Read Ireland Book Reviews, April 2001

The Pursuit of Happiness by Douglas Kennedy
This novel is set in Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945. The war was over, and Eric Smythe’s party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara - an independent, canny young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked a gate crasher, Jack Malone - a U.S. Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, and a man whose world-view did not tally with that of Eric and his friends. The chance meeting between Sara and Jack - and the choices they both made in the wake of it - would eventually have profound consequences, both for themselves and for those closest to them. And the effect of their actions would reverberate within their families for decades afterwards. Set amidst the dynamic optimism of post-war New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy witch-hunts, this novel is a great tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices, and the random workings of destiny.

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The Drawbridge by Marie McGann
This novel is set amongst the Polish community in Crouch End. Brid Finucane lives in a state of ordered chaos in both her head and her house. When her husband disappears, she is forced to confront her past and its sad consequence, together with lone motherhood, alcoholism and a Polish war hero as a suitor. Her swirls of emotion are compounded by her position as an expatriate Irishwoman living in a North London suburb. She involves herself with the charming Adam Barowski, and faces the terrifying possibility of falling in love for the first time. But when Brid’s husband Stanley, after a long absence, sends a message from the Sudan, Brid is forced to work towards her most major life decision. This novel explores both Irish and Polish experiences of alienation, while at its core it is a story about the hard choices in a woman’s life: choices about love and independence, loyalty and dependence.

Love in One Tradition by Peter Cunningham
This is the third volume of Peter Cunningham’s acclaimed trilogy (after Tapes of the River Delta and Consequences of the Heart) set in the fictional Irish town of Monument. When Jasmine joins the staff of the Monument Gazette, she finds herself drawn to Kaiser, the lonely, partially-deaf maintenance man, who spent his childhood in an orphanage and knows nothing of how he came to grow up in the peaceful town of Monument. Jasmine decides that she will help Kaiser to find the truth about his origins. She keeps a journal in which she records her research and her feelings for him as their friendship deepens into love. But as she delves into the history of the town and the three generations of the Pender family who have owned and run the Gazette, she uncovers not only Kaiser’s violent past, but also an appalling secret that if revealed will shatter the lives of many. Kaiser and Jasmine’s love is strong enough to overturn the web of lies on which an empire is founded - but is it strong enough to withstand the outcome? This is a grand, lyrical novel of passion and betrayal told by a master Irish storyteller.

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The Eggman’s Apprentice by Maurice Leitch
Orphaned at a cruelly young age by the death of both parents, little Hugo Dinsmore is torn from his pampered life in the great heart of County Antrim, Northern Ireland and plunged into the world of brutish country relatives, a world where his refined ways and small stature are a constant source of mockery for them and torment for him. Survival means learning to stay sly and hidden, not only in the vast, rumbling ruin they call Larkhill, but in the fields and woods, and then later at school where he discovers a talent for retribution and petty thieving. A remarkably pure singing voice is something else he finds himself blessed with, drawing him to the attention of the Eggman, a feared local gangster who gets him to perform for him and his rich cronies at their parties of well-dressed mascot, travelling around with the Eggman and his enforcer friends in the back of a vast pink Cadillac. Gradually he breaks away from his old life in Larkhill, but when the Eggman’s grip tightens and a criminal price must be paid for all the fine clothes and high living, Hugo decides to break free in his own spectacular but haphazard fashion.

Doubletime by Micky Donnelly
As if he didn’t have enough trouble, Myles has just met Matt, his younger, thinner and more stylish doppleganger. Just what he needs, on top of keeping up with sexy Mex, dodging the gruesome twins sent by a very, very cross landlord and - oh yes, the Wife, who is pissed off with him yet again. We’re in the dislocated world of double-time, a hall of mirrors where mistaken identity is the norm and where appearances are never, ever, to be trusted. Playful, fast and clever, this debut novel from the acclaimed Irish artist tests language, literature and perception to the limit on its way to a dramatic, last-ditch climax.

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Juno & Juliet by Julian Gough
Galway: it’s a long way from Tipperary, if you are eighteen, reluctantly beautiful and one of a pair of twins eager to learn about everything that life, especially college life in Galway, has to offer. So, when Juno and Juliet Taylor start their first year at university together, disappointment reaches up and tugs them down as all around they encounter a failure of enthusiasm. Yet, soon, they’re inching their way back up again - there’s the drunken antics of the theatre; there’s cute, shy, kind Michael; and there’s the pure passion, pure helium inspiration of the most wonderful of teachers, David Hennessey. And then again, there’s also the stalker, with his poison-pen letters; there’s trips home and trips into inner space; there’s unrequited and mis-consummated love; and there’s easy death. There’s almost too much of everything, too much for these twins to handle. But then perhaps the incomparable Mr. Hennessey can help bear the load? This is a happy book, and a very funny one.

