Read Ireland Book Reviews, January 2003

Brian Moore: A Biography by Patricia Craig
’The only wise prediction to make about a new Brian Moore novel is that it will be unpredictable and wise,’ wrote Christopher Ricks reviewing ‘Black Robe’, one of the twenty magnificent novels which put Brian Moore into the first rank of world writers. Northern Ireland may have shaped him, as he grew up one of nine children in a Catholic doctor’s Belfast household, but World War II took him to Africa and war-ravaged Europe, and Canada freed him to become a writer. It was in London in 1955 that he first published ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’, the first of many novels which led steadily to international critical acclaim. The United States became his home, though he was no more likely to be pigeon-holed by a single country than to write the same novel under a different guise. He was a writer’s writer, baffling contemporaries who wondered how he pulled off his literary feats while remaining accessible to everyone. Above all, he could wield a marvellous plot, create characters - male, and perhaps especially female - who would burst into life, and he could kindle atmospheres of haunting tension, historical vividness or metaphysical mystery. In this, the first authorised biography, Patricia Craig impeccably pieces together the colourful and peripatetic life that lay behind the novels. She also reveals the droll, romantic, cant-hating, affable and brilliant man who so disarmingly enhanced twentieth-century letters.

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The Billy Boy: The Life and Death of LVF Leader Billy Wright by Chris Anderson
Since his death in 1997, Billy ‘King rat’ Wright has become a cult figure for many loyalists, his image appearing on numerous wall murals throughout Northern Ireland’s loyalist communities. Revered and respected by loyalists, despised and feared by nationalists, Wright is reputed to have been involved in a number of sectarian murders before he himself was shot dead by republican gunmen inside the Maze Prison in 1997. Wright became involved with loyalist paramilitaries at the age of 16 when he joined the UVF’s junior wing. In the early 1990s he emerged as the UVF Commander in the Mid-Ulster area and, through a deliberate policy of ‘taking the war to the enemy’, effectively neutered the IRA East Tyrone and North Armagh units. This book documents Wright’s role in the Drumcree dispute of 1995-6 and his split from the UVF, recounting how he ignored both a death threat and an order to leave Northern Ireland within 72 hours, only to remain in Portadown and form the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It covers Wright’s trial and subsequent imprisonment for a crime it has been claimed was set up by the state, recounts the circumstances of his killing inside a top security prison, and investigates the allegations of state collusion in Wright’s death.

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Rory & Ita by Roddy Doyle
This book is Roddy Doyle’s first non-fiction book. It tells - largely in their own words - the story of his parents’ lives from their first memories to the present. Born in 1923 and 1925 respectively, they met at a New Year’s Eve dance in 1947 and married in 1951. They remember every detail of their Dublin childhoods - the people (aunts, cousins, shopkeepers, friends, teachers), the politics (both came from Republican families), idyllic times in the Wexford countryside for Ita, Rory’s apprenticeship as a printer. Ita’s mother died when she was three; Rory was the oldest of nine children, five of them girls. By the time they put down a deposit of two hundred pounds for a house in Kilbarrack, Rory was working as a compositor at the Irish Independent. By the time of the first of their four children was born, he had become a teacher at the School of Printing in Dublin. Kilbarrack and Dublin and Ireland began to change. Through their eyes the reader sees the intensely Catholic society of their youth being transformed into the vibrant, modern Ireland of today. Both Rory and Ita Doyle are marvellous talkers, with excellent memories, so combined with Roddy’s legendary skill in illuminating ordinary experience, it makes for a book of tremendous warmth and humanity.

