Biography

In the sequel to Seamus O’Rourke’s popular first memoir, Standing in Gaps, this innocent Leitrim lad finally flees the nest, briefly sampling life in New York, Dublin and London – before inevitably returning to his beloved, duller…

GBS was the first great brand – discover how he created this most modern of concepts. The fourth book in the Royal Irish Academy’s award-winning ‘Judging’ series looks at the legacy of George Bernard Shaw, Nobel prizewinner for li…

The Remastered Edition: because Theres Always More to the Story Dave Grohl' s TheStoryteller created a sensation when it was initially published, becoming a global bestseller and thrilling fans and critics alike. Readers came to t…

George Michael was an extravagantly gifted, openhearted soul singer whose work was both pained and smolderingly erotic. He was a songwriter of true craft and substance, and his music swept the world, starting in the mid-1980s. His…

'He understands only the women he invents – the others not at all' Thomas Hardy is one of the most beloved and most-read British authors. His influence on literature and the minds of his readers is singular. But how is it that th…

When death is a way of life . . .In A Life Among the Dead, David McGowan, Ireland's best known Funeral Director, and subject of the Award-winning Netflix documentary The Funeral Director, guides us through the business, the scienc…

Lenin is a colossal figure whose influence on twentieth-century history cannot be underestimated. Robert Service has written a calmly authoritative biography on this seemingly unknowable figure. Making use of recently opened archi…

Revolutionary practitioner, theorist, factional chief, sparkling writer, ‘ladies’ man’ (e.g., his affair with Frieda Kahlo), icon of the Revolution, anti-Jewish Jew, philosopher of everyday life, grand seigneur of his household, f…

It was love at first taste for fifteen-year-old Tadhg Hickey when he drank a can of Scrumpy Jack on the night of his exam results. Straight away it provided a cure for that constant feeling of 'something wrong, something not quite…

‘Every devotee of literature and art should read this rare, bright-lit, hard-won book, and every student of life — that is to say, everyone.' - Sebastian Barry In this contemplative short narrative, artist and acclaime…

The riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—a record-breaking, critically-acclaimed no.1 bestseller, now out in paperback. In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the s…

Delving deep into Deakin’s library of words, Patrick Barkham draws from notebooks, diaries, letters and recordings to conjure his voice back to glorious life in these pages

Joan Didion's savage masterpiece, which, since first publication in 1968, has been acknowledged as an unparalleled report on the state of America during the upheaval of the Sixties Revolution. We forget all too soon the things we …

After being expelled from school for playing football for his country, fifteen-year-old Liam Brady travelled to London to join Arsenal, and soon became an indispensable part of their glorious 1970s team. Rightly considered one of …

Musician and artist Cosey Fanni Tutti has continually challenged boundaries and conventions for four decades. As a founding member of the hugely influential avant-garde band Throbbing Gristle, as one half of electronic pioneers Ch…

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. I thought of life's many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success a…

Get tucked in to a third bestselling helping of Clarkson's Farm from our favourite wellie-wearing wannabe farmer, Jeremy Clarkson. After three years, Jeremy Clarkson has discovered the golden rule of farming:whatever you hope will…

Discover the authoritative, illuminating biography of T. E. Lawrence – the man who inspired the iconic film Lawrence of Arabia – from The World's Greatest Living Explorer Ranulph Fiennes Thomas Edward Lawrence first set foot on th…

Colm Tóibín’s personal account of encountering James Baldwin’s work, published in Baldwin’s centenary year. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year…

Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love a…

The critically acclaimed definitive biography of Kate Bush, revised and updated for 2024, with a new foreword by Sinead Gleeson. Detailing everything from Bush's upbringing to her early exposition of talent, to her subsequent evol…

'As I shall embark in a business, within a few days, the event of which is uncertain, I take the opportunity of a vacant hour to throw on paper a few memorandums relative to myself and my family …’ So begins Theobald Wolfe Tone’s…

The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's masterful and intensely-personal series about the four seasons, illustrated with paintings by the great German artist Anselm KieferThe conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and origi…

As a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working class parents and the…

Lady Sings the Blues is the inimitable autobiography of one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century. Born to a single mother in 1915 Baltimore, Billie Holiday had her first run-in with the law at aged 13. But Billie Holiday…

The first and only Estate-authorized biography of the legendary artist, Tupac Shakur, a moving exploration of his life and powerful legacy, fully illustrated with photos, mementos, handwritten poetry, musings, and more*AS SEEN IN …

A spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Wood. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as…

Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris, and Shanghai to the stunning desert solitude of …

On 29 September 1934, at the German Embassy office in London, Christabel Bielenberg officially became a German citizen. Having met her German husband Peter two years prior, Christabel decided to renounce her British citizenship, p…

Lebowitz turns her trademark caustic wit to the vicissitudes of life - from children ('rarely in the position to lend one a truly interesting sum of money') to landlords ('it is the solemn duty of every landlord to maintain an ade…