Irish Non-Fiction

From war to revolution, famine to emigration, The Darkness Echoing travels around Ireland bringing its dark past to lifeIt's no secret that the Irish are obsessed with misery, suffering and death. And no wonder, for there is darkn…

Forestry in Ireland has never been so contentious. It is the subject of protests outside parliament and angry call-in radio shows. Over the last century the area of Irish woodland has increased tenfold, mostly through the planting…

Full-colour, handy guide to more than 50 of the most popular film and TV locations in Ireland. Striking images and detailed descriptions allow for a comprehensive guide to Ireland's most recognisable filming sites in a convenient,…

For decades the British and Irish had 'got used to' a situation without parallel in Europe: a cold, ferocious, persistent campaign of bombing and terror of extraordinary duration and inventiveness. At the heart of that campaign li…

Claire Walsh spent her twenties living the life she thought she was supposed to live, all the while playing hide and seek with depression. As a result, the road to recovery was the only travelling she did. Aged 32, single and livi…

Stories from the lives of some of Ireland’s greatest sports stars. From the highs of lifting trophies and overcoming the impossible, to the lows of battling injury and facing defeat, these are inspiring stories written in plain En…

Explore new places with handy pocket maps from Collins. Handy full-colour map of Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way with a high level of detail. Clear mapping of the full 2500 km (over 1500 miles) route, showing the road network and plac…

Every day a beloved father dies. Every day a lover departs. Every day a woman turns forty.All three happening together brings a moment of reckoning. Medieval historian Elizabeth Boyle made sense of these events the best way she k…

Death is a whisper in the Anglo-Saxon world. But on a remote island, off the coast of County Mayo, it has a louder voice. The local radio station runs a thrice-daily roll-call of the recently departed.The islanders keep vigil with…

For over thirty years, David McDonald worked in Ireland's biggest prisons. This is his story. As a young officer, McDonald got a baptism of fire in Mountjoy. In 1989 it was a chaotic, pungent and overcrowded place, and the approac…

Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Among the wave of emigrants from Ireland to North America were many, many young women who travelled on their own, hoping for a better life…

Lydia Little tells the story of her extraordinary brother, Fergus O’Farrell, by bringing the reader through an intimate, raw account of his wake and funeral – all the while carrying the secret of how he really died. Fergus was the…

Daragh Fleming’s honest portrayal of mental health, wellbeing and recovery opens with a quote from Seneca, Moral Letters that states: ‘I will keep constant watch over myself.’ Throughout Fleming’s ‘Lonely Boy’, loss, friendship an…

Diary of An Activist is a social activism memoir journeying through vegetarianism, anti-nuclear and CND protests, feminist and queer activism, lesbian parties, coming out and becoming a parent. It features quirky Cork locations li…

Mountaineering Ireland is delighted to announce that Irish Peaks, our new guide to hillwalking on Ireland’s highest mountains, is now available direct from Mountaineering Ireland. Irish Peaks is a large-format book, celebrating Ir…

From near Bantry to Inchigeelagh, on to Macroom, Dripsey and Coachford, all the way north to Millstreet and almost as far as Mallow. Like anywhere else in Cork and Ireland for that matter it’s dotted with murder. Some murders are …

In A Natural Year, critically acclaimed travel writer Michael Fewer celebrates the everyday wonder of Irish nature in these beautifully written diaries, observed from his homes in south Dublin and rural Waterford, in which he deli…

Twelve birds. One country. A wild Ireland waiting to be discovered. In Ireland Through Birds, Conor O'Brien takes the reader on an ornithological adventure around Ireland in search of twelve of our rarest and most elusive birds. A…

Irish Women's Speeches (Vol. II): A Rich Chorus of Voices follows on from the ground-breaking, best-selling Voices that Rocked the System. Related to arts, culture and heritage this compilation of Irish women's speeches, includes …

Serial winners and glorious losers, heroes andvillains, trailblazing women, role models and rogues,all are here; so too are audacious sporting founders,enduring legends and forgotten or overlookedgreats. Through a selection of six…

The Great Lighthouses of Ireland is a collection of striking images and fascinating stories about the lighthouses around Ireland's coast and the extraordinary men and women who lived and worked in them. The book, published to acco…

The road to Croke Park can be a long one, but for Leitrim hurler Zak Moradi it was longer than most. Born in a refugee camp in Ramadi, Iraq, at the height of the Gulf War, Zak spent his formative years living under the oppressive …

Abandoned Ireland travels the length and breadth of the island of Ireland visiting and documenting our forgotten buildings, highlighting their social importance, and bringing their stories back to life through the medium of photog…

Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written his autobiography: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced a…

The seventeenth century in Ireland was a time of huge change. At its beginning, there were still significant areas under Catholic Gaelic ownership and cultural sway; by the end – almost none. The story of how the island made this …

What makes the perfect swim?It's all about the most magical locations (and how to protect them), finessing your kitbag, keeping yourself and others safe and maybe discovering a nice place for a warm-up cuppa and cake. Whether you'…

For almost fifty years, Michael Harding has been crafting words in a bid to express himself and to explore truths about the human condition. But even still he found himself unable to say certain things he really wanted to. Then, w…

Web of Lies is a fascinating and far-reaching examination of the rising threat of far-right extremist thought in Ireland and internationally, and looks at how these movements utilise the online world to spread disinformation, pola…

Our ancestors developed a uniquely nature-focused society, centred on esteemed poets, seers, monks, healers and wise women who were deeply connected to the land. They used this connection to the cycles of the natural world - from …

Mary Lou McDonald is the bookies' favourite to be Ireland's next Taoiseach. She would be the first woman to reach the office, and the first Sinn Fein leader ever to enter government in the Republic of Ireland. But how did a quinte…