Biography / Memoir

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All Down Darkness Wide
€17.50
A luminous and haunting memoir from the prize-winning poet – a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma. When Sean meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis.

Wrestling with this, Sean Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope. All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s suffering.

By turns devastating and soaring, it is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a work of rare and transcendent beauty.

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I Will Be Good
€18.50
Meet Peig McManus, an unforgettable Dublin character whose story will make you laugh and cry. Her memoir of a 1940s’ childhood is recounted with candour and wit, as she describes her early years in the last of the city’s tenements, under the shadow of the Second World War. Even in the midst of sorrow, as the ravages of poverty and tuberculosis prevailed, there was always singing and laughter.

Peig recalls happy family gatherings in their tenement rooms before their way of life was shattered when the slums were cleared, making way for the migration of inner-city families to Dublin’s new suburbs. Peig learned early about class distinction, chastity and shame, and fought against social prejudice to become one of Ireland’s foremost campaigners for educational reform. But a quiet sorrow lay at the heart of her life, one which could not be hidden forever.

Now, in her eighties, Peig shares her story: an inspiring journey through the trials and triumphs of a remarkableIrish woman who refused to do what she was told.

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Tea for One
€18.95
Description

Many of us spend the later years of life living solo when children have grown up and moved on. Others choose this lifestyle. We get used to being on our own while also enjoying family and communal occasions.

But 2020 brought new challenges to this solo lifestyle. We rose to the first challenge thinking that it would all be over in a matter of weeks. But no.

Instead came a series of on-again off-again lockdowns of different levels. This was a new, radical, solitary living experience which was really going to test our endurance and resilience. Would the coping skills we had already acquired see us through? But this was more a hermitage existence than we had ever experienced and it would really test our mettle.

Then, gradually, a realisation dawned that maybe there were things to be learnt from this unique situation? Might we discover a new understanding and appreciation of things previously ignored? Alice began to wonder how best to handle this new, solitary experience, and to document her progress though this most extraordinary year. This is her journey.

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Rambling Man – My Life on the Road
€18.95
In my fantasy of the Rambling Man who is something of a hobo, walking – or maybe jumping into the car of a moving train – is what he does. He slings his guitar or banjo over his shoulder and strides out along the road to the next town. There he plays a few songs at a local gig and meets a beautiful woman who feeds and shags him.

It’s a wonderful life, and a million miles better than sitting on your couch watching reality TV.

During his lifetime of global adventures, Sir Billy Connolly’s genuine curiosity and natural ability to connect with the people he meets on the road has made him a true ‘citizen of the world’.

A good trip, in my book, should be littered with little detours. Travelling from A to B is all very well, but you risk missing out on so much .

In RAMBLING MAN, Billy takes us with him on his incredible journeys criss-crossing the world.

But this is no conventional travel memoir. From Ireland to India, Australia to the Arctic, we join the Big Yin on an international voyage full of detours, digressions and the most eccentric of characters – all underscored by the chosen soundtrack of the ultimate ramblin’ man himself.

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The Biography John Le Carre
€19.50
Long after The Spy Who came in from the Cold made John le Carre a worldwide, bestselling sensation, David Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym, remained an enigma. In this definitive biography, written with unprecedented access to the man himself, Adam Sisman offers an illuminating portrait of a fascinating and enigmatic writer. In Cornwell’s lonely childhood Adam Sisman uncovers the origins of the themes of love and abandonment which dominated le Carre’s fiction: the departure of his mother when he was five, followed by ‘sixteen hugless years’ in the dubious care of his father, a man of energy and charm, a serial seducer and conman who hid the Bentleys in the trees when the bailiffs came calling – a ‘totally incomprehensible father’ who could ‘put a hand on your shoulder and the other in your pocket, both gestures equally sincere’.

And in Cornwell’s adult life – from recruitment by both MI5 and MI6, through marriage and family life, to his emergence as the master of the spy novel – Sisman explores the idea of espionage and its significance in human terms; the extent to which betrayal is acceptable in exchange for love; and the endless need for forgiveness, especially from oneself. Written with exclusive access to David Cornwell, to his private archive and to the most important people in his life – family, friends, enemies, intelligence ex-colleagues and ex-lovers – and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material, Adam Sisman’s extraordinarily insightful and constantly revealing biography brings in from the cold a man whose own life was as complex and confounding and filled with treachery as any of his novels.

‘I’m a liar,’ Cornwell once wrote. ‘Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist.

‘This is the definitive biography of a major writer, described by Richard Osman as ‘just the finest, wisest storyteller we had.’

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Time and Tide
€19.95
A poignant and introspective memoir from Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird. In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease – a man whose voice was so synonymous with his career faced losing it completely. Yet knowing he had just a short time left with family and friends, what emerged was a great sense of resilience and motivation to take advantage of every moment.

Here, Charlie reflects on his life and phenomenal broadcast career through the lens of his diagnosis, as he ponders the big questions and takes stock of the small moments that we so often overlook. Written over the course of 2022 as his health deteriorated, with the help of long-time friend and fellow journalist Ray Burke, this is a candid and unforgettable story about the triumph of the human spirit and, ultimately, what it means to be alive.

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Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
€19.95
‘Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name.

My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.’

So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who travelled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us.

. . and so much more.

In an extraordinary story that only he could tell – and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it – Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true.

But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humour, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fuelled it despite seemingly having it all.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening – as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.

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Limitless
€19.95
The sea has always been a part of Nuala Moore’s life: her earliest memory is of jumping off her father’s fishing boat in Dingle Harbour and swimming back to shore. Since then, she’s swum in some of the coldest, most remote and dangerous waters in the world, from the Bering Strait to the Drake Passage. After years of marathon swimming, Nuala struggled to balance sacrifice and achievement.

