Irish Biography

Everyone knows where they were when Ray Houghton outfoxed the Italian goalkeeper in the 1994 World Cup finals. Every television in the country was tuned in to the match, and The Heights Bar in Loughinisland, Co. Down was no exception. But two miles down the road, three men with no interest in Ireland's footballing progress were planning a deadly massacre. Shortly after half-time they burst through the door of the bar and opened fire, spraying bullets indiscriminately. As they fled the scene, six innocent men lay dead or dying.

Irish mafia from the streets of Dublin to the highest echelons of global organised crime and right into the heart of professional boxing. When a weigh-in turns into a gangland bloodbath, the tables begin to turn on the powerful Kinahan Organised Crime Group. But is it too late to tame the beast or can the law finally catch up with the mob? With a unique insight into the rise of mob and its reach into boxing through a tapestry of confidential informants and some too-close-for-comfort experiences, Tallant brings to life one of the most extraordinary stories in modern organised crime.

On discovering her murdered husband's body, an 18th-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's poem travels through the centuries, finding its way to a new mother who has narrowly avoided her own fatal tragedy. When she realizes that the literature dedicated to the poem reduces Eibhlin Dubh's life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poet's girlhood and old age; her unique rages, joys, sorrows, and desires; the shape of her days and site of her final place of rest.

Ireland's patron saint has long been shrouded in legend: he drove the snakes out of Ireland; he triumphed over Druids and their super-natural powers; he used a shamrock to explain the Christian mystery of the Trinity. But his true story is more fascinating than the myths.

Sinn Féin is the most popular political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. A movement once synonymous with a paramilitary campaign is on the brink of taking real power through purely democratic means. But if Sinn Féin has mastered the art of electoral politics, it remains strangely opaque. Who really runs the party? How is it funded? And what can we expect of it as a party of government? Aoife Moore, Irish Journalist of the Year in 2021, explores these and other burning questions in The Long Game.

Maeve Higgins was a best-selling memoirist and comedian in her native Ireland when, at the grand old age of 31, she left the only home she’d ever known in search of something more. Like many women in their early 30s, she both was and was not the adult she wanted to be. At once smart, curious, and humane, Maeve in America is the story of how Maeve found herself, literally and figuratively, in New York City.

In part, an exercise in coming to terms with and making sense of life and mortality following the loss of a beloved father; in part, a reflection on an unlikely journey with her siblings through the music industry; in part, a meditation on family, on music and on creativity; and, in part, a shout-out for love and for hope. This is a very personal - at times very funny, at times deeply moving - book from an iconic figure in popular music.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright in the late 19th century. His controversial plays were riddled with mockery of social status, cleverly covered by the use of comedy. Wilde may have paved the way for people living a little off the center line. Full of flash and flare, he wrote some of those colorful traits into his literature. Take a journey into the world of Oscar Wilde, and find out just how individualistic he was.

The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints, invasion forces and furtive gun-runners, writers, musicians and fishermen. The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea—from the narrow North Channel through St George’s Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into wide Atlantic—have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms.

"J'ai toujours eu un cœur excentrique." Bono a grandi dans le nord de Dublin entre un père catholique et une mère protestante, alors que les violences sectaires se multipliaient en Irlande. Il n'avait que quatorze ans lors du décès de sa mère, perte qui va façonner sa recherche d'une famille. Il a commencé sa vie avec le sentiment d'être quelconque, pourtant toute son existence sera consacrée à combattre l'idée que quiconque puisse l'être. En quatre décennies, U2 passe d'une bande d'adolescents ambitieux au plus grand groupe au monde.

In 1979, 24-year-old Maura O'Halloran moved to Japan and became the first woman ever admitted to Toshoji Temple. Soshin-san (O'Halloran's monastic name) labored through three intense years of work and study in preparation for becoming a dharma teacher. Her life ended abruptly during a trip to Thailand, and today Soshin-san is revered as a Buddhist saint. The material in this program is from her private and heartfelt journals and letters.

G. K. Chesterton was a journalist, playwright, poet, biographer, novelist, essayist, literary commentator, editor, orator, artist, and theologian. Orthodoxy is his great apologia for the Christian faith, which was prompted by a serious attack in 1903 against Christianity by well-known newspaper editor Robert Blatchford.

1975: A young Irish-American man joins an elite US Marine unit to get the most intensive military training possible—then joins the Irish Republican Army, during the days of some of the bloodiest fighting ever in the Irish-British conflict. It is a story that will see him running guns with American mobster—and secret IRA fundraiser—Whitey Bulger; running from safe house to safe house in the Irish countryside, one step ahead of British troops; fending off a recruitment offer from the CIA; and being one of the masterminds behind a campaign to take out London's electrical system.

In the early 20th century, how did a woman rise from her Irish immigrant roots to claim her place in the man's world of Midwestern America? Meet Kitty. KITTY'S PEOPLE is the intimate portrait of the author's grandmother, Catherine Flanagan. You'll walk in her footsteps from her youth as the daughter of ambitious Irish immigrants, through her years as a young mother and businesswoman plagued by senseless tragedy. Then, you'll cheer for her rise as the woman-in-charge—confident, organized, fierce, and supremely generous.

Following in the grand tradition of such Irish memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and Are You Somebody?, Liam Clancy relates his life’s story in a raucously funny and star-studded account of moving from provincial Ireland to the bars and clubs of New York City, to the cusp of fame as a member of Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers.

The autobiographical account of how the Irish writer Felicity Hayes-McCoy and her English husband, opera director Wilf Judd, chose to divide their life between inner-city London and a remote house on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula, a place Felicity fell in love with at the age of 17.

One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans.

A childhood holiday inspires an exploration into the family history of a ten year old Irish girl. Tales of peculiar neighbours; exploring a deserted cottage; visiting Grandad at work on the Donegal turf moors; ghost stories; turn of the century life in the Inishowen homestead; grasping family members; inoculation; emigrating on the 'Cattle Boat' to 'no dogs, no Irish, no children; lodgings in England; the Irish workmen in England; living in a Halfway house; 1950s convalescence; a convent education and performing in a bagpipe band.

"Irish" Micky Ward grew up in the 1970s and ’80s as a tough kid from Lowell, Massachusetts - a town where boxers were once bred as a means of survival. A hard worker who overcame bad luck, bad management, and chronic pain in his hands, he avoided the pitfall of poverty and dead-end work that plagued Lowell to become a Golden Gloves junior welterweight. Ward participated in street fights from an early age and was forever known by his opponents and spectators as the underdog.

Discover the remarkable life of Brian Boru.... Ireland is a country steeped in history, myth, and legend. During ancient times a long line of kings reined over this fairytale land, and one of those kings was a man named Brian Boru. Ruling the Emerald Isle from 1002 to 1014, Brian’s tenure is indeed so immersed in mythology that it is sometimes hard to glean the fact from the fiction. But Brian Boru himself was not the product of a fanciful tale - he did indeed exist in the flesh.