Irish Interest

  • Northern Protestants on Shifting Ground

    Northern Protestants on Shifting Ground

    19.95

    Description
    Twenty years on from her critically acclaimed book, ‘Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People’, Susan McKay talks again to the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. Based on almost 100 brand-new interviews, and told with McKay’s trademark passion and conviction, this is essential reading. This new title will be accompanied by a new edition of ‘Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People’.

    Containing interviews with politicians, former paramilitaries, victims and survivors, business people, religious leaders, community workers, young people, writers and others, it tackles controversial issues, such as Brexit, paramilitary violence, the border, the legacy of the Troubles, same-sex marriage and abortion, RHI, and the possibility of a United Ireland, and explores social justice issues and campaigns, particularly the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. Interviewees include: Eileen Weir, Dee Stitt, Dawn Purvis, Chrissie Quinn, Clare Sugden, Toni Ogle, Kyle Black, Sammy Wilson and others, and ties in to topical debates around identity in the context of Brexit and the centenary of the foundation of Northern Ireland. Susan McKay is an award-winning writer and commentator and contributes regularly to print and broadcast media, including Guardian/Observer, New York Times, Irish Times and London Review of Books.

  • Rememberings

    Rememberings

    13.50

    THE LANDMARK MEMOIR OF A GLOBAL MUSIC ICON

    Sinead O’Connor’s voice and trademark shaved head made her famous by the age of twenty-one. Her recording of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ made her a global icon. She outraged millions when she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on American television.

    O’Connor was unapologetic and impossible to ignore, calling out hypocrisy wherever she saw it. She has remained that way for three decades. Now, in Rememberings, O’Connor tells her story – the heartache of growing up in a family falling apart; her early forays into the Dublin music scene; her adventures and misadventures in the world of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll; the fulfilment of being a mother; her ongoing spiritual quest – and through it all, her abiding passion for music.

    Rememberings is intimate, replete with candid anecdotes and full of hard-won insights. It is a unique and remarkable chronicle by a unique and remarkable artist.

  • Ireland's Pirate Trail

    Ireland’s Pirate Trail

    14.95

    Bloodthirsty buccaneers and buried treasure, fierce sea battles and cold-blooded murders, Barbary ducats and silver pieces of eight. Des Ekin embarks on a road trip around the entire coast of Ireland, in search of our piratical heritage, uncovering an amazing history of swashbuckling bandits, both Irish-born and imported. Ireland’s Pirate Trail tells stories of freebooters and pirates from every corner of our coast over a thousand years, including famous pirates like Anne Bonny and William Lamport, who set off to ply their trade in the Caribbean.

    Ekin also debunks many myths about our most well-known sea warrior, Granuaile, the ‘Pirate Queen’ of Mayo. Thoroughly researched and beautifully told. Filled with exciting untold stories.

  • Diary of a Young Naturalist

    Diary of a Young Naturalist

    15.00

    ‘This diary chronicles the turning of my world, from spring to winter, at home, in the wild, in my head.’

    Evocative, raw and lyrical, this startling debut explores the natural world through the eyes of Dara McAnulty, an autistic teenager coping with the uprooting of home, school, and his mental health, while pursuing his life as a conservationist and environmental activist. Shifting from intense darkness to light, recalling his sensory encounters in the wild – with blackbirds, whooper swans, red kites, hen harriers, frogs, dandelions, Irish hares and more – McAnulty reveals worlds we have neglected to see, in a stunning world of nature writing that is a future classic.

  • ISLANDS OF CONNAUGHT

    ISLANDS OF CONNAUGHT

    21.95

    CLARK, WALLACE

  • The Irish Diaspora

    The Irish Diaspora

    12.00
    Description
    The Irish have always been a travelling people. In the centuries after the fall of Rome, Irish missionaries carried the word of Christianity throughout Europe, while soldiers and mariners from across the land ventured overseas in all directions. Since 1800 an estimated 10 million people have left the Irish shores and today more than 80 million people worldwide claim Irish descent.

    The advent of the British Empire ignited a slow but extraordinary exodus from Ireland. The pioneering explorers of the Tudor Age were soon overtaken in number by religious refugees, the ‘Wild Geese’ who opted to live outside of the Protestant state and to take their chances in the Spanish or French empires, or in America. The Irish played a pivotal role in the foundation of the United States of America, just as they would in the Civil War that followed eighty-five years later.

    The lives of Irish emigrants wove in and out of the major events of global history, including the Abbe Edgeworth, confessor to King Louis XVI at his execution during the French Revolution; Margaretta Eagar, governess to the daughters of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia; and William Lamport, who travelled from County Wexford to Central America, and became Don Guillen, a martyr for Mexican independence. Turtle Bunbury explores the lives of those men and women, great and otherwise, whose journeys – whether driven by faith, a desire for riches and adventure, or purely for survival – have left their mark on the world.