The Simurgh and the Nightingale by Roger Derham
Simurgh is, in Persian mythology, a large mythical bird of great age believed to have the power of reasoning and speech. This novel is set in 1631. Catherine Cullen, a barber-surgeon and free woman of Dublin, visits Baltimore in south-west Ireland. During a raid she is taken prisoner by Algerian pirates and taken to North Africa. Her surgical skills gain her respect and the means to freedom. This comes at a great price involving passion, death and betrayal. She falls in love with a Ragusan knight and their destinies seem intertwined, as his quest and her fate lead to Constantinople and vicious rival forces. Their story ends in Ragusa in 1667. This is a novel of power and imagination.

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Swan Song by William King
A way of life is dying; convents are up for sale. Only a handful of nuns, like Deirdre Logan, are still teaching. Nevertheless, Sister Deirdre is content with her life - that is, until the death of her friend releases a tidal wave of questions about her future in the Precious Blood congregation. Her inner search leads her to the brink. She is now caught between loyalty to her vows and her desire as a woman. This is a multi-layered tale of the joys and trials of the religious life, and a gripping examination of the personal pressures with which we all have to deal.

My Favourite Goodbye by Sheila O’Flanagan
Ash O’Halloran knows she should be having the time of her life. She’s blonde, 29, single and self-supporting. So shouldn’t she be out there every night, swilling Chardonnay and falling in love? Or is she isn’t, at least having a great time moaning about it with her best friends? Doesn’t she know how to be a single woman? The trouble is, Ash likes things the way they are. And she doesn’t do impulsive. Relationships scare her to death - at the first hint of commitment, it is goodbye. There’s no way she’ll ever put herself in a position where she might be hurt. But she knows not everyone is the same - Dan Morland for instance, who employed her to cook the ultimate dinner the night he proposed to his ambitious girlfriend. And, as she watches Dan trying to sort out his life with the woman he loves, Ash begins to wonder if being Miss Self-Contained and -Secure might also mean missing out.

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Ordnance Survey Letters Dublin edited by Michael Herity
These Ordnance Survey Letters are reports written from the field to the Superintendent, Thomas Larcom, at Mountjoy Barracks in the Phoenix Park, discussing the derivation and English orthography of the names to be printed on the first edition of the Survey’s maps. John O’Donovan and Eugene Curry began work in south Dublin at the end of March, 1837, after a long spell of research on Tara, County Meath, in the Dublin libraries over the previous autumn and winter. The fieldwork was continued by Curry over the summer months after O’Donovan had left for Longford and Roscommon. Encouraged by George Petrie and with the help of the artists George Du Noyer and T. Butler Williams, Curry described and mapped more ordinary field monuments than had been so described in any county in Dublin before.

The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland by John Waddell
On present evidence the human settlement of Ireland commenced some ten thousand years ago and the prehistoric story thus covers over eight and a half thousand years. Now in a second edition, this book provides a chronological account of this long timespan and, with numerous illustrations, charts the development of the first hunting and foraging communities, the achievements of the earliest environmentalists with their remarkable megalithic tombs, and the technological advances of the later bronze- and iron-using societies. Recent decades have seen some exceptional developments in the study of the prehistoric archaeology of Ireland. New discoveries, excavations and research, new theoretical approaches and the increasing application of radiocarbon and tree-ring dating techniques have all made an enormous contribution to the better understanding of this remote past. As well as being a comprehensive and original review of the subject, this book answers the need for a detailed introduction to a large body of archaeological evidence.

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Sister Genevieve by John Rae
This book is the story of Mary O’Farrell, who became Sister Genevieve, one of the most remarkable yet little-known heroines of our time. A woman of great courage and spirituality, she devoted her life to the education of the girls of West Belfast during the Troubles, defying the Catholic Church, the IRA and the British Army in her determination to give her under-privileged girls the best possible start in life. When she arrived in 1956, Catholic West Belfast was one of the most deprived areas in western Europe. By the time she left the secondary school she led for twenty-five years, she had transformed the lives of its pupils. More astonishing is that for nineteen of those twenty-five years, she was running her school in the middle of a guerrilla war between the IRA and the British Army. The girls were lifted by the army and brought in for questioning; their homes were taken over by gunmen or turned over by soldiers; their fathers and brothers were killed on active service or sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Yet through all this, Sister Genevieve remained loyal to her pupils and was compassionate to all who suffered in the conflict. This book is the biography of an inspirations headteacher and a fascinating and highly complex woman. It is also a unique insight into the Troubles from the point of view of the ‘civilians’ who were living on the front line.

How the GAA Survived the Troubles by Desmond Fahy
The GAA can claim members and supporters in every town, village and parish throughout Northern Ireland. Its clubs provide a social and cultural centre for the people, and are an integral part of community life. However, for more than thirty years, the events of the Troubles have represented a significant challenge for the GAA. With its members and property coming under concerted and often savage attacks, the Association has been forced to move away from its rigid non-political stance and respond publicly to what was happening in the wider society. Focusing on the human stories behind the facts, this book traces the GAA’s journey through the turmoil - both political and social - on the three decades of the Troubles. The author interviews the families of victims and speaks to members about their experiences, and also discusses the effects and future of the controversial rule prohibiting members of the British Security Forces and RUC from joining the Association.