Her work-life balance, coupled with caring for her father, forced a change in her pathway. She turned to ice swimming. For Nuala, these extreme situations offered freedom and a chance to find her true north.

Nuala believes that everyone is capable of greatness, whatever shape that might take. Limitless is her breathtaking memoir, detailing what goes through her mind when she’s in the water and how, when she returns home, she processes the fallout of pushing herself to the brink.

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Big Beacon
€19.95
In Big Beacon, Norwich’s favourite son and best broadcaster, Alan Partridge, triumphs against the odds.

TWICE.

Using an innovative ‘dual narrative’ structure you sometimes see in films, Big Beacon tells the story of how Partridge heroically rebuilt his TV career, rising like a phoenix from the desolate wasteland of local radio to climb to the summit of Mount Primetime and regain the nationwide prominence his talent merits.

But then something quite unexpected and moving, because Big Beacon also tells the story of a selfless man, driven to restore an old lighthouse to its former glory, motivated by nothing more than respect for a quietly heroic old building that many take for granted, which some people think is a metaphor for Alan himself even though it’s not really for them to say.*

Leaving his old life behind and relocating to a small coastal village in Kent, Alan battles through adversity, wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious community, and ultimately shows himself to be a quite wonderful man.

* The two strands will run in tandem, their narrative arcs mirroring each other to make the parallels between the two stories abundantly clear to the less able reader.

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Madhouse
€19.95
I grew up in a psychiatric experiment crossed with an alcoholic experiment . . . a place run by two people who were extraordinarily drunk and guarded by a potentially vicious dog with a brain tumour.

PJ Gallagher spent much of his childhood knocking back Lucozade with the local alcoholics in his parents’ northside pub. But the chaos that reigned for his first ten years was nothing compared to what happened when – having lost the pub – his mum took in six psychiatric patients from the local hospital to give them ‘care in the community’.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

Madhouse is PJ’s riotous life story. Covering everything from dogs, motorbikes and the art of small talk, to the lessons of mental breakdown and finally figuring out love, this is PJ unbound. Most surprising – to PJ more than anyone – is the prospect of becoming a dad in his late forties, when he always thought of ‘family’ as a trap.

Madhouse is the funny, insightful and moving story of someone just trying to keep his head above water – and how he is making sense of it all at last!

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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.

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An Irish Atlantic Rainforest
€21.95
Description

On the Beara peninsula in West Cork, a temperate rainforest flourishes. It is the life work of Eoghan Daltun, who had a vision to rewild a 73-acre farm he bought, moving there from Dublin with his family in 2009. An Irish Atlantic Rainforest charts that remarkable journey.

Part memoir, part environmental treatise, as a wild forest bursts into life before our eyes, we’re invited to consider the burning issues of our time: climate breakdown, ecological collapse, and why our very survival as a species requires that we urgently and radically transform our relationship with nature. This is a story as much about doing nothing as taking action – allowing natural ecosystems to return and thrive without interference, and in doing so heal an ailing planet. Powerfully descriptive, lovingly told, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest presents an enduring picture of the regenerative force of nature, and how one Irishman let it happen.

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Keira and Me
€22.50
Let national treasure Professor Noel Fitzpatrick – the Supervet – break your heart and put it back together again in this beautiful new Christmas story. ‘With you by my side, just doing my best was the best thing to do.’

Keira is an extraordinary dog. She held the key to Noel’s heart from the moment he first met her.

That’s because Keira doesn’t judge. When Noel struggles, Keira is there to remind him he need only do his best. When he sees only darkness, Keira is ready to lift him back into the light.

Keira & Me is the real-life story of Supervet Noel Fitzpatrick, his companion Keira and their life together. It captures the incredible bond of unconditional love between us and our canine friends. Inspiring and healing in equal measure, this beautifully illustrated and deeply heartfelt story of Noel and Keira’s journey together teaches us all how to embrace the ups with the downs, the joy and the sorrow, the darkness and the light, that make up a life.

For animal lovers everywhere, or anyone who needs a little comfort this Christmas, Keira & Me promises to break your heart and put it back together again – even better than it was before.

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This Boy’s Heart
€22.95
Description

John Creedon is a renowned storyteller. Following on from the sensational success of An Irish Folklore Treasury, here he seeks to capture the folklore of his own childhood. This Boy’s Heart is set in a city-centre household bursting with humanity, with a cast of a dozen children and another dozen adults, including beloved aunts, an American writer, an African doctor and a Scottish bookie.

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Walfrid
€23.95
Andrew Kerins [Brother Walfrid] [1840 – 1915] was one of
the most significant Irish immigrants to Scotland. He
was an outstanding individual in relation to Catholic
education and charity in Glasgow and a major
contributor to the emergence of organised sport in
Scotland in the late nineteenth century.
He was but one individual, amongst countless thousands
of victims, who survived the catastrophe of An Gorta Mor
in Ireland, only to be forced to leave behind family,
community and homeland in the hope of finding a
better life overseas. Over one million others perished
owing to the prevalence of starvation and disease during
Ireland’s darkest period. Kerins left for Glasgow as a
fifteen-year-old boy and the spectre of hunger,
accompanied by a concern for the spiritual and physical
well-being of others, are motifs which endured
throughout his long and impactful life.

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Spare
€26.95
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow – and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling – and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last.

With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief. Prince Harry wishes to support British charities with donations from his proceeds from Spare. The Duke of Sussex has donated $1,500,000 to Sentebale, an organisation he founded with Prince Seeiso in their mothers’ legacies, which supports vulnerable children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS.

Prince Harry will also donate to the non-profit organisation WellChild in the amount of GBP300,000. WellChild, which he has been Royal patron of for fifteen years, makes it possible for children and young people with complex health needs to be cared for at home instead of hospital, wherever possible.

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