Read Ireland Book News - Issue 73
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Stone Building: Conservation, Repair, Building by Patrick McAfee (Hardback; 18.99 IRP / 25.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is a plea for a sympathetic approach to the conservation and repair of traditional stone buildings. These beautiful buildings are in danger of disappearing from the Irish landscape because they are not yet properly understood. Here is a book about saving them by applying traditional methods and techniques in a sympathetic manner, using materials and methods that are in harmony with their nature. The author shares here a wealth of knowledge based on wide experience.
Siege City: The Story of Derry and Londonderry by Brian Lacy (Paperback; 14.99 IRP / 22.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Inishowen mountains, Derry has one of the most beautiful and panoramic locations of any Irish city, with its steep streets and steps rising high above the River Foyle. But it is also a fortress city, envisioned as a 'new Troy' by the plantation settlers and witness to some of the most bitter conflicts in Irish history. This illustrated history sweeps across the full span of Derry's rich, varied past - the legend of Colmcille, the tale of 'half-hanged' McNaughton, vivid evocations of medieval and plantation times, incisive accounts of the Siege of Derry and Bloody Sunday - tracing its evolution from a simple monastic settlement to a bustling modern city.
Ancient Ireland: Life Before the Celts by Laurence Flanagan (Hardback; 17.99 IRP / 24.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
When the Celts first arrived in Ireland around 250B.C., the island had already been inhabited for over 7000 years. These pre-Celtic peoples have left no written records: they are literally pre-historic. But they have left extensive archaeological evidence, of which Newgrange is the most celebrated example. Who were these people, and how did they live? What sort of houses did they build? How did they cultivate the land? What sort of social and economic systems did they have? Using archaeological evidence, the author pieces together the answers to these and many other questions about the daily life in pre-Celtic Ireland. This book combines scholarship with a lightness of touch that makes it accessible to a wide audience. It gives a unique and fascinating insight into a lost, fabled world.
Dublin Voices: An Oral Folk History by Kevin Kearns (Hardback; 19.99 IRP / 30.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
For nearly 30 years Kevin Kearns has been collecting the memories and recollections of Dubliners on tape. His previous books have focused on specific themes such as tenements and pubs. Now in this ambitious work, he uses the voices of ordinary Dubliners to construct an oral folk history of city in the 20th century. Firemen, engine drivers, bell ringers, gatekeepers, cinema ushers, gravediggers, dockers, factory workers, butchers, hatters, booksellers and many more: all contribute their own words to this extraordinary mosaic of Dublin city life from Victorian to modern times. In this book, the words of perfectly ordinary Dubliners are heard as they recall their lives and times. These detailed and graphic oral narratives bring the city to life in a manner that conventional histories cannot match.
All Our Yesterdays by Declan Hassett (Hardback; 20.00 IRP / 30.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
In this charming memoir the author portrays how time and distance colour everything and how we remember best that which we enjoyed most in our lives. He recalls the smiling, innocent faces on this first visit to the crib on Christmas morning; the peals of joy and ringing laughter as Santa's visit on that blessed night is confirmed by squeals of delight round the tree; the anticipation of the arrival of favourite comics in the shop each week; going to the circus; fishing with bamboo sticks and jam jars; First Communion and Confirmation days; going to the pictures; meeting girls; Ballrooms of Romance; going to rugby matches; visits to the panto. In this book the author brings alive memories of Cork city, evoking the simple joys of boyhood adventures in his native Blackrock, then a rolling rural area; summer holidays in Ardmore, County Waterford; pilgrimages with the Dad to centres of hurling pride in Limerick and Thurles, Croke Park and the Kingdom of football in Killarney.
Mary Robinson: The Authorised Biography by Olivia O'Leary and Helen Burke (Hardback; 17.99 IRP / 24.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Electing Mary Robinson was a stroke of genius in which the Irish still take pride. This was the face they wanted to present to the world - a liberal woman lawyer, a total break with the conservative past. But Ireland's first woman President soon found she was in many ways a prisoner of the Irish government. In this biography she tells of her fierce struggle to break out of that prison. She tells of her struggle with the controversial Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. She explains for the first time, too, her prickly relationship with Foreign Minister Dick Spring, her chief supporter for the Presidency and tells of her constant efforts to keep her office above politics. Many of her changes were initially resisted but she prevailed and went on to make historic visits of friendship to Northern Ireland and to the British Royal Family. She tells, too, the full background to her controversial handshake with Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams. But this is also the intimate story of the Catholic girl from Mayo who defied her whole family to marry the man she loved; the leading lawyer and Senator who fought all her life to make Ireland the pluralist, modern state it became during her Presidency. This is the story of the shy academic who was changed forever by the warmth of popular affection; who was shaken to the core by her visits to famine- and war-torn Africa, and who has now taken up the job of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin by Maeve Brennan (Paperback; 13.00 IRP / 20.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
The twenty-one stories collected here trace the patterns of live within three Dublin families, patterns as intricate and various as Irish lace. Love between husband and wife, which begins in courtship and laughter, loses all power of expression and then vanishes forever. The natural love of sister for brother, of mother for son, is twisted into the rage to possess. And love that gives rise to the rituals of family life - those 'ordinary customs that are the only true realities most of us ever know' - grows solid as rock that will never give way. In an introduction, William Maxwell, who was for twenty years Maeve Brennan's editor, writes of the special quality of her wok, and especially of the title story, which he places among the great short fiction of this century.
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