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Halfway Home by Ronan Tynan
In this autobiography, Ronan Tynan, a member of the enormously popular Irish Tenors, shares his moving life story - a story Barbara Walters calls ‘so amazing you may find it hard to believe’ - of overcoming adversity and attaining worldwide success in several different fields. Diagnosed with a lower-limb disability at birth, Tynan had his legs amputated below the knee when he was twenty years old. Eight weeks later he was climbing the stairs of his college dormitory, and with a year he was winning races in the Paralympic Games, amassing eighteen gold medals and fourteen world records. After becoming the first disabled person ever admitted to the National College of Physical Education, he served a short stint in the prosthetics industry and began a new career in medicine. He continued his studies at Trinity College, where he specialized in orthopaedic sports injuries. After earning his medical degree, Tynan chose music for the next act of his life. Less than one year after he began studying voice, he won both the John McCormack Cup for Tenor Voice and the BBC talent show ‘Go For It’. He went on to win the prestigious International Operatic Singing Competition in France, and in 1998 his debut Sony album, ‘My Life Belongs to You’, become a top-five hit in England within just two weeks and eventually went platinum. Later that year he was invited to join the Irish Tenors, furthering a journey that started in a small Irish village and has brought him to the world’s grandest stages.

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John B. by Gus Smith and Des Hickey
John B. Keane, playwright, poet and fiction writer, was born in Listowel, County Kerry in 1928 and died in his home town on 30 May 2002. His first play, Sive, a rural tragedy of love and greed, was rejected by the Abbey Theatre but made a sensational impact on its first - amateur - production and has come to be seen as a classic work of Irish drama. Among his other notable plays are Sharon’s Grave (1960), Big Maggie (1969) and The Field (1965), which was successfully filmed. In this biography, originally published in 1992 and since updated, the two authors chart the progress of Keane’s drama - and its reception by critics and the public - and explore the man behind the work. His beloved wife Mary, his family and his many friends in Listowel contributed their memories and their opinions of one of the great Irish writers of his generation - a man who, despite his great fame, continued to hold court for friends and visitors in his own public house in Listowel. The highs and lows of his personal life too play their part, and his sometimes controversial opinions of the issues of the day. The death of John B. Keane, after a long battle with cancer, was mourned by the Irish nation. He was a Listowel man, a Kerryman, and an Irishman; his appeal - whether as raconteur, playwright or novelist - was universal, and this biography does him proud

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Somewhere to Hang My Hat: An Irish-Jewish Journey by Stanley Price
Inspired by a search for the origin of his Lithranian-immigrant grandfather’s unlikely name - Charles Beresford Price - the author of this book sets out to assemble his own identity from a multitude of fragments: rugby-playing, patriotic Irish; rebellious orthodox Jewish; Cambridge, anti-Establishment British; 1960s immigrant to America; not to mention, eventually, successful novelist and playwright. Displaying a bulls-eye with, the author introduces the reader to a varied, Woody Allen-esque cast: the eccentric grandfather who was once famously asked by a Dublin policeman whether he was ‘a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew’; the ageing spinster aunts Minne and Hilda, aka ‘The Girls’; a wind-obsessed rabbi; and guest appearances from Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Marilyn Monroe. Criss-crossing both the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic, this perfectly paced and witty memoir also tells a little-know story: that of the Jews of Ireland - their history, culture and contribution.

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Victor Bewley’s Memoirs by Fiona Murdoch
Victor Bewley was groomed from an early age to fill the role of managing director of Bewley’s Oriental Cages - a position held by his father and grandfather before him. While he had enjoyed listening to his father’s anecdotes, he had absolutely no interest in entering the family business. At the age of twenty-one, following the untimely death of his father, he was horrified to find himself at the helm of a growing fleet of cafes, preferring instead to have become an artist, concert pianist or missionary. The book, recounted to his journalist granddaughter several years before his death in 1999, reveals a sensitive man with a quiet determination to help others. His frank and vivid account of his life answers the following puzzling questions: What drove him to reach out a hand to the underprivileged, especially Travellers? Why did he describe parts of his life as ‘undiluted hell’? How did he end up carrying secret messages from the IRA to the British Government? And why did he hand over the business to his staff in the 1970s?

