Irish Biography

The artist Frances Georgiana Chenevix Trench, better known as Cesca, kept a detailed diary of her involvement in the nationalist movement as a member of Cumann na mBan, as well as a personal account of her presence in the Howth gun-running incident and the events of Easter Week 1916.

Described by Yeats as 'the nearest ... they have to a true poet' Mitchell (1866-1926) rebelled against privileged society and the Protestant Church. Dublin from the Easter Rising, the signing of the Treaty and the Civil War is seen through her eyes. Objective despite her republican views, she lampooned contemporary politics and the literary world.

Casimir Markievicz was a Polish count who fell in love with Joan of Arc. His pictures hang in National Gallery in Ireland and in Poland, but despite his famous name, he has been overshadowed by his wife's reputation. This book offers a study of Casimir's work and shows that his relationship with Constance and Ireland was a major part of his life.

Stanislaus (Stasko) Markiewiecz was overshadowed by his famous father and stepmother, Casimir and Constance. He was educated in Ireland, conscripted into the Russian Navy in World War One and held hostage by the Bolsheviks. One of his letters on a cloth was smuggled out of Russia in a coat. His story is a fascinating episode in the connection between Ireland and Poland.

By age seven, Rebecca Quin, now known in the ring as Becky Lynch, was already defying what the world expected of her. Raised in Dublin, Ireland in a devoutly Catholic family, Rebecca constantly invented new ways to make her mother worry - roughhousing with the neighbourhood kids, getting older and hosting secret parties while her parents were away, enrolling in a warehouse wrestling school, nearly breaking her neck and almost kneecapping a WWE star before her own wrestling career even began - and she was always in search of a thrilling escape from the ordinary.

Part investigative tale, part time capsule, And a Bang on the Ear sees Philip painstakingly piece together the events that led up to, and followed, the accidental clash of heads that left him in a coma before waking up to 30 years of pain and paralysis. Full of hope and humour, rage and rehabilitation, this is an autobiography unlike any other.

The first paperback edition of the critically acclaimed biography, described by one reviewer as 'a magnificent work of love and scholarship...the best biography I have read in years'.

This book is a selection of 40 articles from the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography, dealing with 42 people whose careers, in one way or another, were deeply involved with the Easter rising of 1916.The biographies include insurgents, women involved, nationalist leaders and figures in the British military and administration.

In his latest collection, the acclaimed author and broadcaster John Quinn explores the perennial theme of commencement through encounters with an array of intriguing people. Maeve Binchy shares a typically warm and good-humoured account of a first date and later, we hear from the writer and social philosopher, Charles Handy, of a profound life-changing experience. Henry Ford’s dream of ‘a motor-car for the great multitude’ and Martin Luther King’s dream of freedom and justice for his people are pondered, as the reader is taken on a journey of threshold moments that invigorate and inspire.