Ireland Memoir

Nick and Lesley's desire for a better life in the countryside was a long-held dream. Unforeseen events and a leap of faith forced that dream into reality, but moving to rural Ireland was only the beginning of their story. Foreigners in a foreign land, they set about making new friends, learning the culture, and expanding their collection of chickens and unruly dogs. But their dream home was in desperate need of renovation - a mammoth task they attacked with the aid of a DIY manual, dwindling funds, and incompetent enthusiasm.

In 2018, artist and activist Erin Darcy launched In Her Shoes – Women of the Eighth, an online project where Irish women anonymously shared the realities of abortion under the Eighth Amendment. Within months, hundreds of stories poured in, breaking decades of taboo and helping shift public opinion before Ireland's historic vote to repeal the Amendment that May. Garnering over 100,000 followers and global media attention, the project became both a national reckoning and a personal act of healing for Darcy, who transformed grief into activism.

'A remarkable story, a real page-turner' JOE DUFFY 'Powerfully written ... a gripping narrative' FINTAN O'TOOLE The remarkable story of one man's journey from the edge of death to the heart of a hidden past. Adopted at age three, Paul Cullen always felt like an outsider. After a near-fatal fall...

‘The bombshell book everyone is talking about’ DAILY MAIL ‘A radio genius … the maestro of the show’ EVENING STANDARD As presenter of Radio 4’s Today, the nation’s most popular news programme, John Humphrys was famed for his tough interviewing. He has been at the heart of...

A tragic death, a murder trial and a 170-year-old mystery - but what really happened? Shortly after Maria Kirwan died in a lonely inlet on Ireland’s Eye, it was decided that she had drowned accidentally during a day spent with her husband on the picturesque island. This inquest verdict appeared to conclude the melancholy events that consumed the fishing village of Howth, Co Dublin, in September 1852.

English born Joe Riley recounts his extraordinary childhood in a small town on the rugged West coast of Ireland, where he was abandoned by his abusive father at the age of four and raised by a loving older couple and their children. Emotionally unsettled for most of Joe Riley’s adulthood, Joe feels inspired to revisit his childhood and write a memoir.

Practically everyone in the western world has heard of the man called St. Patrick. But hardly anyone knows anything about him. About the only two things that more people "know" about Patrick is that he was Irish and Roman Catholic. In truth, he was neither. He was British, and he belonged to the autonomous Celtic church. Although Patrick is the most famous person of his age, the real man has been buried in a cloud of myths

In the late nineteenth century, the great Tory leader Lord Salisbury and his closest collaborators were haunted by the looming threat of Home Rule in Ireland. Salisbury, an anxious man obsessed by visions of social disintegration, was determined to undermine the legitimacy of what he saw as a revolutionary project, one that would damage the prestige and integrity of the British Empire, then at its zenith. He was willing to tarnish the reputation of the Irish leadership by any means necessary.

Just who was Saint Patrick? Many know him as the figure behind the huge festival of fun and drinking that takes place every year on March 17. But look a little more closely and see that there is more to the patron saint of Ireland than meets the eye.

A hilarious tale of dogs, fogs, bogs and moving to Ireland. For many years, Nick and Lesley Albert had shared a dream of living far away from the stress of modern life, and when the opportunity arose, they jumped in with both feet. Almost overnight, they decided to move to beautiful County Clare, in the west of Ireland - a country they had never before visited. With little experience or money they set about renovating a derelict farmhouse and building a new life together.

Saint Patrick was, by his own admission, a controversial figure. Convicted in a trial by his elders in Britain and hounded by rumors that he settled in Ireland for financial gain, the man who was to become Ireland’s patron saint battled against great odds before succeeding as a missionary. Saint Patrick Retold draws on recent research to offer a fresh assessment of Patrick’s travails and achievements. This is the first biography in nearly 50 years to explore Patrick’s career against the background of historical events in late antique Britain and Ireland.

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 remained. When he was fifty-eight, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy. Here...

The perfect gift for parents this Father’s Day: a beautiful, gut-wrenching memoir of Irish identity, fatherhood, and what we owe to the past. “A heartbreaking and redemptive book, written with courage and grace.” –J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy “…a lovely little book.”...

This anthology of popular American history presents the stories of nine incredible Irish immigrants as written by nine contemporary Irish-Americans. More than one in 10 Americans claims Irish ancestry and, with its celebrity contributors, Nine Irish Lives will have strong appeal for those listeners. It is also, though, a timely portrait of shared humanity. These are stories about immigrants - and in the tales of revolutionaries and visionaries, caretakers and unsung heroes, Nine Irish Lives reminds us of the values and the people that have shaped America.

“Extraordinarily moving, exquisitely written, and socially revolutionary.” —The Irish Times “Ring of Salt is so vast and tender and urgent, it’s almost like reading a novel. I couldn’t put it down. I haven’t cheered for a heroine like Betsy in ages.” —Jen Hatmaker, author of...

From the internationally acclaimed Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes "a delicious memoir" (New York Times) that unfolds around the author's recollections, experiences, and imaginings of Dublin. As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city...

Born in 1846 in Ireland at the start of the "Great Hunger", James Kinnier Wilson emigrated to Philadelphia to start a new life at 17 years old. After his life took a dramatic turn, he found himself attending Princeton and then a college in Scotland, where he met Agnes Hately, the talented daughter of a famous figure in the Scottish "Disruption" - the emergence of the Free Church of Scotland.

Arnold Meagher was born in a small village in the heart of Ireland, Ballinamuck in the County of Longford. When he was four, he moved with his family to the larger village of Drumlish, four-and-a-half miles away. It is in the larger village that his stories of growing up in Ireland's heartland begin: among villagers who loved to chat, among dew-covered pastures on his grandmother's farm and among the fairy forts and whispering bogs that dot the countryside.

Against the Wind: Memoir of a Dissident Dubliner is the story of life in the first 50 years after independence was won for a part of the island of Ireland. The times were financially tough and morally prude, with dissenters both north and south of the border few and far between. Intellectualism was suspect, and liberalism was often equated with communism. A wealth of varying and informative material and the ability to anchor the personal securely within the public domain gives this memoir a universal appeal.