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Contemplating Ireland: Images and Verse Photographs by James Gleason
This book is a visual meditation on this ancient island. James Gleason’s photographs, complemented by selections from Ireland’s rich poetic tradition, transport the reader to ancient Celtic burial sites, barren coastal islands and crumbling monastic ruins. Haunting land and seascapes draw the reader to quietness: from Kerry’s mountain ranges and Clare’s Cliffs of Moher to Connemara’s stone walls and Mayo’s sea-carved coastline. Long-since deserted castles, houses and churches awake imaginations of generations past.

The Celtic Cross: An Illustrated History and Celebration by Nigel Pennick
This book combines a fascinating and informative text with the author’s beautifully detailed line drawings and photographs to present an historical overview of the emblem acknowledged throughout the world as the symbol of Celtic Christianity. The book traces the rich diversity of the Celtic Cross through its historical background and predecessors, by way of the evolution and development of Celtic Christianity, and through to its influence to the form and pattern of Celtic art. In addition, the author provides a comprehensive gazetteer covering sites in Ireland, Britain and Brittany in France as a guide for those who wish to celebrate the cross as a continuing manifestation of the finest traditions of Celtic art.

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Bringing It All Back Home: The Influence of Irish Music 2nd edition by Nuala O’Connor
Irish music is flourishing in all corners of the world today, thanks to centuries of emigrations. This book chronicles the remarkable journey of Irish music from its origins in rural Irish communities to reinvention in the melting pots of America and Britain, and return home to a new generation of exciting musicians. In times past, Irish music belonged to remote rural communities. The hauntingly beautiful Sean Nos (unaccompanied) singing tradition in the Irish language originated with them, and there were ballads, jigs, reels, slides and polkas taught by itinerant dancing masters. Irish emigrants carried their music and dances with them to the New World, where over time it was changed by their new lifestyles and enriched by contact with other cultures. Twentieth-century technology also sent Irish music in unexpected directions. It melded rock, country, pop, electric folk, blues and the avant-garde, giving birth to artists from the Clancy Brothers and Bob Dylan, Planxty and Clannad, to the Pogues, Van Morrison, John Cage, U2 and Sinead O’Connor. Modern music and Irish tradition were alchemised, through the use of instruments like the bodhran, the harp and the uilleann pipes, to form that unique sound that is unmistakably Irish.

Ireland: Collectors Coins Year 00 by R.J. Marles
This is the new edition of a compilation of averaged selling-prices drawn from dealers’ lists, auctions, and numismatic magazines regarding Irish coinage

Ways of Old: Traditional Life in Ireland by Olive Sharkey
Imagine Ireland without tractors, cars, electricity, running water this book brings old Ireland to life with evocative descriptions of the work, activities and material possessions of the past. The author describes the implements of the home, the farm, the garden and for home-crafts, with hundreds of detailed drawings in an authentic folk-art style. These once-familiar objects - truckle-beds, bittles, butter-workers and noggins - are looked at anew in the context of the people who used them and depended on them for their livelihood. This is a new edition of this well-known classic originally published in 19.

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Killarney National Park: A Place to Treasure edited by Bill Quirke
Killarney National Park forms the backdrop for most visits to Killarney and indeed, County Kerry. It is the beautiful landscape visitors see in the distance when they play golf, visit Muckross House or look out a hotel window. Despite the popular image of a crowded commercialised tourist destination, this backdrop is arguably Ireland’s greatest national treasure, over 26,000 acres of relatively undiscovered and unspoiled native woodlands, lakes, bogs and mountains. This book takes the reader into this landscape and shows that here indeed is a place that deserves and needs to be cherished in Ireland. Each contributor shares his/her expertise and love of this park on a voluntary basis and the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to supporting nature conservation projects in the park.

Traditional Irish Cookery by Carmel Kavenagh
For generations of Irish people around the world, traditional Irish cookery is the taste of their childhood. This cookbook is for them - and for everyone else who envies Ireland’s reputation for quality, wholesome, satisfying foods. Ireland is a country where culinary traditions were shaped by a climate, and an economy that was in turn both unpredictable and demanding. Conditions that could have stifled creativity in fact inspired originality - and turned the humble potato into a culinary work of art. As an island nation blessed with lush pastures, Ireland boasts a wealth of seafood and first-class beef, dairy products and fresh produce. This book makes the most of them all, proving there’s a lot more to Irish cooking than the famous and ever-popular Irish stew - although of course you’ll find that there too.

