Read Ireland Book News - Issue 24
<-- [Back To Main Menu] 1. An Irish Voice: The Quest for Peace by Gerry Adams (paperback; 9.99 Irish pounds / 15.00 US Dollars approximately) [Add To Basket]
This book provides a unique insight into the Irish peace process. It is a revealing chronicle of political events and an insight into the private life of its author who is President of Sinn Fein and a Westminster MP for West Belfast. It includes some surprisingly light and humorous moments.
Consisting of selected articles from his regular column in the New York newspaper, The Irish Voice, these writing possess a remarkable immediacy. From talks with John Hume in 1993, through the IRA cessation, President Clinton's visit to Northern Ireland, the bombing of Canary Wharf, right up to the restoration of the present IRA cease-fire, Gerry Adams gives an absorbing firsthand account.
2. The Woman of the House by Alice Taylor (pb; 9.99 IRP / 15.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Alice Taylor is the author of To School Through the Fields and a series of other best-selling memoirs of Irish country life. This is her first novel.
Rural life is evoked with humour and humanity in this exceptional novel, a moving story of land, love and family.
Generations of Phelans have occupied Mossgrove, working hard on their well-tended farm, improving the land and the livestock. They have played their part in the social life of the small cluster of farming families around, surviving a feud with unscrupulous neighbours. But suddenly and unexpectedly the farm comes under threat from within, and the family is torn asunder. Set in the early 1950s, the novel explores the passions, the struggles, the joys and the trials of a life lived close to the earth.
3. Classic Celtic Fairy Tales by John Matthews (hardback; 18.99 IRP / 28.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Nothing better exemplifies the world of magic and Celtic tradition than its fairy tales, and in this collection John Matthews has brought together some of the best of these stories, following in the tradition of the great 19th-century collectors such as Joseph Jacobs, W.B. Yeats and Jeremiah Curtin. This book contains a veritable treasure trove of material, much from forgotten archives in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
While fairy tales and their equivalent occur in all cultures throughout history, the Celtic tradition speaks especially of a universal humanity, and of a oneness with land, time and nature that we seem to have lost over the last hundred years. The current revival of interest is matched by a seeking for deeper understanding, both of self and of place in the universe. These tales and their lessons are wonderful in introducing the simple yet magical aspects of truth - entertaining, amusing and teaching all at the same time.
The author has supplied a full background and explanation for each story and from renowned authority and writer R.J. Stewart there is a thought-provoking Foreword. With the superb colour illustrations provided by noted artist Ian Daniels, this book is a fitting addition to the wide range of titles on Celtic and other mythical and legendary topics available.
4. The Wondrous Land: Fairy Faith in Ireland by Kay Mullin (pb; 11.85 IRP / 17.80 USD) [Add To Basket]
Dr. Kay Mullin, a clinical psychologist by profession, was introduced to the world of faery by Spirit channelled through a medium. She was told that it was her task to help to open the doorway between mankind and the faery kingdom. That revelation led, after considerable resistance, to Kay undertaking extensive research in Ireland, collecting stories both old and new, not just from books, but from people who not only know of faeries, but see and hear them too - in the land so long associated with them.
The result is this book, leading the reader to discover the elemental powers of Ireland. The text is complemented with lyrical poetry from Irish seer Gabriel Rosenstock, and exquisite drawings by Cormac Figgis. The faery faith is real, alive and growing!
5. Monica Carr's Country Diary edited by Mairead McGuinness (pb; 7.99 IRP / 12.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Mary Norton was born on a farm in Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow on 28 August 1922. She spent a large part of her early years farming the family's mixed farm until, in the 1950s, her "Country Diary" appeared in the Farming Independent under the pen-name of Monica Carr.
Those who delved into her "Country Diary" each week did so for the way she portrayed farming and rural Ireland in less hectic times and for her absolute delight in its simplicity. Monica Carr captured the atmosphere of another era. She warmed readers' hearts with her tales about a day at the mart with husband Tom, or about the antics of the noisy inhabitants of the rookery close to the farmyard. Her grandmother Carr's recipes (for everything from a cure for chilblains to the most delicious plum jam) were very popular features of her weekly column. Her words brought back memories to those who came from farming stock and, for those who did not they gave a delightful picture of country times, nature and how farmers manage through good times and bad.
This compilation of Monica's evocative "Country Diary", by Mairead McGuinness, editor of the Farming Independent, will bring great pleasure to those who have loved her column over the years. It will also help the Irish Cancer Society to provide care and support for people with cancer in communities all over Ireland.
6. Rebels and Informers: Stirrings of Irish Independence by Oliver Knox (hb; 21.60 IRP / 32.40 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is a brilliant portrait of a key moment in history when Ireland embarked on the struggle for independence. The year 1998 is the bicentennial of the bloody end of the first great revolutionary republican movement in Ireland. This book looks again at that movement's heroes and villains, and at the similarities and differences between the situations then and now.
The Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast, and its first members were for the most part highly educated men of Protestant and Presbyterian stock. Imbued with the hopes and learning of the 18th century Enlightenment, their dream was to bury the religious divisions of the island, end the rule of the 'antiquated and corrupt Ascendancy' centred on Dublin Castle, and sever all connections with England.
From the first, the Society was riddled with informers. Most of the Society's leaders were scattered or banished, and endured picaresque sojourns in France and America. Wolfe Tone, its proto-martyr, his panache and gaiety undimmed, conspired in Paris during the early Napoleonic Wars in the hope that Ireland's independence might be won with the help of a French invasion. The quixotic Hamilton Rowan, disenchanted by Robespierre and the Terror, comforted his exile by boating in the marshes of the River Delaware. Drennan, pious coiner of the phrase 'Emerald Isle', retreated into patriotic poetry after a near-fatal trial for sedition. Of the book's four principal rebels, Lord Edward Fitzgerald gave the movement, as it headed towards the doomed rebellion of 1798. flourished of romantic but hopelessly inadequate leadership.
The author draws freely on the journals and letters of the four principal rebels, and their voices reach us with marvellous freshness and immediacy. Combining an ancestral interest in Irish history with a novelist's sensitivity to character and motive, he brings his protagonists vividly before us as they experience conspiracies, trials, betrayals, flights, wild Atlantic crossings, the scoldings of long -suffering wives, the ironic perceptions of well-rewarded informers, and terrible, drawn-out deaths.
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