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Shackleton: An Irishman in Antarctica by Jonathan Shackleton and John MacKenna
Eight years after his death, the legend of Ernest Shackleton and the extraordinary story of the ‘Endurance’ South Pole expedition still hold a compelling grip on the public imagination. Trapped in drifting polar ice pack, Ernest Shackleton and his crew fought for survival against the odds. When the Endurance was finally crushed, they were stranded on ice-floes for more than a year before reaching Elephant Island in April 1916. From there Shackleton and his five men embarked on the most remarkable rescue mission in maritime history, sailing to South Georgia across eight hundred miles of the world’s roughest seas in a small open boat. Despite failing to realize his dream of reaching the South Pole, Shackleton’s story lives on because of his unique qualities of leadership and the fact that all his men survived. This compelling narrative reveals the profound influence of Shackleton’s Irish and Quaker roots, offering a vivid portrait of a man whose ambition was tempered by his flawed humanity and egalitarianism. Here too are the untold stories of Shackleton’s upbringing in Kildare; his time in the Merchant Navy; his 1901 voyage on the Discovery with Scott; his 1907 Nimrod expedition; his marriage and love affairs; his life as a public figure and politician; and the haunting story of his final, fatal expedition on the Quest. Drawing on family records, diaries and letters - and hitherto unpublished photographs and archive material - this mesmerizing book takes the reader beyond the myth of Shackleton the man, for whom ‘Optimism is true moral courage,’ and whose greatest triumph was that of life over death. The book is lavishly illustrated with over 100 photographs, maps and engravings, many of them appearing in print for the first time.

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The Journeyman: A Builder’s Life by Billy French
Growing up in Dublin wasnt easy in the 1940s, but having a family trade helped. Old Dublin comes to life as Billy talks the reader through his years from builder’s apprentice to man-about-town journeyman. His life is full of colourful characters including Christy Brown and family, Brendan Behan, Noel Purcell, Patrick Kavanagh, Mick McCarthy and the famous Embankment, and of course, Luke Kelly and the Dubliners. This intriguing book gives the reader a rare picture of Dublin as a growing town soon to become the capital city of today. His heart-warming memoirs and experiences bring to life Dublin as it used to be in ‘ the rare ould times.’

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No Other Medicine, But Hope: Memoirs of a Minister’s Wife by Marguerite McDaid
Having reached the end of her tether in 1998, Marguerite McDaid heeded the impassioned pleas of her family and fled the town of Letterkenny, Co Donegal in a final bid for survival. Not everyone, after thirty years of marriage, is forced to flee to London. Certainly not the wife of a local doctor and TD, who in 1997 had risen to the post of Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation in Bertie Ahern’s Cabinet. Yet with all her worldly goods packed into a battered old Mazda and her young son in town, Marguerite did just that. In a poignant and riveting account, she raises the lid on the private demons that gripped her husband, and which would ultimately lead to the end of her marriage. With a new life in London pitted against the familiar one abandoned in Donegal, the dark but sometimes hilarious story of her time as a politician’s wife is refreshingly told. Cast into a world of unscrupulous landlords and pressurised job-hunting, Marguerite slowly rebuilds her life. And with all the exciting opportunities that life in London affords, a new stronger, fulfilled woman emerges.

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A Ghost Upon Your Path: An Irish Journey by John McCarthy
Ever since he first visited Ireland with his family twenty years ago, John McCarthy has felt a strong affinity with its people and landscape. Yet in spite of his Irish name, he has never thought of himself as remotely Irish. Two decades later much about Ireland, and about John McCarthy, has changed. Aware that the Ireland that first attracted him - a place of breathtaking beauty and a culture steeped in its love of language, music and humour - is only a part of the picture, McCarthy sets up home in a wild and isolated corner of County Kerry, where his ancestors lived a thousand years before. From here he examines what it means to be Irish from the viewpoint of a small rural community, and unravels his own curious sense of belonging to a place he has never lived in. Looking back on Ireland’s turbulent past, which continues to colour the country today, he realizes that this past nurtured his own family roots too. These roots, he discovers, are still alive and thriving, with a stream of distant cousins receiving him as one of their own. McCarthy charts his reactions to this impermanent homeland, often finding his thoughts turning in on himself as he tackles some of the ghosts in his own life, particularly the death of his mother during his period of captivity in the Lebanon. This book presents an unsentimental picture of the Irish people and the issues confronting them in the 21st century. It is a book about change and continuity, betrayal and loss, identity and displacement.

