Irish Biography & Memoir Books

Jackie McCarthy O'Brien has led a truly remarkable life, from being born in 1961 to an Irish mother and Jamaican father (whom she never met) in Birmingham to growing up in Limerick. She was put in an industrial school as a baby by…

Language is the labyrinth we're enmeshed in, and any line of exploration we think is leading us out only adds a further strand to the entanglement. Rope presents an alluring and provocative array of insights as it follows a mind o…

Trish Bourke's father, a questioning Catholic in a small Southern Irish town, found his faith shaken when Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on the family door in 1974. He converted in 1977. Her mother followed. Trish had no choice in th…

From the heartbreak of losing his mother to breast cancer at just 12 years old, to battling mental health struggles throughout his teens, Andrew Porter's journey is one of extraordinary resilience. In this deeply personal and insp…

Leo Varadkar shares his fascinating experience as Irish prime minister at a time of much change and turbulence, in this remarkably honest memoir.Leo Varadkar was an unlikely Taoiseach – the youngest on taking office in 2017, the f…

‘The one thing you can’t fully control in a ship is the water all around you, so part of your plan is always reading and analysing the currents and the tides. You have a clear image in your head of how you think the ship will perf…

Everything good, bad and downright mad that has shaped Vogue’s life and career is laid bare in Big Mouth. So get ready for sharply observed, hilarious and very personal insights into divorce, anxiety, family life, and showbiz, alo…

Upon its original publication in 1996, Are You Somebody? quickly became an cultural sensation in Ireland, sparking an ‘emotional episode in public life in Ireland’. O’Faolain’s striking candour and focus on the long-silenced exper…

The fascinating new memoir from one of Ireland's most celebrated and singular broadcastersI started writing this book as an exclusively work memoir but the work and the personal kept overlapping. I don’t know if that’s because I’m…

DR HARRY BARRY's life and career has been shaped by defining events: a solitary childhood with chronic illness, a traumatic experience in school, and family tragedies that set him on a course of dedicating his life to medicine and…

Katriona O'Sullivan has come a long way from the poverty, chaos and abuse she knew growing up. A respected academic and bestselling author, she defied every expectation placed on the teenage mother she once was.Yet even as the acc…

Lesley Bond and her partner Gordon were the first couple to embark on the six-month caretaking residency on the Great Blasket Island, one of Ireland’s most remote and historically rich locations. With no electricity, hot wat…

Bernard Phelan was working for an Iranian tour operator when he was arrested on false charges of spying on 3rd October 2022, becoming a political hostage. He shared "Satan's block" in Mashhad prison with political prisoners and dr…

'Since I’ve had my first book published, I’ve earned more from cleaning than from writing. The home economics don’t add up.' Between 2015 and 2021 Caitríona Lally published her first two novels, Eggshells and Wunderland. To buy he…

From the master storyteller behind 2023's critically acclaimed KILLING THATCHERA Rebel and a Traitor is the story of a rogue imperial consul who sought to forge a new nation in the middle of a war - and the mercurial spy chief who…

In these pages, Dr Suzanne Crowe opens the doors to a world few ever see: the charged and fragile realm of paediatric intensive care. From her earliest days as a junior doctor to becoming one of Ireland's leading specialists, she …

In this new anthology of essays about Maeve Brennan, ten contemporary Irish writers consider the various meanings of the word ‘asylum’: an institution, a site of incarceration, a refuge and a shelter. They explore cityscapes and g…

Tom Leahy hails from Ballythooly in North Cork. He is one of Ireland's most decorated Paralympians, winning a total of eight medals at the Paralympic Games. He is now a full-time artist, with his paintings appearing in many public…

Remarkably honest, brutally heroic and darkly humorous memoir following a devastating diagnosis of early onset Parkinson's disease. Twitch is a frank and funny memoir about picking up the pieces when personal tragedy hits. In 2021…

As Ireland's Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy took on one of the toughest briefs in government, one that continues to be a challenge today. Looking back at his life in the build-up to parliamentary office and at his time in the…

In At Least It Looks Good From Space, journalist Carl Kinsella attempts to solve the great human mystery of why we are the way we are in this chaotic era of internet algorithms, disinformation campaigns (Carl's only responsible fo…

On frosty nights, as he sits by a flickering fire, Michael Harding withdraws into the stillness of winter and begins to reckon with age and death.As stories emerge from the shadows, we meet a young boy whose arrival brings hope, b…

Michael Bradley joined his school friend's group in Derry, Northern Ireland in the summer of 1974. They had two guitars and no singer. Four years later the Undertones recorded 'Teenage Kicks', John Peel's favourite record, and bec…

She Died Young is the literary work of an astonishing mind in which intellect, madness, art and raw honesty unite. It is as far from a ‘celebrity memoir’ as you can get. With humour, honesty and a poetic sensibility, Brenda Fricke…

David Trimble was one of the most influential figures in modern British and Irish history. A Nobel Laureate, he negotiated the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 that helped to secure peace in Northern Ireland. In this first biography …

“IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS.” So begins Colm Tóibín’s fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for cancer. Tóibín survives, but he has entered, as he says, “the age of one ball.” The secon…

Samuel Beckett was perhaps the most unconventional playwright of the twentieth century. His plays broke all the rules by dispensing with traditional concepts of plot, scene, and character, concentrating instead on the experience o…

Rosita Sweetman tells with irresistible dry humour the story of how she fled from a turbulent upbringing into a relationship that became marked by emotional abuse. Set against the backdrop of mid-20th century Ireland, her narrati…

A lively and engaging account of the legendary Irish folk music ensemble Ceoltóirí Chualann, and the first time that readers can see the groundbreaking concepts used by Seán Ó Riada and his band Ceoltóirí Chualann as they changed …

An intimate and evocative celebration of the life and legacy of music and political icon Sinéad O’Connor, featuring writers including Neko Case, Sinéad Gleeson, Rayne Fisher-Quann, Porochista Khakpour, and more.  More than thirty …