Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 418
Irish Biography
Bard of Erin: The Life of Thomas Moore by Ronan Kelly
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 40 Euro. Read Ireland Sale Price 32 Euro / 44 USD / 22 UK; 630 pages
Colm Toibin has called Thomas Moore 'the most influential figure in shaping the Irish psyche'. Through his Irish Melodies, Moore created an iconography of silenced harps, misty landscapes and round towers that lives on today, more than a century and a half after his death. In "Bard of Erin", Ronan Kelly tells the story of Moore's extraordinary life. From humble beginnings in Dublin to glittering social and literary success in London (at one point his popularity was eclipsed only by that of Sir Walter Scott and his close friend Lord Byron), Moore lived in the glow of fame and under the burden of national expectation. Ronan Kelly's biography is a gripping and definitive account of a great romantic figure.
Ireland’s Misfortune: The Turbulent Life of Kitty O’Shea by Elizabeth Kehoe
Large Format Trade Paperback; 17 Euro / 24 USD / 12 UK; 586 pages [Add To Basket]
At the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Stewart Parnell, MP, was the only man who both the English government and Irish radicals believed could secure Home Rule for Ireland. But when Parnell met and fell in love with Kitty O'Shea, a married woman, Parnell's life - and Ireland's history - would change for ever. When Parnell was named as co-respondent in Kitty's divorce and revealed as the father of three of Kitty's children it would trigger the most notorious scandal of the Victorian era.Elisabeth Kehoe's vivid biography introduces us to a woman who is unrecognisable from the home-wrecker and historical catastrophe she is commonly seen as. From this book emerges, for the first time, the real Katie O'Shea: a gifted woman bound by impossible financial and social restrictions who influences political policy with an acuity and sensitivity sorely lacking in her Irish lover. "Ireland's Misfortune" is a compelling account of one of history's most misunderstood women and offers a fresh insight into a defining moment in Irish history.
My Father’s Watch: The Story of a Child Prisoner in 70s Britain by Patrick Maguire
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 432 pages
The intensely moving memoir of Patrick Maguire, one of the 'Maguire Seven' wrongly imprisoned as a teenager for making bombs for the IRA. On the night of October 5 1974, an IRA unit left bombs in two Guildford pubs: five people were killed. On the night of December 3 1974, on the strength of fabricated testimony extracted under duress from Paul Hill and Gerard Conlon (whom the police mistakenly believed had planted the Guildford bombs), Anne and Paddy Maguire, two of their four children, Vincent and Patrick, plus other family members and friends, a total of seven in all, were arrested at their home in West London. On 22 October 1975 the Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of bombing the two pubs in Guildford. On the 4 March 1976 the Maguire Seven, as they had become known, were found guilty of possession of the nitro-glycerine used in those bombings. On 19 October 1989 the verdicts on the Guildford Four were quashed. On 26 June 1991 the convictions against the Maguire Seven of handling explosives were quashed and just over a year later, Sir John May, after producing a report on the Maguire Seven case, described it as the worst miscarriage of justice he had ever seen.Behind these dates lie human stories -- 'My Father's Watch' tells that of Patrick, who was the youngest of the accused, at fourteen years old. He was sentenced to four years and when he came out he had no home and no family, as both parents were still in jail. This book takes us through Patrick's entire life, from his working-class childhood in West London to the difficult life he has led since prison, the roots of which go back to the wrongful convictions and the destruction of the family that followed. Patrick Maguire and the novelist Carlo Gebler have written 'My Father's Watch' jointly. It is not a ghosted work -- told in Patrick's own voice, it is a lucid and inspiring account of one individual's experience of an appalling injustice, as well as a reminder, as the war against terror ratchets up, of just how much harm a state can do to its own innocent citizens in the name of security.