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The Irish War of Independence by Michael Hopkinson
The Irish War of Independence, January 1919 to July 1921, constituted the final stages of the Irish revolution. It went hand in hand with the collapse of the British administration in Ireland. The military conflict consisted of sporadic, localised but vicious guerilla fighting that was paralleled by the efforts of the Dail Government to achieve an independent Irish Republic and the partitioning of the country by the Government of Ireland Act. This book is a meticulous piecing together of many disparate local actions into a coherent narrative. It stresses local and contingent issues, rather than proposing a central master plan operated by the Dublin-based republican leadership. The book devotes separate sections to British politics and government, to the Intelligence war, the fighting in the various localities, and to Irish America. Particular stress is placed on the war’s relevance to the six counties. The overall aim is to place the events in a wider context than is usually adopted and to consider the crucial question of how necessary the use of violence was for the achievement of Irish independence.

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Ireland During the Second World War by Ian Wood
After the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush denounced a world-wide ‘axis of evil’ and declared that there could be no neutrals in the fight against it. In the Second World War there were states that chose to avoid taking sides in the fight against Hitler and Fascism. Ireland’s role during this time remains a controversial and bitter matter even today. This is because the self-governing state of Eire, still a Commonwealth member at the time, opted for neutrality. How far this policy was benign to the Allied cause, along with the historical and political reasons for it, is explored in this book through informative text by a noted authority on Irish history. Vivid photographs and illustrations, some of which are published for the first time, accompany the text. The very different experience of Northern Ireland in the war years is also examined. There, an Unionist government’s support for the war did little to reduce deep internal divisions. There were heightened by IRA action on both sides of the border and in Britain itself and this was a potential threat to the Allies.

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Derry Anthology edited by Sean McMahon
Derry, with its long tradition of learning, its turbulent history and its cross-fertilisation of Irish, English and Scottish cultures has always been a fertile ground for writing. This handsome new anthology presents a wealth of writing about Derry city from earliest times to the present and includes fascinating extracts from fiction, history, poetry, letters and travel writing. The wide range of writers hints at Derry’s eventful past - from St. Columbkille through to John Wesley, William Thackery and Mrs. Alexander. In more recent times, writers like Sean O Faolain, Ben Kiely, Kathleen Ferguson, Nicholas Monsarrat, Brian Friel, Nell mcCafferty, Jennifer Johnston, Eamonn McCann, Seamus Heaney, Michael Foley and Seamus Deane had all recorded vivid impressions of the city and its people. This book provides a complex and stimulating portrait of this ancient city.

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Living in Ireland by Barbara and Rene Stoeltie
Few countries conjure up images of idyllic country houses and snug rambling mansions as readily as Ireland does. The mere mention of Ireland prompts thoughts of fairytale castles and cottages, rolling emerald hills dotted with sheep and cows, jagged cliffs and crashing waves, and mystic stone circles and enchanted gardens. The houses presented here live up our wildest expectations: from an eccentric artist’s retreat in a disused school to a haunted country estate enclosed by high walls, to a magnificent house in the Palladian style 85 and more. Of special interest is a medieval fort, Leixlip Castle, belonging to Desmond and Penny Guinness of the world-famous brewers.

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Native Trees and Forests of Ireland by David Hickie
Ireland’s native trees and woodlands have been with us for the last 10,000 years. When once they covered the whole island, today they cover less that 1 per cent. But the woodlands that have survived are some of the richest ecosystems in the country, providing the perfect environment for many species of native animals and plants. This book is a celebration of the precious heritage of Ireland’s trees and woodlands. This is a story with a future, as well as a past and a present. The author recounts the history, the tree species, the folklore and superstitions of Ireland’s native woods, as well as the traditional uses of timber products. He looks at the future of Ireland’s native trees and forests, how to manage and protect them and plan for their further development. Photographer Mike O’Toole spent a year shooting the extraordinary photographs contained in the book. Accompanied by an excellent and informative text, this book is an important and beautiful records of a unique part of Ireland’s heritage.