  • Irish Customs and Rituals

    Irish Customs and Rituals

    12.50

    Do you know what a Brideóg is? Why are lone hawthorns unlucky? What does it mean to ‘drown the shamrock’? From the author of The Irish Cottage comes a new book, exploring old Irish customs and beliefs. Chapters focus on the quarter-day festivities that marked the commencement of each season: ‘Spring: Imbolc’; ‘Summer: Bealtaine’; ‘Autumn: Lughnasa’ and ‘Winter: Samhain’, and also major life events — ‘Births, Marriages and Death Customs’ — and general beliefs in ‘Spirituality and Well-Being’ and ‘The Supernatural’. Focusing on the period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Irish Customs and Rituals discusses a time during which many of the practices and beliefs in question went into decline. Many of these customs were rooted in residual pre-Christian beliefs that ran parallel to, and in spite of, conventional religion practised in the country. Some customs were so deep-rooted that despite continued disapproval from the Roman Catholic Church they remain with us today. It is wonderful to see so many traditions still with us, as many are worthwhile remembering, commemorating, or even reviving today. Irish Customs and Rituals will appeal to all those with an interest in Irish history, folklore, culture and social history.

  • Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings

    Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings

    49.00

    This major illustrated study investigates farmhouse and cabin furniture from all over the island of Ireland. It discusses the origins and evolution of useful objects, what materials were used and why, and how furniture made for small spaces, often with renewable elements, was innate and expected. Encompassing three centuries, it illuminates a way of life that has almost vanished. It contributes as much to our knowledge of Ireland’s cultural history as to its history of furniture. …

  • To Walk in My Native Place

    To Walk in My Native Place

    20.00

    To Walk in My Native Place

    By Bernadette McCarrick

    A book of poems with an accompanying set of photographs on the theme of Native Place.

    A coffee table book merging poetry and photography.

    “The poems in this collection are a lovingly observed portrait of the poet’s home place. Each poem captures a moment, a place or an event in a language that is evocative yet never sentimental.”

    Gerry Boland – September, 2020

  • In Nearly Every House

    In Nearly Every House

    20.00

    This book contains biographies along with
    black and white photographs featuring
    over one hundred traditional musicians
    from counties Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon
    and Mayo. Through the author’s unique
    personal and musical connection to the
    musicians of the North Connacht region,
    he uses a conversational interview style to
    draw out their stories, revealing both the
    individual and collective experience within
    that tradition.

  • Mythical Irish Wonders

    Mythical Irish Wonders

    22.95

    JOYCE, MARK

  • Standing In Gaps

    Standing In Gaps

    20.00

    ‘Standing in Gaps’ Seamus O’Rourke – A Memoir

    From far away Leitrim looks small and our lives insignificant. Not enough there to fill out the pages of a fairly thick book. Well come closer, and I’ll show you. And remember … it’s not a memory test. Who cares what I can remember. I just want to tell about the misery and the fun we had. It was all around me. In the fields and the houses. In the people and the time. This was my time. And what a time it was, if you had nothing better to be at.

    ‘The comedy and calamity of growing up in Leitrim’

    Seamus O’Rourke is an award-winning writer, director and actor from County Leitrim. He tours Ireland regularly with his own self-penned shows. Seamus has over two million hits on YouTube and Social Media with his collection of short stories, recitations and sketches.

     

  • Constellations

    Constellations

    13.50
    Description
    *Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020**Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*’Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read.’ -Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing. I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal.
  • What is Beautiful in the Sky

    What is Beautiful in the Sky

    7.50
    Description
    ‘In these strange days Michael Harding’s route taking and wise words gently nudge us towards the future, steadying us as we navigate the great unknowns ahead’ Joe Duffy It’s dawn and in the early morning light, Michael Harding is walking in his garden in the hills above Lough Allen in Leitrim, dreaming of the new beginning in Donegal he had planned before the world changed in the early months of 2020. Here, in his stunning and intimate new book, we travel with Michael through this day as he looks back at a life lived within, and as part of, the Irish landscape. In doing so, he vividly brings to life what is at the heart of Irish identity: storytelling, love and human connection.
  • Why the Moon Travels

    Why the Moon Travels

    12.95

    DE BHAIRDUIN,OEIN

  • Ok, Let's Do Your Stupid Idea

    Ok, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea

    12.95

    ‘Funny, smart, soulful and sometimes devastating … It made me laugh and cry’ EMILIE PINE, author of Notes to Self’Hilariously, painfully, Freynefully brilliant’ JOSEPH O’CONNORPatrick Freyne has tried a lot of stupid ideas in his life. Now, in his scintillating debut, he is here to tell you about them: like the time (aged 5) he opened a gate and let a horse out of its field, just to see what would happen; or the time (aged 19) he jumped out of a plane for charity, even though he didn’t much care about the charity and was sure he’d end up dead; or the time (aged old enough to know better) he used a magazine as a funnel for fuel when the petrol cap on his band’s van broke.