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Guide to National and Historic Monuments of Ireland by Peter Harbison
Since its first publication in 1970, this classic Guide has introduced countless thousands to the archaeological riches with which the Irish landscape is endowed. Detailed plans and reference maps, reconstructions and illustrations enliven the text, which describes all the monuments in close detail. A comprehensive introduction places these monuments within the context of Irish history. The author’s unparalleled knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, his subject have ensured that this Guide is an indispensable companion for everyone travelling through Ireland who wishes to appreciate the riches of its ancient built heritage.

Aspects of the Belfast Agreement edited by Rick Wilford
This edited collection assembles leading experts on the politics and constitution of Northern Ireland to explore and analyse aspects of the 1998 Belfast Agreement. For most, the Agreement represented an inclusive political bargain, while others perceived it as an act of betrayal - whether of the Union or, conversely, of republicanism. These rival interpretations are discussed by key actors both within and outside Northern Ireland in forging the Agreement. The more immediate provenance of the Agreement is complemented by a comparison with its often cited predecessor, the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, and the formers’ ‘consociational plus’ design is explained while its legislative implementation is set within the context of cross-cutting constitutionalism ushered in by the UK’s wider devolution process. The collection also discusses the British-Irish Council, and the early operation of both the Executive Committee and the Assembly elected in 1998.

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Michael Collins and the Troubles: The Struggle for Irish Freedom 1912-1922 by Ulick O’Connor
When Asquith introduced his bill for Home Rule for Ireland in 1912, he sparked a decade of turbulence and violence for Ireland and her people. Michael Collins played a crucial role in rekindling Ireland’s aspirations for freedom. A leading figure in the nation’s bitter and bloody resistance to British Rule, he played a key part in reshaping Ireland’s history as we know it today. This new edition of the classic book originally published in 1975 includes valuable new information about the secret war against England and provides a fresh and highly dramatic account of Ireland’s fight for freedom. Using crucial material from the archives of General Richard Mulcahy, Collins’s Chief of Staff, as well as personal interviews with Mulcahy, Eamon de Valera, and many other leading figures, this book is a vivid and often horrifying account of a turning point in Irish history.

James Chichester-Clark: Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by Clive Scoular
James Chichester-Clark was Northern Ireland’s fifth Prime Minister from May 1969 until March 1971. He was heavily pressurised by the Civil Rights Association to introduce more reforms, even though he initiated more than any of his predecessors during this troubled period in Northern Ireland’s history. He struggled to implement the recommendations of the Scarman, Hunt and Cameron reports, particularly the disbanding of the ‘B’ Specials. When the Bogside riots of August 1969 erupted, he was compelled to call in British Troops when the RUC’s resources were stretched beyond breaking point. His relations with the British Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, were always fractious. This biography describes not only these difficult events of his premiership, but also tells the story of him as a family man and trusted friend.

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Children of the Dead End by Patrick MacGill
Originally published in 1914, this book is based on the personal memories of the author’s life in Ireland and Scotland during the early 1900s. A bonafide classic, it tells the story of Dermod Flynn, an independent and feisty youth, who earns a meagre living as an itinerant farm hand in Donegal and County Tyrone, before moving to Scotland with a potato-picking squad. Alternatively living on the road, labouring and navvying, Dermod reads voraciously, begins to discover his talent as a writer and is eventually lured to Fleet Street, where he briefly follows a career in journalism. Peopled with extraordinary characters and told with humour, this novel is a gritty and uncompromising expose of the near slavery endured by the poor in Ireland and Scotland at the beginning of the th century. A best-seller from the outset, it has become a literary classic, unmatched in its accurate portrayal of this dark corner of Irish and Scottish social history.

Shipwrecks of Ireland by Edward J. Bourke
The Irish coast has seen shipwrecks from Celtic times through to the present day. The Romans may have had a small bridgehead at Loughshinney and continental wars were fought offshore. The 1588 Spanish Armada came by and left its tribute of twenty-six ships on the remote west coast. Before 1800 ports like Dublin, Strangford, Waterford, Kinsale and Wexford were very significant. Hazards around Ireland range from rocky cliffs of the west coast coupled with a transatlantic landfall in fog or snow to the treacherous sandbanks of the east coast.

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Irish Human Rights Review 00 edited by Dennis Driscoll
Dealing with contemporary human rights issues, this review features articles by leading academics and legal practitioners on questions of human rights and how they relate to Ireland. Issues that affect all aspects of modern Irish life are raised and explored. Coverage includes aspects of domestic social policy, law enforcement, etc. which have developed and are developing in line with the principles espoused in, for example, the European Convention on Human Rights and the E.C. Treaty. It also highlights Ireland’s responsibility to contribute to the international community with a proactive foreign policy on human rights.