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Another Time: Growing Up In Clare by Colette Dinan
Set in the 1940s and 50s, this book portrays the simple pastimes and day-to-day happenings in what seems another era. The small town of Scariff in County Clare might have appeared sleepy on the outside, but a day never passed without some excitement. It is hard for us now to imagine what life was life before electricity, television and video. In this book, the author brings to life the pleasant, friendly and resourceful lifestyle that existed without these modern conveniences. Friends and neighbours played an important role and were seen as part of the extended family. Despite economic hardship and the uncertainty of the times, life seemed secure. There was time to listen, to play and to sit and dream in those days.

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A Shared Childhood: Story of the Integrated Schools in Northern Ireland by Fionnuala O Connor
Drawing on in-depth interviews with parents, teachers and pupils and many others - critics as well as supporters - award-winning journalist Fionnuala O Connor has written a vivid account of the first two decades of a quiet revolution in Northern Ireland. The deeply ingrained divisions in Northern Ireland do not spring solely from segregated schooling, but there can be little doubt that children sent to separate schools on the basis that some are Catholic and others Protestant, will later find it easier to fear and demonise each other. In 1981 a group of parents decided to tear up the pattern of division and open a school that would welcome Protestants, Catholics, children of all faiths and of none. The history of organised integrated education in Northern Ireland is marked by the effort of challenging long-accepted and unquestioned assumptions. Enemies have been plentiful and varied, from the loyalist paramilitaries who threatened that first school to the more genteel churchmen who met appeals for help with coldness and hostility. Twenty-one years later, efforts to break down barriers and encourage links between schools are established government policy. Integrated education has become an accepted and formidable part of the education system, putting other school sectors on their mettle.

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Community and the Soul of Ireland: The Need for Values- Based Change by Fr. Harry Bohan
Fr. Harry Bohan, Founder of the Ceifin Institute, is recognized as one of the leading social commentators in Ireland today. An innovative and original thinker, Fr. Bohan contends that the economic success of recent years was hugely important, but it has come at a considerable cost. The rapid changes in Irish society over the last decade - including the decline in the authority of the Catholic Church, the revelations of political corruption, a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and a breakdown in the family and community as social units - have created a sense of unease despite our increased prosperity. Fr. Bohan argues that people are becoming disconnected from institutions that shaped them and provided leadership in the past. Our current social model emphasises individualism and consumerism to the extent that child-rearing, for example, is seen as another ‘cost’, to be met by both parents working, often meeting their children for a few brief exhausted hours in the evening. The key questions then remains: if the family and institutions are losing their authority, who will raise the next generation? Fr. Bohan believes that there is an urgent need to re-form society through values-based change, because it is values which mobilise a society, not facts or laws. This book, the result of a lengthy interview with journalist and playwright Frank Shouldice, is a provocative, timely and significant analysis of contemporary Ireland.

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Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W.B. Yeats by Ann Saddlemyer
’I, the poet William Yeats, 85 Restored this tower for my wife George’ claims the lovely six-line poem in which Yeats dedicates the renovation of Thoor Ballylee. But the poem’s truth conceals another, and different truth - that they worked together at the restoration, and it was largely her vision and hands that created a dwelling from the former ruins. Just how symbolic this is, of the close but largely hidden collaborations between them, is revealed by this deeply researched life of George Yeats - the first full scale-biography of a woman of remarkable gifts and generous self-concealment. Raised in the decades before the First War, in London literary salons where the arts and occult met, Georgie Hyde-Lees became an art student, accomplished linguist, and serious scholar of medieval arcana, anthroposophy, and astrology. She was a lifelong friend of Ezra Pound and his wife Dorothy Shakespeare, in whose social circle Yeats also moved; he sponsored her initiation to the Order of the Golden Dawn. In 1917 they married (she was 25, he was 52), and on their honeymoon Georgie began the automatic writing which formed the substance of ‘A Vision’, and from which sprang the ideas that occupied Yeats for the rest of his life. Her extrasensory perceptions fed his poetic imagery as her practicality and warmth supplied the environment for his writing. As with the restoration of Ballylee, they were intimate collaborations - but her instinct was always for self-effacement. Though valued by numerous writer friends as a perceptive critic - and known to have written two plays and a novel, which she suppressed - she deliberately hid her talents from public view. Her choice was to appear as Yeats’s wife, helpmate, and secretary, the mother of his children - and for over thirty years after his death the tireless overseer of his literary legacy and a knowledgeable adviser to generations of young critics and writers. For the first time this intelligent and creative woman is allowed to take centre stage. Drawing on memoirs and a wealth of unknown and unpublished sources, this biography reveals someone much more significant than just ‘Mrs. W. B. Yeats’ - a personality at once visionary and practical, and an important figure in twentieth-century literary history.