Days of Fear: Diary of a 1920s Hunger Striker by Frank Gallagher
Paperback; 13 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 154 pages [Add To Basket]
During the War of Independence Frank Gallagher was interned in Mountjoy where he took part in a mass hunger-strike of republican prisoners demanding political status. Gallagher's remarkable diary reveals his internal conflict during the hunger strike in April 1920. He describes a 'double personality', one half bent on self-preservation and the other on sacrifice. On the tenth day, he almost surrendered, but what kept him resolute was shame before his fellow hunger strikers. 'If there were an honorable way of escape, I should be glad...I'm afraid to die, and I'm going to die because I'm afraid not to...The papers will call me a hero and a martyr...a miserable, frightened fool, who hadn't the courage not to die.'
The Green Marine: An Irishman’s War in Iraq by Graham Dale
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 300 pages, with an 8-page full colour photo insert
Dubliner Graham Dale, an IT specialist living in Texas,was working as a volunteer with a fire department when he heard that an airplane had hit the World Trade Centre in New York. As the tragic events unfolded before his eyes, he suddenly realised that he could no longer remain a spectator in the face of this appalling atrocity. There and then he made a decision that was to affect the rest of his life; he drove to the nearestMilitary Recruitment Centre and enlisted in the US Marines. After surviving months of 'constant mental and physical torture' in the notoriously tough 'Marine Boot Camp' in San Diego, he joined the ranks of one of the most elite branches of the United States military and two years later found himself patrolling the dangerous wastes of the western desert in war-torn Iraq. Throughout his deployment in Iraq, Dale kept a daily journal to give us an astonishing, true account of one man's fight in the frontline of America's 'War on Terror'. Told with brutal honesty, he gives us a unique and rare insight from an Irishman, fighting for a foreign military in a very foreign land.
Lights, Camera, Action: The Adventures of a Special Effects Director by Gerry Johnson
Large Format Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; with black-and-white photos throughout and a 16-page full colour photo insert [Add To Basket]
As Irelands top special effects director, Gerry Johnstons life is the stuff of boyish fantasy, from meeting childhood heroes to playing with blood and gore, his has been a rollercoaster career, mingling with the famous and flirting with the dangerous! Gerry began working and learning on the job as a novice special effects man in 1960s Ireland. Often with little more than his wits, a tool-box and some electrical cable he had to interpret and realise the directors vision usually on a limited budget. After learning the ropes on a string of WW2 films, co-ordinating dogfights and working with the likes of George Peppard, Julie Andrews, James Mason and a cursing Ursula Andress, Gerry soon became the man to call if you were making a film in Ireland. One of Gerrys earliest jobs was working on the Oscar winning Ryans Daughter trucking around Irelands beaches with director David Lean, searching for the perfect storm. From impressing the genius of Stanley Kubrick, to realising John Boormans vision of Excalibur, Gerrys 40 plus year career is a personalised chronicle of Irish film; a behind the scenes glance at a turbulent history. Gerry has worked with international and Irish stars and directors including Steven Spielberg, Neil Jordan, Helen Mirren, Sean Connery and a young Colin Farrell, and his credits include global hits such as In The Name of the Father, My Left Foot, Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. The book reveals the secrets and occasional mishaps behind the visual effects and stunts performed to create the illusion for the viewer. With an extensive plate section of behind the scenes shots, as well as an introduction by James Morris, Chairman of the Irish Film Board, Lights, Camera, Dynamite is an entertaining look into the creation of the magic we see on screen and the people who conjure it up.
