Irish Biography

10... 9... 8... 7... 6...That's about as far as you get, counting backwards, as you wait for surgery to begin - and that's all most people know about what I do. But what happens between you conking out and waking up? And what does the anaesthetist have to do with it all? Do they just sit around playing sudoku while the rest of the team do all the hard work? And why are they so obsessed with what time you ate dinner?

This is the story of a man who never had the life he could have had, born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, moved to another place to leave behind that horror, caught up in another war he was priding himself on staying out of. Blake Knox draws each party carefully in order to highlight the savage reach of the Northern Ireland conflict; not just a sectarian scuffle in a tiny part of north-west Europe. At the heart of this story is a family, several lives destroyed, and the ongoing private cost of war.

Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.

Recent years have witnessed a series of shifts in the reception of Brian O'Nolan's work, with the publication of collected short stories and dramatic texts and a systematic critical reappraisal of once marginal titles in the author's canon.

Brian Boydell (1917 - 2000) was a leading figure in Irish musical life. Composer, performer, broadcaster, agitator for music, and Professor of Music at Trinity College Dublin, he profoundly influenced the development of music and music education in Ireland.