Irish Non-Fiction

Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Among the wave of emigrants from Ireland to North America were many, many young women who travelled on their own, hoping for a better life…

Lydia Little tells the story of her extraordinary brother, Fergus O’Farrell, by bringing the reader through an intimate, raw account of his wake and funeral – all the while carrying the secret of how he really died. Fergus was the…

Daragh Fleming’s honest portrayal of mental health, wellbeing and recovery opens with a quote from Seneca, Moral Letters that states: ‘I will keep constant watch over myself.’ Throughout Fleming’s ‘Lonely Boy’, loss, friendship an…

Diary of An Activist is a social activism memoir journeying through vegetarianism, anti-nuclear and CND protests, feminist and queer activism, lesbian parties, coming out and becoming a parent. It features quirky Cork locations li…

Mountaineering Ireland is delighted to announce that Irish Peaks, our new guide to hillwalking on Ireland’s highest mountains, is now available direct from Mountaineering Ireland. Irish Peaks is a large-format book, celebrating Ir…

From near Bantry to Inchigeelagh, on to Macroom, Dripsey and Coachford, all the way north to Millstreet and almost as far as Mallow. Like anywhere else in Cork and Ireland for that matter it’s dotted with murder. Some murders are …

In A Natural Year, critically acclaimed travel writer Michael Fewer celebrates the everyday wonder of Irish nature in these beautifully written diaries, observed from his homes in south Dublin and rural Waterford, in which he deli…

Twelve birds. One country. A wild Ireland waiting to be discovered. In Ireland Through Birds, Conor O'Brien takes the reader on an ornithological adventure around Ireland in search of twelve of our rarest and most elusive birds. A…

Irish Women's Speeches (Vol. II): A Rich Chorus of Voices follows on from the ground-breaking, best-selling Voices that Rocked the System. Related to arts, culture and heritage this compilation of Irish women's speeches, includes …

Serial winners and glorious losers, heroes andvillains, trailblazing women, role models and rogues,all are here; so too are audacious sporting founders,enduring legends and forgotten or overlookedgreats. Through a selection of six…

The Great Lighthouses of Ireland is a collection of striking images and fascinating stories about the lighthouses around Ireland's coast and the extraordinary men and women who lived and worked in them. The book, published to acco…

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 the height of the Gulf War, Zak spent his formative years living under the oppressive …

Abandoned Ireland travels the length and breadth of the island of Ireland visiting and documenting our forgotten buildings, highlighting their social importance, and bringing their stories back to life through the medium of photog…

Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written his autobiography: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced a…

The seventeenth century in Ireland was a time of huge change. At its beginning, there were still significant areas under Catholic Gaelic ownership and cultural sway; by the end – almost none. The story of how the island made this …

Originally from west Kerry, Thomas Ashe was a schoolteacher in north County Dublin and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers. During the 1916 Rising he commanded the Fingal Battalion of the Volunteers, who were tasked with des…

What makes the perfect swim?It's all about the most magical locations (and how to protect them), finessing your kitbag, keeping yourself and others safe and maybe discovering a nice place for a warm-up cuppa and cake. Whether you'…

For almost fifty years, Michael Harding has been crafting words in a bid to express himself and to explore truths about the human condition. But even still he found himself unable to say certain things he really wanted to. Then, w…

The GAA is a part of the Irish consciousness and plays an influential role in Irish society that extends far beyond the sport itself. In popular imagination and experience, the GAA is often evoked in terms of its objects: medals p…

Web of Lies is a fascinating and far-reaching examination of the rising threat of far-right extremist thought in Ireland and internationally, and looks at how these movements utilise the online world to spread disinformation, pola…

Our ancestors developed a uniquely nature-focused society, centred on esteemed poets, seers, monks, healers and wise women who were deeply connected to the land. They used this connection to the cycles of the natural world - from …

Showcasing the astounding contribution that the Republic of Ireland has made to the richest and most popular league in football. Over the last thirty years, the English Premier League has grown to become the richest and most popul…

Mary Lou McDonald is the bookies' favourite to be Ireland's next Taoiseach. She would be the first woman to reach the office, and the first Sinn Fein leader ever to enter government in the Republic of Ireland. But how did a quinte…

In an uncertain world, we all seek a sense of security and inner peace. In Still Points: A Guide to Living the Mindful Meditative Way shows us how to achieve this, simply by following a daily spiritual practice. In doing so, we en…

Road to Repeal: 50 Years of Struggle in Ireland for Contraception and Abortion opens in 1970 when the Irish Women's Liberation Movement burst onto the streets and screens of a society bewildered by women demanding equal status in …

Ireland has changed radically in a generation. Today both parts of the island define themselves by or against the narrative of a freedom struggle. Could they conceivably put that behind them, regard it as closed, and if so, how wo…

We Don't Know Ourselves is a very personal vision of recent Irish history from the year of O'Toole's birth, 1958, down to the present. Ireland has changed almost out of recognition during those decades, and Fintan O'Toole's life c…

Michael Viney and his wife Ethna lived in the city, had successful jobs in the media and had just turned forty when they made a life-changing decision: to give up everything for a self-reliant existence on a remote cottage farm in…

The incendiary untold story of Ireland's response to the most significant public health emergency of the past century, woven from a wealth of original research and dozens of interviews with ministers, politicians, public health ex…

Ireland's Suffragettes is a collection of biographical essays introducing the suffragettes who influenced Ireland's struggle for women's rights. Many of the women were political activists while others became militant suffragettes …