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I Am Just Going Outside: Captain Oates - Antarctic Tragedy by Michael Smith
On 17 March 1912, Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates crawled bootless from a tent to his death in blizzard conditions on -10 Celcius. Oates, always an outsider on Scott’s polar expedition, died on his thirty-second birthday. His parting words were: ‘I am just going outside and may be sometime.’ Oates was the epitome of the Victorian English gentleman, a public schoolboy who became a dashing cavalry officer and hero in the Boer War. Stationed in Ireland from 1902-06, his passion became horseracing and he won numerous victories at racecourses throughout Ireland. In 1910 he paid 1,000 pounds to join Scott’s South Pole expedition. Oates was dominated by his austere mother and constantly struggled with dyslexia. He clashed with Scott on the expedition and his diary and letters offer a very different perspective from the traditional myth of Scott’s heroic failure. Even the motives behind Oates’ sacrifice can now be challenged Oates’ mother blamed Scott for her son’s death and she was among the first to challenge the accepted version of events. She continued to control his memory long after his death, keeping his diary and letters hidden, even ordering their destruction from her deathbed. Oates always had difficulty forming lasting relationships with women. He died without knowing that he was a father. The story of how Oates died, unaware of his daughter, has been a closely guarded secret until now. This book is a compelling and heart-rending story of endurance, bravery and folly. The author’s previous book, An Unsung Hero - Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer, was a bestseller in Ireland.

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Robert Emmet: A Life by Patrick M. Geoghegan
Robert Emmet (1778-1803) was one of the most romantic of all Irish revolutionaries. His doomed relationship with Sarah Curran, his failed rebellion at the age of twenty-five, and the brilliance of his speech from the dock, captured the popular imagination and created a powerful and enduring legend. W.B. Yeats declared that Emmet was the leading saint of Irish nationalism. Born in Dublin, Emmet was the youngest son of the state physician. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, he was a leading member of the College Historical Society until his expulsion for radical activity in 1798. Prevented from pursuing a profession, Emmet visited the continent where he discussed plans for liberating Ireland with Napoleon and Talleyrand. He returned to Ireland in 1802 and soon became involved in a conspiracy for a new rebellion. This book reveals for the first time the complex and ingenious plans that Emmet devised for the rebellion. His youthful idealism and military talent proved insufficient, however, and his attempt to seize Dublin on 23 July 1803 was a dramatic failure. Captured soon after, Emmet won an unlikely victory with his extraordinary speech from the dock that is rightly considered to be one of the greatest courtroom orations in history. He died bravely on the scaffold the next day. This book draws on new archival material from Ireland, the United Kingdom, France and the United States, and is the first modern study of Robert Emmet in almost fifty years. Romantic, impulsive and doomed, Emmet is one of the tragic heroes of Ireland’s past.

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James Larkin by Emmet O’Connor
James Larkin (1874-1947) retains a central position in the pantheon of the Irish labour movement. In the popular consciousness he is most commonly linked to his role in the epic 1913 Dublin Lockout and to his turbulent leadership of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. Less well known is his role as leader of the Workers’ Union of Ireland, his thorny relations with Soviet Russia, and his political career as a city councillor and Dail deputy. In general, labour historians have been kind to Larkin, and his style of leadership, which was often abrasive and dictatorial, has often been portrayed as a form of improvisation engendered by contemporary exigencies. In this important new biography, the author, a leading labour historian, radically reassesses the man and asks whether he should be viewed as a ‘hero’ of the working class, or as a ‘wrecker’ whose difficult personality was detrimental to both trade unionism and an emerging Irish communist movement. The author uses new archival sources, including declassified Soviet Union and FBI files, to cast new light on Larkin and his relations with international communism. He aims to uncover the motivation behind Larkin’s public persona, and to assess the reality obscured by the myth.