Siobhan’s Miracle by Ellen and Derek Jameson
Hardback; 16 Euro / 24 USD / 12 UK; 230 pages [Add To Basket]
This is the true story of a remarkable life - and a death deferred. At the heart of "Siobhan's Miracle" is a Belfast girl from a working class family who grew up to become a university professor and world-renowned authority on English and Irish literature.As millions celebrated the millennium, Siobhan Kilfeather was diagnosed with terminal cancer and all but given up for lost. By then she was married with two young children, Constance and Oscar.In February 2000, she embarked on a pilgrimage to Lourdes and in that ancient shrine, through the power of prayer, she made a pact with the Virgin Mary. You are a mother, she said, grant me more time to see my children grow up to an age where they will know and remember me. Three days later she checked into the Royal Marsden Hospital in London for a course of 'very aggressive' radio therapy - with no guarantee it would conquer the cancerous melanoma destroying her body. There she was summoned to a conference in a doctor's office. Fearing the worst, she clutched the hand of her husband Peter. The surgeon wasted no time. 'It's gone,' he said. 'The X-rays show that the cancer is no longer in the lungs. There is no treatment needed.' Siobhan's prayer had been answered. Seven years later came the devastating news that the cancer had returned. Siobhan died peacefully in the knowledge that her time had come. Here Derek Jameson, Siobhan's father-in-law, and his wife Ellen unfold the remarkable life of this child of the Troubles and the unwritten pact she reached beside the holy grotto at Lourdes. Was it divine intervention? Dare we claim a miracle? That is for the reader to decide.
Hungry for Home: Leaving the Blaskets by Cole Moreton
Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 288 pages [Add To Basket]
Starting on Christmas Eve 1946 with the sudden illness and subsequent death of a young man on the Great Blasket, Hungry for Home tells the story of the eventual departure of the remaining inhabitants from the island in November 1953. The Blasket archipelago, suspended in the Atlantic a few miles west of Dunquin in County Kerry, became famous at the beginning of the twentieth century for its way of life, for the purity and vigour of the Irish spoken by its inhabitants much sought-after by Irish and foreign scholars and most of all for what has come to be known as the Blasket Library , books such as An tOileánach (1929) by Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Fiche Blian ag Fás (1933)by Muiris Ó Súíloleabháin and Peig (1936), by Peig Sayers. When Ó Criomhthain wrote elegiacally at the end of his autobiography: ...mar ná beidh ár leithéidí arís ann... he could not have imagined that within three decades the island would be abandoned to the seals, the gulls and the rabbits. As well as giving a lively account of the history, society and literature of the Blaskets, Cole Moreton seeks out surviving islanders, both in Kerry and in Springfield, Mass, where many of them emigrated, to record their memories.
Ma, He Sold Me For a Few Cigarettes by Martha Long
Paperback; 10 Euro / 14 USD / 7 UK; 476 pages [Add To Basket]
A heart-rending memoir of a deprived childhood in 1950s and '60s Dublin that will both horrify and inspire. Born a bastard to a teenage mother in the slums of 1950s Dublin, Martha has to be a fighter from the very start. As her mother moves from man to man, and more children follow, they live hand-to-mouth in squalid, freezing tenements, clothed in rags and forced to beg for food. But just when it seems things can't get any worse, her mother meets Jackser. Despite her trials, Martha is a child with an irrepressible spirit and a wit beyond her years. She tells the story of her early life without an ounce of self-pity and manages to recreate a lost era in which the shadow of the Catholic Church loomed large and if you didn't work, you didn't eat. Martha never stops believing she is worth more than the hand she has been dealt, and her remarkable voice will remain with you long after you've finished the last line.
A Life Interrupted by Malachy Walsh
Paperback; 13 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 140 pages [Add To Basket]
In 1960 Malachy Walsh was diagnosed as suffering from incurable depression, the disease which had taken the lives of Primo Levi, Vincent Van Gogh and Virginia Woolf. Over the next 25 years, while trying to be a good husband and father, and building a successful business, he tried a range of treatments including strenuous exercise, religious devotion and psychiatric sessions. After virtually sleepless nights, the daily struggle to leave his bed and cope with the day ahead never relented. At one point, a psychiatrist exclaimed: How do you do it? Don t you know how ill you are? But few guessed or knew of his condition. Extraordinarily he was cured and he now lives a life free of depression. Malachy chose to write of his experiences to help other depressives and those close to them to empathise and understand. His description of the hidden, gloomy domain of melancholia and his ultimate recovery is moving and courageously honest.
