Irish Biography

In Music and Mayhem, acclaimed saxophonist Keith Donald traces his extraordinary journey from post-war Belfast to the forefront of a musical movement that reshaped modern Ireland - and resonated far beyond it. Born into Unionist east Belfast during the early years of the Troubles, Donald was performing on the BBC at just ten years old. By the 1960s, he was studying classics at Trinity College Dublin while immersing himself in the restless energy of the European jazz scene. Music became both refuge and rebellion - and, at times, self-destruction.

G. K. Chesterton was a journalist, playwright, poet, biographer, novelist, essayist, literary commentator, editor, orator, artist, and theologian. Orthodoxy is his great apologia for the Christian faith, which was prompted by a serious attack in 1903 against Christianity by well-known newspaper editor Robert Blatchford.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE LANDMARK MEMOIR OF A GLOBAL MUSIC ICON SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2021 Sinéad O'Connor's voice and trademark shaved head made her famous by the age of twenty-one. Her recording of Prince's 'Nothing Compares 2 U' made her a global icon. She outraged...

An immersive history of a pivotal stretch of water ‘Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun.’ Roddy Doyle ‘Remarkable. Lively … Gower writes beautifully [and] the book is profoundly popular.’ Times Literary Supplement The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of...

‘[A] rich, stylish and immersive epic’ Irish Independent ‘Deeply researched and fascinating’ The Guardian ‘[Rory Carroll is] an exceptionally gifted storyteller’ Max Hastings ‘A gripping read’ The i Paper ‘A thrilling account of one of the most unpredictable, memorable and...

What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 2025 - AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS A shocking true story of heartbreak and survival by Sarah Corbett Lynch, daughter of Jason Corbett - an Irish Times Number 1 bestseller and the subject of NETFLIX documentary A DEADLY AMERICAN MARRIAGE. 'Honest and compelling' Sunday...

The autobiographical account of how the Irish writer Felicity Hayes-McCoy and her English husband, opera director Wilf Judd, chose to divide their life between inner-city London and a remote house on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula, a place Felicity fell in love with at the age of 17.

A provocative new biography probes deeply into the storied life of Father Ted Hesburgh, the well-loved but often controversial president of Notre Dame University. Considered for many decades to be the most influential priest in America, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, played what many consider...

Byron, more than any other poet, has come to personify the poet as rebel; imaginative and lawless, reaching beyond race, creed or frontier, his notorious flaws redeemed by a magnetism and ultimately a heroism that by ending in tragedy raised it and him from the particular to the universal...

Brought to you by Penguin. In the autumn of 2010, a little-known New Zealander called Joe Schmidt took over as head coach at Leinster. He had never been in charge of a professional team. After Leinster lost three of their first four games, a prominent Irish rugby pundit speculated that Schmidt...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Battle by Paul O'Connell, read by John Cormack. There has never been a rugby player quite like Paul O'Connell. His name is synonymous with passion, heart and determination. But he is also the thinking man's rugby player, a legendary student of the...

Unpublished for 90 years, Agatha Christie’s extensive and evocative letters from her year-long round-the-world trip to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America as part of the British trade mission for the famous 1924 Empire Exhibition. In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a...

"This story is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in disruption. Of the two human beings here described, one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward. The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces in comparison with which the changes that health or fortune or place introduce are as nothing.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER No Irish rugby player has ever achieved more, or been a source of more inspiration to teammates and fans alike, than Johnny Sexton. All of this would have seemed highly unlikely as late as May 2009, when – aged 24 – he was nowhere near first...

In an irresistible tale of a life lived fully, if not always wisely, Liam Clancy, of the legendary Irish group the Clancy Brothers, describes his eventful journey from a small town in Ireland in the 1930s into the heart of the New York music scene in the 1950s and ’60s. Following in the grand...

Death is a whisper in the Anglo-Saxon world. But on a remote island, off the coast of Co. Mayo, it has a louder voice. Along with reports of incoming Atlantic storms, the local radio station runs a thrice daily roll call of ordinary deaths. The islanders go in great numbers, often with young...

NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025, AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS The heart-breaking account of a search for the truth behind the brutal killings that shocked a nation. On 29 August 2016, devastating news hit the headlines that an entire family was found dead in a rural community. For Jacqueline...

Reconocido mundialmente como uno de los más importantes e influyentes del siglo XX, este escritor irlandés nacido en 1882, es mundialmente aclamado por su obra maestra, la espectacular y altamente simbólica Ulises (1922), y luego por su controvertida novela posterior, Finnegans Wake (1939).