Someone Like You by Cathy Kelly
This new novel from the best-selling author of Irish contemporary romance features Leonie, Emma and Hannah - all want just one thing in life and then they’ll be truly happy. For Leonie, divorced 40-something mum-of-three, happiness means finding the true love she ended her marriage for. For the insecure and just-married Emma, it means escaping the control of her domineering family and conceiving a longed-for child with her beloved husband. And for fiercely independent, beautiful Hannah, happiness means money and security - something she doesn’t think any many can ever provide. But as these three very different women discover, wanting something with all your heart and actually getting it are two very different things. Because sometimes when you get it you may discover it’s not what you wanted after all.

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Galloway Street: Growing Up Irish in Scotland by John Boyle
John Boyle was born and raised in Scotland but he could never feel Scottish. His parents were poor immigrants from the west of Ireland who came to Scotland to find work and eventually settled in Paisley, where John was the first of six children. This book beautifully captures the poverty and the rough humour of the Boyle family’s life in the Paisley tenements, the songs and stories of their Irish Catholic relatives and the often uneasy relationships with their Scottish Protestant neighbours. It also shows how John is marked at the age of ten by an extended stay with his spinster aunt on the remote island of Achill, as he begins to understand the life his parents left behind. This is a book about exile and belonging, about the poignancy of growing up Irish in Scotland, so close to the place your mother still calls home. It is a truthful, funny and moving evocation of a unique place and time, experienced through the eyes of a child.

Special Relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland Problem by Paul Arthur
Although recent events are testing its durability, the Good Friday Agreement on 1998 has been hailed as a triumph of Anglo-Irish diplomacy. But why did it take thirty years of intense conflict to reach an understanding of the problem before a solution could be implemented? In this ground-breaking book, centuries-old misperceptions between the two islands are scrutinised and recent seismic shifts examined, including the changing nature of Irish nationalism and the role of Irish-America in both shaping and resolving the conflict. This is a wise and accessible study by a distinguished observer, persuasively demonstrating how even the most intractable conflicts can be made more malleable.

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Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement by Feargal Cochrane
This book is a revised edition of the first and still most comprehensive study of unionist politics since the Anglo-Irish Agreement and sets out to explain the dynamics which underpin contemporary unionist political behaviour. An understanding of the mindset, fears, objectives of the largest political community in Northern Ireland is crucial to any attempt to address and resolve the political conflict in the region. The book concentrates on the period preceding the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 15 November 19 through to the forum elections and multi-party talks of July 1996. This revised edition contains a new chapter that examines divisions within unionist politics during the negotiations that led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. It looks in detail at David Trimble’s leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party and the difficulties he has faced in selling the GFA within his party and within the wider unionist electorate.

Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader edited by David Pierce
This reader offer a comprehensive and pleasurable introduction to modern Irish literature in a single volume. It contains over 400 pieces, including letters, diaries, newspaper and journal articles, songs, poems, critical essays, literary profiles, entire plays and short stories as well as extracts from novels and other longer works. Texts which until now have been out of print or difficult to locate are made easily accessible in this book. Arranged chronologically by decade, from the 1890s to the 1990s, each decade is divided into two different types of writing: critical/documentary and imaginative writing, and is accompanied by a headnote which situates it thematically and chronologically. The book is also structured for thematic study by listing all the pieces included under a series of topic headings. The wide range of material encompasses the writings of well-known figures in the Irish canon and neglected writers alike.

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Historic Pubs of Dublin by Aubrey Malone
Dublin’s pubs are its defining experience as the most celebrated drinking city in the world. Apart from being watering-holes, many were also once grocers, borders, trading and meeting places. Others are the very stage on which the drama of Irish history have been played out. The story of Dublin’s pubs forms a social history of the city itself with a cast of hundreds. Not just the famous either - Daniel O’Connell, Charles Parnell, Michael Collins, James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Brendan Behan - but the unsung heroes of Dublin drinking culture too: legendary brewers, barmen, publicans and drinkers. The author of this book takes the reader on an easy-to-follow tour of the 60 finest historic bars Dublin city has to offer. With sections on the city centre, Stephens Green, Temple Bar, North and South-side Dublin and further afield, it is a practical guide for the visitor and Dubliner alike. There are maps and specially-commissioned photography from Dublin-based photographer Trevor Hart to bring the pubs gloriously to life.

Guide to Irish Gardens by Shirley Lanigan
This book is the most comprehensive guide ever to the gardens of Ireland. From tiny town gardens to the walled gardens and sprawling acres of historic country houses, the author takes the reader into every county of Ireland on a tour of over 300 gardens which are open to the public. The gardeners share the secrets of their success and give ideas for colour combination, low-maintenance plants, unusual planting schemes, even for slug-control ducks! Explore the gardens’ history, design, plant types and unusual features; locations - from sub-tropical to seaside, wind-battered, boggy and rock-strewn; perfect lawns, topiarised hedges, bluebell woods, sculpture trails, sensory gardens and potagers; designs - from the minimalist to glorious riots of colour and scent. Whether you are an avid garden visitor or an enthusiastic gardener in search of inspiration, this is the book for you.

