Irish History Books

Storytelling kept alive the myths, legends and history of the Blasket Islands. In her old age, Peig Sayers, recounted her life to her son who recorded the tale in this book. She recalls the events of her life and her simple philos…

Country houses may be triumphs of architecture, fine and decorative art, and landscape design, but they are also about the history and transmission of ideas. In varying degrees their occupants thought, conversed, read, and respond…

From the first prehistoric inhabitants of the island to the Windsor Framework for Northern Ireland, this uniquely concise account of Ireland and its people reveals how modern Irish society is the product of a rich, multivalent his…

This highly anticipated sequel charts the contributions of Irish doctors in the Second World War, a conflict that demonstrated to the world that the pace of military warfare had changed forever. Advancements in medical care during…

Dublin is the only city in the world to produce three Nobel Prize winners for literature. An indication that something remarkable was taking place, not only in the capital but in the whole country, came in the extraordinary conflu…

Pictorial map illustrating almost 200 medieval coats of arms of Ireland's principal families.A map of Ireland showing the locations of the lands occupied by each family between the 14th and 17th centuries, following the Norman inv…

This comprehensive directory lists historic locations in Dublin on a street-by-street basis, describing events during the tumultuous decade from the 1913 Dublin Lockout, through the 1916 Easter Rising and Irish War of Independence…

In January 1972, a peaceful civil rights march in Northern Ireland ended in bloodshed. Troops from Britain's 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment opened fire on marchers, leaving 13 dead and 15 wounded. Seven of those killed were teen…

Ireland's top crime journalist traces the flood of cocaine into Ireland and those behind its unprecedented growth. From the first smugglers and their adventures on the high seas to the modern-day Instagram-loving gangsters, COCAIN…

Amidst the moments of seismic change in LGBTQ history in Ireland lie the stories of ordinary people, who did extraordinary things to change queer Ireland and Irish culture. Marking fifty years of the founding of an LGBTQ rights mo…

November 1983. Early morning in suburban south Dublin. Businessman Don Tidey is snatched from his car and the IRA has its latest kidnap victim.Weeks later he is tracked down to an isolated Leitrim wood, but in saving Tidey’s life …

Northern Ireland is one hundred years old. Northern Ireland does not exist. Both of these statements are true.It just depends on who you ask. How do you write about a place like this? THE STRANGERS' HOUSE asks this question of the…

In July 1927, at just thirty-five years old, Kevin O’Higgins was assassinated on his way to Mass in Booterstown, Co. Dublin. A reviled figure for anti-Treaty republicans, O’Higgins became the target of particular venom for his voc…

In 1983 twenty-four-year-old Catholic taxi driver Kevin Barry Artt was convicted and sentenced to life for Miles’ murder, falsely named by an IRA member-turned-jailhouse-informant. On his way to the Maze in handcuffs, Artt resolut…

Branded as ‘Bandit Country’ by the British government, South Armagh was the heartland of the Provisional IRA. It was the rebel Irish stronghold where Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy reigned supreme, bomb attacks on England were planned and t…

This selection of documentary photography by Billy Mundow matches monochrome images of Ireland from the 1960s to the words of Irish poets, recalling lost generations. Themes of a vanished world spool through the pages, capturing t…

During the War of Independence, faced with an armed insurrection it couldn’t stop, the British government introduced increasingly harsh penalties for suspected republicans, including internment without trial. This led to the incar…

The Royal Irish Constabulary are often portrayed as the villains of the War of Independence in Ireland, Irishmen who betrayed their country by serving the British regime. No memorial has been raised in Ireland to those who died du…

Tadhg Barry was the last high-profile victim of the crown forces during the Irish War of Independence. A veteran republican, trade unionist, journalist, poet, GAA official and alderman on Cork Corporation, he was shot dead in Ball…

There are violent events and murders in the history of every country and Ireland is no exception. Through the years, it has had its share of violent murders including the murder of its most famous victim, Ellie Hanley or the 'Coll…

In the summer of 1982, Irish aristocrat Malcolm Macarthur embarked on a brutal killing spree in a doomed plan to remedy his financial woes. Two weeks later, in a sensational turn of events, he was arrested in the home of Attorney …

Explore the lives of over forty men and women – great and otherwise – whose pioneering journeys beyond the Irish shore played a profound role in world history. The Irish have always been a travelling people. Since 1800 an estimat…

Born in Cloughjordan in Co. Tipperary, MacDonagh was a poet and playwright, an educator and political activist. Appointed to the IRB Military Council he became a member of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic and was a…

In the twenty-first century there are two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland, and two very different heads of state represent the populations of Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively: the elected presidency of the republic…

Executed in Kilmainham Gaol on 8 May 1916, Michael Mallin had commanded a garrison of rebels in St Stephen's Green and the College of Surgeons during Easter Week. He was Chief-of-Staff and second-in-command to James Connolly in th…

In this gripping memoir, Eamonn Mallie takes us on an extraordinary journey through his life as a journalist in Northern Ireland. From the frontlines of the Troubles to the corridors of power, Mallie’s fearless reporting and unrel…

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of the brutal crime and a whole …

First written down in the eighth century AD, these early Irish stories depict a far older world - part myth, part legend and part history. Rich with magic and achingly beautiful, they speak of a land of heroic battles, intense lov…

If you are looking for happy, positive or uplifting stories then this might not be the book for you. If, on the other hand, tales of human tragedy, executions, wars, grave-robbing, rioting, man-eating Kerry eagles, rat-eating Belf…

In 1993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahon left Ireland for New York, carrying two suitcases and a ton of unseen baggage. It took years, and a bitter struggle with alcohol addiction, to unpick the intricate traumas of her past and pres…