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Fishamble Pigsback: First Plays edited by Jim Culleton
Fishamble is a dynamic theatre company at the core of new Irish playwriting. It has produced numerous award-winning new plays in Dublin, throughout Ireland and abroad. This collecting brings together six diverse plays by new playwrights produced by Fishamble - and under the company’s original name, Pigsback - in the past decade: a moving exploration of childhood friendship and adult betrayal; a warm-hearted saga of a Jewish family living in Dublin during the 1930s; a contemporary bitter-sweet comedy about a dysfunctional Irish family; a comic thriller or revenge, violation and a smelly dog; a mythic play about dark secrets and adolescent passions during a hot summer in the 1970s; a macabre farce about murder and the search for justice during carnival time. The playwrights are: Deirdre Hines, Gavin Kostick, Joseph O’Connor, Mark O’Rowe, Pat Kinevane and Ian Kilroy.

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Fat God, Thin God by James Kennedy
This book is a true story of cultures colliding and the tender love affair that led to one priest to choose a different path. In the 1970s, in anisolated, rural parish in northwest Philippines, James Kennedy began to question the beliefs that had sustained him through almost twenty years as a Columban priest. With wit and sensitivity, the book describes the uncertainties, conflicts, and good-humored comradeship of the missionary life, as well as the author’s personal struggle to reconcile religious training with natural compassion. Against a backdrop of revolution, martial law, the war in Vietnam and upheavals throughout the Catholic Church, the author tells the dramatic story of how he fell in love and left the priesthood.

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Nice Fellow: A Biography of Jack Lynch by T. Ryle Dwyer
Jack Lynch, who died in October 1999, was the most popular Irish politician of his time. In Cork he is revered as no public figure since Daniel O’Connell. Born John Mary Lynch on 15 August 1917, Jack became a superb sportsman. He led Cork to All-Ireland hurling or football glory in six consecutive years. He began his government career as Parliamentary Secretary in charge of the Gaeltacht and later became Minister for Education, where he abolished the ban on married women teachers. As Minister for Industry and Commerce, Lynch helped prepare Ireland for membership of the EEC, and as Minister for Finance he engaged in some political sleight of hand, bringing in a budget and then requiring a mini-budget in the year de Valera was re-elected president. After assessing his sporting career, the author provides the only in-depth assessment of Lynch’s early political career and deals with his time as Taoiseach, his calm leadership during the Northern Troubles and his difficult relations with British Prime Minister Ted Heath. The push to oust Lynch as Fianna Fail leader, his difficult relations with Charles Haughey, and his decision to step down in order to facilitate his supporters are also considered in depth. Although opinion is divided over whether he was one of the country’s great Taoisigh or a week leader who was manipulated by others, there is no disputing the fact that Jack Lynch was a gentleman, and a thoroughly nice fellow.

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It’s A Long Way From Penny Apples by Bill Cullen
A phenomenal best-seller in hardback, this book is the story of a Dublin reflecting with stunning honesty on his city and his past, according to current Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Born and bred in the tough inner-city slums of Summerhill in Dublin, Bill Cullen was one of fourteen children. Selling on the streets from the age of six was a means of putting food on the table for Bill and his family. He finished school at thirteen to work on the street full-time. In 1956, Bill got a job as a messenger boy for a pound a week in Walden’s Ford Dealers in Dublin. Through hard work and determination, he was appointed director general of the company in 1964. Bill went on to set up the Fairlane Motor Company, which became the biggest Ford dealership in Ireland. In 1986, he took over the troubled Renault car distribution franchise from Waterford Crystal. His turnaround of that company into what is now the Glencullen Group is an Irish business success story. This book is an account of incredible poverty and deprivation in the Dublin slums. It highlights the frustrations of a father and a mother feeling their relationship crumble as they fight to give their children a better life. It is a story of courage, joy and happiness - of how a mother gave inspiration and values to her children, saying, ‘The best thing I can give you is the independence to stand on your own feet.’

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