Secondhand Irish Biography Books

This autobiography describes the first ten years of the life of Christy Kenneally, a working-class Cork northsider who lost his mother when he was five years old. The book captures...

'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...

John Bayley's account of his long and loving marriage to the great novelist Iris Murdoch takes us on a journey, from their love affair's comically inauspicious beginnings in the Oxford...

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...

'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...

Hugely entertaining and refreshingly honest, So Me is the memoir everybody has been waiting for. Graham Norton, whose impish charm and quick wit has earned him a place in our...

The biggest regret of Michael Healy-Rae's life was a time he didn't talk when somebody needed him the most. After that, he vowed to never stop talking, listening and trying...

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...

This volume traces the 12 years spent in Belfast by BBC journalist and Northern Ireland Correspondent, Mark Devenport. It presents an insight into the region's recent troubles through a journalist...

'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...

'"Mrs Byrne, you've a beautiful, very pale, ginger-haired baby boy with a wonky eye." As she was handed me by the midwife, my mother wept for all the wrong reasons....

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.'...

'Honest, vulnerable and empowering' Angela Scanlon'Poignant, profound, and moving, I have no doubt that this beautifully written book will comfort anyone who is in the process of falling apart' Louise...

This is the first biography of Denis Johnston, barrister, theatre director, film-maker, pioneering television producer, war correspondent, essayist and celebrated playwright. Johnston was of Ulster Presbyterian stock, born into Edwardian...

The Making of an Artist is a fascinating portrayal of the formative years of Micheal MacLiammoir, actor, playwright, artist, linguist, raconteur and co-founder of the Gate Theatre. Born in Cockney...

'Destined to be a classic' Sunday Independent'Gabriel Byrne tells his story brilliantly' - Edna O'Brien'Dazzles with unflinching honesty' Washington Post'An absolutely marvellous book' - Colm ToibinBorn to working-class parents and...

Solace is that feeling of calm and comfort, that sense of peace that is all around us when we are open to finding it.Writer and photographer Catherine Drea explores the...

Imagine you're thirty-two, married, with two little children and you find out you're carrying a deadly cancer gene?That was me in August 2005. I discovered I had the gene Brca1,...

With the imminent arrival of her third child, veterinary surgeon, Gillian Hick, decides to abandon the perils of mixed animal practice, in a favour of setting up a small animal...

From the award-winning, number one bestselling author of The Cow Book.It is summer, the hay and silage have not yet been made on John Connell's farm, so he has time...

From the award-winning, number one bestselling author of The Cow Book.It is summer, the hay and silage have not yet been made on John Connell's farm, so he has time...

Not another memoir of childhood? Well, yes actually. Not another regressive desire to capture a golden weren't-we-poor-but-happy age? Well, no. Nor a pursuit of misery and repression either. This is...