the books and recalling poetry...

Alice Taylor brings the reader with her on her 80th birthday year.Alice had a big birthday on the horizon, the village was about to celebrate many milestones, and she had...

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...

The road to Croke Park can be a long one, but for Leitrim hurler Zak Moradi it was longer than most. Born in a refugee camp in Ramadi, Iraq, at...

'Like nothing else you will read' Hilary MantelTop 25 History Books of the Year, The Times - the perfect gift for book lovers this Christmas!Every day a beloved father dies....

Unbowed: A Soldier's Journey Back from Paralysis is the story of a dramatic recovery from diagnosed quadriplegia to a level of functionality rarely seen.Billy Hedderman was body boarding on the...

Well-known DJ Nikki Hayes has lived most of her life with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a serious mental disorder marked by a pattern of ongoing instability in mood, behaviour, self-image...

#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...

Today was his first climb to the top. He knew if he was there, watching, then she would never leave him. Her name was Bernadette and he climbed the shed...

It was June 10th, Barnacle Day. He saw her in Nassau Street and they stopped to talk. She thought his blue eyes were those of a Norseman. He was twenty-two,...

'Life had brought me to the edge of myself and here I was feeling like I was on the edge of the world.'After moving back to her homeplace on the...

In 1993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahon left Ireland for New York, carrying $500, two suitcases and a ton of unseen baggage. It took years, and a bitter struggle with...

Having just turned 40, Bernard O'Shea found himself hurtling towards a mid-life crisis. His waistline expanded, his flexibility abandoned him, his wardrobe was invaded by elasticated beige trousers and sandals...

With Time to Talk, Michael Healy-Rae established himself as a new storyteller, steeped in the traditions of rural Ireland. In A Listening Ear, his superior storytelling skills come once again...

No. 1 BestsellerA successful property developer in England, the Sligo-born Tom Gilmartin had ambitious plans for major retail developments in Dublin in the late 1980s. Little did he know that...

The Sunday Times Top Ten BestsellerSuzanne suffered five heart attacks and made it through open heart surgery. But even that pales in comparison to the horrors she faced as a...

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019'[A] painfully intense, courageous and gripping account of [Fanning's] journey to the underworld of madness and back. This is a brave and instructive book.'...

Winner of the An Post Irish Sports Book of the Year AwardLonglisted for The William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award'Not only the sports book of the year, the...

'Are you going into town today?' she says, which annoys me because it's something she says all the time, having forgotten she said it before, and I say, 'Jesus, Mum,...

As a Facebook moderator, Chris Gray made a living looking at graphically violent images and reviewing some of the internet's most toxic debates. Following a short training induction, he was...

Riverdance exploded across the stage at Dublin's Point Theatre one spring evening in 1994 during a seven-minute interval of the Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Ireland. It was a watershed...

'In my life, I've lost a twin, had an adored sister-in-law suffer a fatal asthma attack at just 31, my brother was murdered, a cherished brother-in-law died in his 40s...

The Irish nana is a repository of family history, memory and lore. Sometimes, like the Italian nonna, she is also a 'walking cookbook', carrying the old knowledge of how things...

Nuala O'Faolain's first memoir Are You Somebody? became a literary sensation and an international bestseller when it was first published by New Island Books in 1996. It launched a new...

'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 NAMED ONE OF THE...

For over thirty years, David McDonald worked in Ireland's three biggest prisons. This is his story.As a young officer, McDonald got a baptism by fire when he started in Mountjoy...

The Sunday Times and Irish Times bestseller, as featured in the Sunday Independent'You're all fallen women. You've sowed the seed of Satan. You are nothing.'Mary Creighton was just 15 when...

In the pieces brought together in Writing Home, Polly Devlin OBE, most bewitching of writers, covers subjects that range over her whole life and thought. She writes about places: about...

'Poignant, funny and highly readable. Would make a wonderful present.' Sue Leonard, Examiner'A real snapshot in time ... a celebration of female friendship ... fantastic - such a good read'...

WINNER OF BOOK OF THE YEAR, NARRATIVE NON-FICTION BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2021Rediscover the natural world with the multi-award winning phenomenon and youngest ever major literary prize winner in UK history.'Miraculous...

'A wonderful book'David Park, Irish TimesIn 1949, when Marianne Elliott was just a baby, her parents moved into the White City, one of the first mixed-religion estates to be built...