Irish Biography

Gander at The Gate is the story of a rural Irish childhood in Knocknagoshel, Kerry, in the thirties. Through the eyes of a son of the local schoolmaster, this beautifully...

An entertaining memoir of a rollicking life in New York of an Irish immigrant. The title is derived from the young Malachy's mishearing of the words 'amongst women' in Hail...

This edition marks the centenary of Oscar Wilde's death, and is the most complete ever to appear. It contains over 1500 of his letters, and anyone unfamiliar with Wilde as...

'Without doubt, it's the memoir of the year' Irish IndependentPassionate, gossipy, opinionated and seriously entertaining, Truly Frank is an instant classic of journalistic memoir. Journalist Frank McDonald is best known...

Very funny, quirky and touching, A Single Headstrong Heart describes in a first-person narrative the author's childhood up to the early years of his career as a journalist and his...

This is the first paperback edition of Antoinette Quinn's acclaimed biography of Patrick Kavanagh, the most important Irish poet between the death of Yeats and the rise of Heaney.From the...

Wilde the writer is known to us from his plays and prose fiction, but apparently it was in his conversation that his genius reached its summit. His talk is lost...

Approximately 400,000 people in Ireland suffer from depression at any one time. In A Life Interrupted, Malachy Walsh gives a courageous and frank account of his 25-year battle with hereditary...

A smuggler and a deserter, Darran Anderson's grandfathers skirted the Second World War on the fringes of legality. Darran's father survived the height of the political violence in Northern Ireland...

Thomas was born into a family of twelve children in Ballyfermot. He had a grim childhood, he was bullied and humiliated at school, and all the time Thomas was hiding...

A full and revealing biography of one of the century's greatest English writers and an icon to a generation. Dame Iris Murdoch has played a major role in English life...

With this volume, John Bayley completes his trilogy, looking back on the years in sickness and health which he and Iris spent together, and attempting to come to terms with...

Of picking, washing and cleaning my pretty little toes, which he took great delight in, and in which pleasurable, innocent, and inoffensive pastime he as often spent hours; twas the...

'Of picking, washing and cleaning my pretty little toes, which he took great delight in, and in which pleasurable, innocent, and inoffensive pastime he as often spent hours; 'twas the...

This fascinating memoir traces one man's experiences of priesthood in Ireland over half a century from formation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, to ordination in 1956, through doctoral...

A uniquely-crafted memoir of the author's early childhood (1967-1972), the third oldest in a working-class Catholic family from the Brandywell in Derry. Written with the authentic voice of a child,...

A Sunday Times Book of the YearAs featured on the BBC Radio 2 Book ClubDr James Barry: Inspector General of Hospitals, army surgeon, duellist, reformer, ladykiller, eccentric. He performed the...

In spring 2006 David Latimer's church, First Derry Presbyterian, was paint bombed yet again. David's usual reaction was to keep his head down and say nothing, but this time he...

When Shane Dunphy starts work at Little Scamps creche, he has no idea what he has let himself in for. He had not worked in an early years setting for...

*The Sunday Times bestseller - now in paperback*By age seven, Rebecca Quin, now known in the ring as Becky Lynch, was already defying what the world expected of her.Raised in...

His devoted uncle, an expert boatman and fisherman, raised and introduced Martin Quigley to trout and salmon angling, and to life, in their backyard river at the shaping age of...

'Witty, shocking in parts and written with real heart ... has something to say to everyone' Sunday Times'Honest, witty and poignant observations on life that are both heart breaking and...

_______________'A triumph of scholarship and sympathy... one of the great post-war biographies' - Independent'A landmark in scholarly criticism... Knowlson is the world's largest Beckett scholar. His life is right up...

Fifteen funny and perceptive essays about one woman's messy path to finding her footing in another country, by Irish comedian, author, actor and podcaster Maeve Higgins.Maeve Higgins was already a...

Walter Ellis grew up in East Belfast. His father was a commercial traveller, his mother a housewife. He and his sister were not abused as children. Ellis was never forced...

2005 is a key year for anniversaries of events that shaped Europe and Ireland. The Collins Press joins the commemorations with the reissue of this epic war memoir, introduced by...

Robbie is a simple man who leads a simple life: he is a husband, a father, and a journalist, living and working in Dublin. However, his carefully crafted life has...