Irish History

We walk past remnants of our past every day without noticing. Our ancestors left echoes of themselves all around us, if we only know where to look and how to interpret the signs. These remnants lie all over Ireland, telling us of …

The prospect of Irish unification is now stronger than at any point since partition in 1921. Voters on both sides of the Irish border may soon have to confront for themselves what the answer to a referendum question would mean - f…

Maps allow us to see how the world is organised spatially and show us relationships which cannot be understood from simply reading a text. This magnificent book highlights a vast selection of maps that range across the centuries a…

The story of the grassroots #WakingTheFeminists movement in Irish theater, a campaign that changed how we saw the world and reshaped the future both on and off the stage. When the Abbey Theatre's 2016 centenary program excluded wo…

How do people transform a house or flat into a home that nourishes both body and soul? How do they engage in the alchemy of homemaking? This book focuses a scholarly lens on one homemaking practice, dresser- and delph-keeping in w…

The two opposing political figures that shaped Irish life in the 1980s and beyond. In the 1980s, Irish politics was dominated by a fierce rivalry between Charles J. Haughey and Dr Garret FitzGerald, both leaders of their respectiv…

The head of the Guinness family tells the true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world. In this narrative non-fiction book, Arthur Edward Guinness, the 4th Earl of Iveagh and head of the Guinness family…

There have been tramways in Britain for 150 years, but it is a story of rise, decline and slow renaissance. Trams have come and gone, been loved and hated, popular and derided, considered both old fashioned and futuristic. Horse t…

Surrounded on all sides by water, Ireland and its people have long been shaped by the sea. Ireland has a rich history of famous – and infamous – mariners: from our earliest navigators, who may have reached North America – by curra…

This book features thirty-eight sites which contain collections of the finest and most interesting - and in several instances, little known - twentieth-century stained glass in Dublin city and county; the majority of the windows w…

Throughout history, the stories of women’s lives and work have been overshadowed by those of men. Wives, especially, disappear, unacknowledged as patrons and champions of their husband’s work, as collaborators, muses, carers and m…

THE NUMBER 1 IRISH TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 An Irish Times Book of the Year 2024 Ireland is a strikingly different country now to the one it was in the mid-1990s. Dramati…

From the bestselling author Linden MacIntyre comes an engrossing exploration of one of the most significant, but nearly unknown figures of the Irish War of Independence, Sir Hugh Tudor. Appointed by Winston Churchill to lead the R…

Executed by a British firing squad on May 12, 1916, for his role in organizing the Easter Rising, James Connolly was one of the most prominent radical organizers and agitators of his day. As a labor organizer, Connolly stressed th…

Until now, in-depth analysis of key female figures in Irish republicanism in the early twentieth century has been limited. Mary MacSwiney was one of themost single-minded anti-Treaty women, leading Eamon de Valera to describe her …

‘After the massacre, the GAA became even more important to us as a real sense of identity. It’s difficult to explain but we could cling to it in a sense, and say this is ours, this is us.’ – Clare Rogan, wife of Adrian Rogan, kill…

Irish history is often fast and furious and nowhere more contentiously than when discussing religion. This book is designed to be read with equal profit by those who know a little and those who know a lot about the role of religio…

For over four decades the story of the extraordinary evil that occurred at the Kincora Boys’ Home in East Belfast in the 1970s and the shocking attempts by MI5 to cover it up have haunted our political and social terrain for decad…

Described by Ulster Unionist leader James Craig as the ‘root of all evil’, the Boundary Commission that convened in 1924 was a symbol of hope for nationalist Ireland and fear for unionist Northern Ireland. Offered to Sinn Féin ple…

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe everyone lived ‘off the land’ in one way or another. In Ireland, however, almost everyone lived ‘on the land’ as well. Agriculture was the only economic resource for the vast majority o…

In the Prohibition era, the speakeasies of New York City provide some much-needed respite, particularly for the likes of Michael Malloy, an isolated Irish immigrant. But times are tough and for an unlikely group of associates – a …

Liam O'Callaghan's revelatory Blood and Thunder shows that the rise of Irish rugby is inextricable from the tensions, debates and divisions – of politics, religion and class – that have defined modern Irish history. Despite the po…

On 12 June 1922 King George V received at Windsor Castle representatives of the six disbanded Irish regiments. While five had long and distinguished service records, the South Irish Horse (SIH) had only been raised in 1902, as a r…

As the War of Independence began to rage in Ireland in 1920, the British, embarked on a major shake-up. They established publicity offices in Dublin to promote their version of events. In this fascinating book Michael B. Barry tel…

Far more than just a faint echo of the past, Ireland’s fairy forts are still vibrantly alive. The traditions connected to them are so powerful that, even today, people rarely interfere with Irish fairy forts or fairy trees. They a…

Discover the long and rich history of the island of Ireland, from the very earliest Mesolithic inhabitants to Vikings and Celts and the modern 21st-century nation of today. Encompassing stories of some of Ireland’s best-known cha…

In this unrepentant and revealing memoir, Dan Mulvihill, a leading figure in Irish republicanism recounts his fight for an Irish Republic over several decades and his central involvement in key events throughout the twentieth cent…

This addictive, fascinating and humorous book is an indispensable collection of Irish trivia, history and uncommon knowledge. Presented in short, digestible entries and engagingly written throughout, this revised edition contains …

Ireland played the central role in maintaining European culture when the dark ages settled on Europe in the fifth century: as Rome was sacked by Visigoths and its empire collapsed, Ireland became 'the isle of saints and scholars' …

Sergeant Maurice McCabe never set out to be a whistleblower. When, in 2008, he complained of shoddy investigations into serious crime in County Cavan, nothing could have prepared him for what was in store. For exposing gross incom…