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The Irish Act of Union by Patrick Geoghegan
The union of 1800-1801 created a single United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It lasted until the Treaty of 1922 gave birth to what is now the Republic of Ireland; it continues to obtain Northern Ireland. The author’s survey examines the passing of the Act of Union in greater detail than ever before, drawing on newly discovered secret service papers in the Public Record Office in London. These papers settle the long-running controversy about government bribery and the passing of the Act of Union. Geoghegan’s analysis shows beyond a doubt that there was considerable bribery involved. He also connects the passing of the Act of Union to the collapse of William Pitt’s ministry in 1801. This is a connection never made before: it gives a depth and context to this book that makes it stand apart.

Reading the Irish Landscape by Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan
This is the third revision of this seminal work, first published in 1986. Co-authored by the original author Frank Mitchell and now with Michael Ryan, the result is a stunning collaboration between masters giving all the elements of the original book, modified, updated and further enhanced by the inclusion of a new narrative of Irish archaeology from the Stone Age to the Norman Invasion. Together they have successfully undertaken the daunting task of giving in one book the story of the shaping of the land from the beginning of time until the present, by all the varying forces of nature, sea, climate, man and machine. The story takes in the shaping of the crust, the movement of glaciers, the first men and their primitive agriculture, the rise of the monasteries of the Early Christians and the castles of conquest, the devastation of war, urban growth, modern agriculture and afforestation, all set against the backdrop of the landscape, arguably one of Ireland’s most precious resources.

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Gardens of Ireland: A Touring Guide to Over 100 of the Best Gardens by Terence Reeves-Smith
This book is for everyone who enjoys visiting and touring gardens. In this book the author explores over 100 of the most beautiful Irish gardens, highlighting their most striking features and revealing charming aspects that will delight every gardener. From the imposing formal terraces of Powerscourt near Dublin to the mixed planting of Glenveagh Castle’s pleasure garden set in the wild Donegal landscape, this guide reveals breathtaking sights awaiting travellers in Ireland. The book also includes at-a-glance symbols which denote garden features and provide key facts for the visitor; maps which who the position of every garden; highlights of nearby cultural sights of interest; and exquisitely drawn three-dimensional garden plans.

Character Building: A Guide for Parents and Teachers by David Isaacs
In this book the author, a prominent Irish educationalist, offers ideas and suggestions on how parents and teachers can help children’s all-round development. The emphasis is on character building, approached from the viewpoint of moral habits. Professor Isaacs takes twenty-four virtues and discusses how the child - at different ages - can be encouraged to be obedient, industrious, sincere, prudent, generous, optimistic, sociable and so on.

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Hungry for Home: A Journey from the Edge of Ireland by Cole Moreton
This book tells the story of an Irish island and the dramatic events that led to its being abandoned. The author goes in search of the missing islanders, discovering a few survivors still alive within sight of the Great Blasket. Following the footsteps of the emigrants who had left half a century earlier, he seeks out the dead man’s brother and discovers an extraordinary end to their untold story. Driven out of a home locked in the Middle Ages, the exiled islanders had crossed the Atlantic and made a new life in the world’s most advanced nation. This is a book about home and what it means, a voyage to America from the edge of Ireland, and a gripping account of a quest for a vanished people. But most of all it is the story of a family, the Kearneys, and their breathtaking journey from one way of life to another.

The Other Side of the Rainbow by Maire Brennan
Raised in County Donegal, Maire began her musical career with family band, Clannad, a venture that has earned her an array of hits, successful film scores and enviable collaborations over the last twenty years. Along with her sister, Enya, and the other members of Clannad, Maire has always fiercely guarded her privacy and, although the personal life of this remarkable artist was material for tabloid speculation in the early 1980s, she has valued the fact that her private life has largely remained distinct from her public persona. Now, with this compelling autobiography, she reveals her full story. The book is both charming and harrowing, intriguing and inspiring. Much more than a behind the scenes account of the rise of Clannad and Maire Brennan, this book is a story of a talented Irish family, the excesses of fame, the loss of self, and the hope of true love.

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1921 by Morgan Llywelyn
The Irish fight for independence is one of the most captivating tales of the twentieth century. Morgan Llywelyn, the acclaimed historical writer of books like ‘Lion of Ireland’ and ‘The Horse Goddesses’, is the writer born to bring this epic battle to life. Having created an entire body of work chronicling the Celts and Ireland, she now turns to recent Irish history to create a multivolume saga: ‘The Irish Century’. This novel tells the story of the Irish War of Independence and the heartbreaking civil war that followed. Henry Mooney, a reporter for the ‘Clare Champion’ and the ‘Irish Bulletin’, is a self-described “moderate nationalist” who struggles to see the truth in the news of the day, and to report it fairly. Lacking the more radical Republican beliefs of his dear friends Ned Halloran and Sile Duffy, Henry reports the political - and, later, bloody - actions of his fellow Irishmen from the ashes of the failed 1916 Rising to the creation of the Irish Free State to the tragic and wide-ranging battles of the Irish Civil War. Meanwhile, Henry feels the impact of these history-changing events in his own personal life. His friendship with Ned falters when their political beliefs diverge, and an unexpected tragedy leaves them further apart than ever. Henry struggles with his passion for a well-bred Protestant Anglo-Irish woman, Ella Rutledge, and as he dutifully reports the events in the political battle for independence, he comes to realise that the Irish struggle for freedom will leave no life untouched - and no Irish citizen with a dry eye or an untroubled heart.

