Irish Interest Books

The Emergency in Colour brings wartime Ireland to life in dramatic colour. Through extensive research, the photos presented here have been painstakingly hand-colourised by photographer John O’Byrne, showing what life on the island…

Loinnir: The sunlight sparkling on the waves, or the merriness you feel after early pints of stout in the morning.  When you speak in Irish, every word is a tiny poem that reveals a new perspective. The Irish language is our inher…

The gripping true crime story of Ireland’s most infamous unsolved murder – the sectarian massacre of six Catholic civilians in 1922.  At 1.20 a.m. on 24 March 1922, five men, four dressed in British police uniforms, broke into the…

In Anarchy and Authority, readers follow contemporaneous accounts of Irish men and women who ventured into the Russian empire during the two long centuries of Romanov rule. Human connections, political intrigues, cultural cross-po…

In the sequel to Seamus O’Rourke’s popular first memoir, Standing in Gaps, this innocent Leitrim lad finally flees the nest, briefly sampling life in New York, Dublin and London – before inevitably returning to his beloved, duller…

The Great Famine in Ireland is still a current and emotive subject which draws readers from all spheres. This book tells a story not merely unique to Cork, but of interest to the national population. Famine in Cork City explores t…

GBS was the first great brand – discover how he created this most modern of concepts. The fourth book in the Royal Irish Academy’s award-winning ‘Judging’ series looks at the legacy of George Bernard Shaw, Nobel prizewinner for li…

Reading the Maps is a textbook companion to the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, the successful series which documents and assesses the evolution of Irish towns. To date, over 27 published atlases, three bound volumes and ten ancillary…

From the acclaimed, controversial singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor comes a revelatory memoir of her fraught childhood, musical triumphs, struggles with illness, and of the enduring power of song.Blessed with a singular voice and …

The hilarious guide to the countryside you never knew you needed, from up-and-coming TikTok-and Instagram-hit comedian Killian Sundermann. Welcome to the countryside! A place of rolling hills, winding rivers and natural beauty. Or…

'Arriving in West Cork to cover the murder of Frenchwoman Sophie Toscan du Plantier, our man on the ground was local journalist Ian Bailey. His level of insight into the killing was extraordinary...'So began the journey of journal…

On Skellig Michael, thousands of birds appear and disappear, erecting towers, coming together in wings of movement which build and unravel over the empty sea.Often, no one else is there to stand beside me on the island. The mind w…

Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, offers a personal, intimate history of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, his own, part of both the Linen Triangle – heartland of the North’s defining i…

Rough Beast is Máiría Cahill's harrowing story of her life and of what she went through at the hands of what is now Ireland’s largest and richest party. That story is told here for the first time in full detail and with unsparing …

An original and fascinating history of Dublin that tells the story of the city through its bridges. Dublin started life on the south bank of the River Liffey and for six or seven centuries that is more or less where the town staye…

When death is a way of life . . .In A Life Among the Dead, David McGowan, Ireland's best known Funeral Director, and subject of the Award-winning Netflix documentary The Funeral Director, guides us through the business, the scienc…

This new volume in the award-winning Atlas Series presents fresh perspectives on, and a nuanced understanding of, the history of the Irish Civil War (1922–3). The centenary of the Civil War has prompted wide-ranging research into …

Rory Gallagher is a hero and icon of rock music. He inspired guitar players from The Edge to Johnny Marr, Slash to Gary Moore, Johnny Fean to Philip Donnelly, Declan Sinnott to Brian May. He toured incessantly and sold over 30 mil…

Skulls, heads, hands, height, legs, sex organs, blood, brains, stomachs, ears and corpses – discover Irish history through the prism of the body. From the brutal beheading of the 25-year-old, red-headed Clonycavan Man some 2,000 y…

The first recorded game of ladies’ Gaelic football was played in St James’ Park, Dublin, in 1920. Players competed in ankle-length skirts, watched by a sizeable crowd. But the game was not authorised by the GAA and, in the decades…

On a solo trip with her best friend to a Wexford caravan park, a barely 18-year-old virginal (ish) Emma Doran discovers it only takes one time to change your life forever and end up covered in stretch marks. Finding herself prepar…

By 1588, relations between the superpower of the time, Catholic Spain and the relatively small Protestant England had deteriorated to a new low. Philip II had decided that the best way to deal with English piracy and its support f…

The incomparable George Hamilton returns with a superb offering of travails and anecdotes spanning his five decades on our airwaves and on our screens, always at the heart of Irish culture. Picking up where his first offering, The…

The Cork Folk Festival has played an integral part in the history of Cork music since 1979. Over a period of 45 years it has presented an annual festival which encourages musicians, enchants audiences and contributes to the cultur…

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.Over t…

Ireland is a strikingly different country now to the one it was in the mid-1990s. Dramatic economic, social and cultural changes, including the Celtic Tiger boom and increasingly secular debate about abortion, the status of women …

From Robert Sheehan, star of Misfits and The Umbrella Academy, and host of hit podcast The Earth Locker, comes a heartfelt journey to inner peace. In Playing Dead, Robert Sheehan shares intimate reflections on his search for purpo…

At her death in 2020, Eavan Boland left a formidable body of work – poems and prose. Together they transformed Irish poetry and had a considerable influence throughout the English-speaking world. She was also a major essayist, who…

How do you feel about embracing Ireland's native tongue? At odds after a tricky relationship at school? Maybe you've given up, or don't know where to start? Well, is fada an bóthar nach mbíonn casadh ann - long is th…

Liam O'Callaghan's revelatory Blood and Thunder shows that the rise of Irish rugby is inextricable from the tensions, debates and divisions – of politics, religion and class – that have defined modern Irish history. Despite the po…