Tales of a Degenerate Poker Player by Derek Kelly
Paperback; 20 Euro / 30 USD / 15 UK; 266 pages [Add To Basket]
Tales of a Degenerate Poker Player is a colourful insight into the world of poker and gambling as seen through the eyes of Derek Kelly. The glue that holds this multitude of often very funny stories and potted histories together is his involvement in a thing called Gutshot. Derek was the leading name in an English High Court battle to prove poker is a game of skill. Along with a bunch of other poker degenerates he chose the method of opening a high profile poker club, (called Gutshot), in Central London, England to challenge a law they believed to be out of date and redundant. The inclusion of irreverent tales of famous gamblers, gangsters, private poker games, (and the strange people that play in them), serves to illustrate poker is not fifty two playing cards and degenerate gambling but maybe a whole lot better than that. Derek Kelly is a 48 year old Irishman living and working in Ireland and Europe where he is involved in a number of poker enterprises. He is the defendant in a major High Court Case in the UK that questions the legality of poker as a game of skill. Derek has been playing poker all his life and has been known to frequent pretty much every poker room of note worldwide.
Little Lady, One Big Man, Ocean: Rowing the Atlantic by Paul Gleeson and Tori Holmes
Hardback; 24 Euro / 32 USD / 16 UK; 170 pages, with an 8-page full colour photo insert [Add To Basket]
The tall, burly man asks: 'Can you row?' 'No, never before,' I answer, and mumble something about canoeing in school. 'Well get in the boat,' says Eamonn Kavanagh. That first day is hard. The hands begin to cramp, drops of blood start oozing through your fingertips The inspirational and romantic story of two non-rowers who took on one of the great challenges: the Atlantic. Tori Holmes, a petite 21-year-old from Alberta, and Paul Gleeson, a 29-year-old financial adviser from Limerick, met in Australia when Holmes answered an advert to drive support for Gleeson's 5,000-km cycle across the continent. Gleeson fell: both off his bike and for the woman behind the wheel of his support car. Crossing a continent was not enough. Acting on self-belief alone, Gleeson and Holmes together then embraced the dream of rowing a tiny boat across the vastness of the Atlantic in the 2005/06 Trans-Atlantic Race. But first they had to learn to row. So they contacted the only Irishmen to have completed the same race, Eamonn and Peter Kavanagh. The tough seafarers gave their expertise, gave their blessing and even gave the boat called after their mother, the Christina. In November 2005, Paul and Tori left the Canary Islands to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic. In February 2006, they completed their epic journey after 86 days. It was always going to be a huge challenge. But the race of 2005-2006 turned into a terrifying ordeal of storms and capsizes. Six of the 20 doubles teams, including another Irish boat, had to be rescued. Paul and Tori were thrown around by huge seas. They saw whales and sharks up close. They suffered days of unbearable thirst when their watermaker broke down. They suffered hallucinations caused by chronic sleep deprivation. But they persisted: with stubbornness, humour and firm self-belief. Help came, bizarrely, during a strange episode on-board their rowing boat, which Paul & Tori to this day are not able to fully explain. It seems that at a crisis point in the journey, they had an encounter with a mysterious unseen, yet completely perceptible, presence. Old seafaring lore has several theories as to what this might have been, but both adventurers are keeping their minds open on it. Irish Times rowing correspondent Liam Gorman heard of this unusual couple, till then unknown on the rowing scene, and began to speak to them on a satellite phone during their journey. The resulting book contains maps of the journey and a colour photo section.
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
Gregory Carr, Independent Bookseller
Read Ireland
392 Clontarf Road
Dublin 3
Ireland
Tel + Fax: +353-1-853-2063
Customer Services Comments, Criticism and Questions
Subscribe to Read Ireland Book News - Our Free Weekly Email Newsletter