A Wild People by Hugh Leonard
This author of this book is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, and was Literary Editor at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1976-77. This is his first novel. ‘She was too old for you,’ TJ Quill’s friend Liz says about his Italian mistress. ‘Not that old,’ TJ protests. ‘At least two thousand years,’ Liz says. ‘Two-thousand-year-old’ Josie might be untameable - a slippery madonna who presents a different face to each beholder - but she’s often left standing by the rest of TJ’s friends. Perhaps it is true that, as the Kerry poet Oozer Kenirons declares, the Irish are only three generations away from the old bog road, the tenement and back lane, and are busy re-inventing themselves. Certainly the cast of this novel are forever surprising each other - and themselves. TJ’s progress through a doomed friendship with ‘Thorn’ Thornton imbrangles him in the staging of a Plautus satire, retitled ‘Lust’ and performed at night on a hurricane-whipped bog, as well as the most traumatic awards dinner of TJ’s chequered career. His affair with Josie drags him from the clandestine dinners in Dublin to the high drama of a ransom mission in Florence. His job as an archivist to great Western filmmaker Sean O’Fearna involves him in nailbiting interactions with the fearsome Widow O’Fearna. And throughout this novel there plays out the story of TJ’s foundering marriage to the enigmatic but never-to-be-understood Greta: a marriage that moves from couplehood in a cottage to uneasy truce in a Martello tower, and reaches its crisis with a car’s night-time plunge into the sea.

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Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl is the book that caused a sensation months before it was even published. This exciting, original novel has captured the imagination of film companies, publishers, the press and readers all over the world. Twelve year-old Artemis Fowl is a brilliant criminal mastermind. But even Artemis doesn’t know what he’s taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These are the fairies of bedtime stories. These fairies are armed and they’re dangerous. Artemis thinks he’s got them just where he wants them, but then they stop playing by the rules a brilliantly realised parallel world, this book has redefined the fairytale and done Harry Potter one better!

Temptation by Dermot Bolger
For Alison Gill, mother of three young children, this year’s much-needed family holiday at Fitzgerald’s Hotel on the southeast coast of Ireland should be, as ever, absolute paradise. So when a work crisis forces her husband to return to Dublin, she is left angry, disappointed and susceptible to the confusing emotions surrounding a chance poolside encounter with Chris, an old flame from nearly twenty years ago. In seeing him again, Alison cannot help but reflect on the passing of time, and sit in judgement on the life she has made for herself. Is this going to be a turning point, an opportunity to revive the passion and optimism of her youth? A final chance? Will she let herself be tempted? Rarely does a male writer enter into the mind of a woman as assuredly as Bolger does in this vivid, skilful meditation on family life, the end of youth and the road less travelled. His portrait of Allison, a woman brought alive by his warmth and understanding, is simply stunning. Told with characteristic insight, verve and humour, this novel weaves a wonderful web of conflicting emotions behind the simple story of five eventful nights in an idyllic Irish hotel.

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Inishowen by Joseph O’Connor
Inspector Martin Aitken’s life is in chaos. The Assistant Commissioner wants him out of his job, terrible things are growing inside his house, and his ex-wife likes talking to famous dead people. Forty-three years old, he still can’t knot a tie. But when a strange woman collapses on a Christmas Eve Dublin street, Aitken’s world is about to be turned on its head. Milton Amery is a New York plastic surgeon. Wealthy, successful, he is nevertheless plagued by anxiety, the kind of man who feels nervous buying trousers. His marriage is in turmoil, his teenage son communicates only in vowel sounds, a guitar-strumming anarchist with a Mao Tse Tung tattoo is having sex with his only daugther. Ellen Donnelly is a woman with a mission, to come to Ireland and find her birth mother, to put together pieces of her past. Time is running out fast for Ellen. A small town in beautiful Inishowen contains the secrets that can unlock her past. This wildly comic and deeply moving new novel from one of Ireland’s most talented writers is a story of love found late, of hidden connections, of a journey that changes three lives forever.

