Non-Fiction - History
For more information, or to buy the book or read an extract, click on the titles below.
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An Unconsidered People: The Irish in LondonWritten by Catherine Dunne.Before the ‘Ryanair Generation’, leaving home was for good. Half a million Irish men and women left these shores in the nineteen-fifties, forced by decades of economic stagnation to make their lives elsewhere. For many of these emigrants, mostly young and unskilled, Britain was their only hope of survival. |
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At Arm's Length: Aristocrats in the Republic of IrelandWritten by Anne Chambers.Living in Ireland today, unobtrusive and ignored by the greater Irish public, are the descendants of Ireland’s former ruling class. Some are directly descended from Ireland’s most ancient kings and chiefs, their ancestry stretching back beyond history. Others claim an Irish pedigree of merely five hundred years. But by virtue of history they are, despite their ancestry, regarded as being less than Irish, not of Ireland. |
Brief Encounters: Meetings with Remarkable PeopleWritten by Bill Long.'Brief Encounters' describes Bill Long''s chance meetings with some of the most famous writers of our time, including Raymond Chandler and John Steinbeck. |
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China and the IrishWritten by Jerusha Mc Cormack.China and the Irish is a pioneering work, the first to explore relations between the Chinese people and those from the island of Ireland. Published to honour the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Ireland in June 2009, the book contains eleven essays. These cover an astonishing range of topics, from diplomatic history to music, from business to botanical exchanges and literary connections. |
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Citizen DwyerWritten by Sean McCarthy.et in Ireland and New South Wales between 1798 and 1825, and describes the life of the ‘Wicklow Chieftain’ Michael Dwyer – revolutionary idealist, inspirational guerrilla leader, and violent alcoholic. Arrested after the rebellion, Dwyer and his family spend time in Kilmainham Gaol before he and his wife are deported to a penal colony in Australia. There they endeavour to reconstruct their lives in the penal colony, but Dwyer’s life is ruled and ruined by alcohol. The story brings to life a pivotal time in Irish history when cruelty was matched by cruelty, an uprising was dependent on French support that never arrived, Robert Emmet was hanged, and a family were brutally separated. This struggle for survival leads to Dwyer’s increasing violence and alcoholism, eventually leading to his death. When his children finally arrive in Australia 1825 they can only visit his grave. |