Nostos: An Autobiography by John Moriarty
In this astonishing volume of autobiography, John Moriarty’s earlier works of mystical philosophy, ‘Dreamtime’ and ‘Turtle Was Gone a Long Time’, a given a biographical grounding. Inhabited by all that he reads and perceives, Moriarty recovers lost forms of sensibility and categories of understanding, reconciling them gloriously within the arc of his life. ‘Nostos’ is a Greek word meaning ‘homecoming’. In its plural form it was the name of an extensive body of literature in ancient Greece about the Greek heroes who returned from the Trojan Wars. Most of this literature has perished, but we do have ‘The Odyssey’, describing the long homecoming of Odysseus to Ithaca. Moriarty’s book assumes that for various reasons humanity is now exiled from the earth, but by re-imaging it ourselves as invoiced in a common destiny, it enacts a homecoming, a ‘nostos’ to it. In pursuit of this enterprise the book unwinds, or better it suffers, an Ariadne’s skein of sponsoring and enabling myths, not all of the indigenous, some of them inaugurating an alternative to our Western way. ‘Nostos’ is a continuous narrative describing early on how its author lost his world as surely and completely as the Aztecs lost theirs when Cortez came ashore. Thereafter, in places as far apart as neolithic North Kerry and London, Periclean Athens and Blackfoot dancing ground, Manitoba and Mexico, the Grand Canal in Dublin and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Kwakiutl coast and Connemara, the author fights his way to a kind of rest, to a requiem, at the heart of things as they terribly and respendently are. Overall, ‘Nostos’ is a book that challenges the reader.

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Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy by Paddy Woodworth
‘Democracy is defended in the sewers as well as in the salons.’ This is how former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez responded to former allegations that his government was fighting the Basque separatist group ETA with its own methods; indiscriminate terrorism, shooting up crowded bars, bombing busy streets, torturing kidnap victims. For three years, the GAL (’Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups’), created mayhem in the French Basque Country, where ETA had its ‘sanctuary’. In 1986 the French government began to hand over ETA suspects to the Spanish police in large numbers and the GAL campaign stopped. But this dirty war had already created widespread support for ETA in the first generation of Spanish Basques to grow up under post-Franco democracy, and its consequences reverberate to this day. The GAL’s links to the Spanish security forces, and finally to Gonzalez’s own cabinet, have been revealed by controversial magistrates like Baltasar Garzon, despite all the resources of ‘state secrecy’. The investigations continue and Garzon is still attempting to establish the full extent of the relationship between the former Spanish Government and the GAL’s death squads. Over the last 15 years, the GAL scandals has undermined Gonzalez’s reputation as a democrat and EU statesman and raised fundamental questions about Spain’s much-praised transition to democracy. The GAL investigations have stretched the relationship between government and judiciary in Spain to breaking point, and have sent a minister and a Guardia Civil general to prison. The author of this book has covered Spain for the Irish Time newspaper and other media since the 1970s, has interviewed many of the GAL’s surviving victims and some of the GAL’s leading protagonists. He has followed the investigations in the Spanish media and courts for many years. The result is a dramatic narrative and a thought-provoking analysis of what happens when a democratic administration fights fire with fire.

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Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora by Tim Pat Coogan
The total population of the island of Ireland is only five million - some 800,000 of whom describe themselves as British! - yet there are seventy million people on the planet entitled to call themselves Irish! This ground-breaking book tells their story. It is based on first-hand research in both North and South American, Africa, the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Apart from contemporary interviews with significant figures from today’s diaspora, it also explores how the Great Scattering occurred, through war, famine and dispossession. How a stricken people produced the movers and shakers, the dreamers of dreams who climbed to the world’s highest pinnacles of politics and the arts. It does full justice to the horrors which lay behind some of the emigration, but concentrates also on the extraordinary and positive experience of Irish people throughout the world. Along with the brawlers and battlers, the heroic soldiers, the passionate labour leaders, the American presidents, the Australian Prime Ministers, the founders of Latin American nations and the creators of Riverdance and U2, the Irish gave the world a caring tradition, the missionaries and the teachers who spread a message of a ‘dream born in a herdsman’s shed and the secret scriptures of the poor.’ Some died by the wayside, some successfully pitched their tents near the stars. All come to live in this vivid historical and contemporary portrait by Ireland’s most readable and most trenchant contemporary historian.

Gander at the Gate by Rory O’Connor
Knocknagoshel, north Kerry, in the 1930s. Autumn mornings with mist rolling over a ‘kindly and fertile land’; the pungent smoke of turf fires; open-air wrestling contests; convoys of tinkers with their piebald ponies; farm boys and servant girls aching with desire; and a cast of remarkable men and even more remarkable women, fiery and forthright, their lives ‘teeming with the emotions of love and jealousy, and human conflict, common among all the simple people of the world.’ Through the lyrical prose of this author, this book tells of an Irish farmhouse, the family who lived there, and the community of which they were part. The reader discovers the imaginings and adventures of the local ‘goboys’; the widow Delia and her sons lost to America; and the eccentric Uncle Jack, full of ‘riddles and recitations and the latest rhymes and small poems’. As the gander of the title begins to intrude on his consciousness, the author describes his youthful wonders and apprehensions and the darker shadows cast by his father’s experience of Ireland’s civil war.

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