Ireland Memoir

The first of Henry VIII's wives was Catherine of Aragon, the pious Catholic princess who suffered years of miscarriages and still births and yet failed to produce a male heir.

As the train rattled westward on the outskirts of Dublin, James Berry didn’t stand out amongst his fellow passengers, but they couldn’t see the long, Italian silk rope coiled in the black leather bag by his side, nor the white cap and pinion straps, nor the revolver in his coat pocket. Galway, the winter of 1885. The violent murders of John Moylan, killed on a dark country lane, and Alice Burns, shot dead in the dining room of the Royal Hotel, have shaken the county. Now, following painstaking investigations and charged courtroom drama, justice beckons for the guilty parties.

Staying on in Northern Ireland as a civilian after years of working on undercover missions against terrorists, Rob eventually gains employment in Bristol, undertaking security work, but things don’t work out and Rob ends up living in a squat. After a job offer from an old colleague, Rob heads to London to work in close-protection security for some of Hollywood’s royalty and later becomes involved in the rescue of some very well-connected people from a dangerous religious cult. Rob’s life seems to be getting back on track. But Rob’s work soon becomes more covert.

A murder in Belfast of gangland's most wanted man, Robbie Lawlor, uncovers a web of betrayal that spans out across the Irish underworld and beyond. Follow a bloody trail that leads all the way into the heart of one of the worst gang feuds Ireland has ever seen which culminates in the Narco style dismemberment of a teenage boy, Keane Mulready Woods. And as the curtain is pulled back on the inner workings of the world of organised crime, a cast of ruthless characters take centre stage for their place in a double-cross plot that feels like a fast-paced thriller.

A hilarious tale of dogs, fogs, bogs and moving to Ireland. For many years, Nick and Lesley Albert had shared a dream of living far away from the stress of modern life, and when the opportunity arose, they jumped in with both feet. Almost overnight, they decided to move to beautiful County Clare, in the west of Ireland - a country they had never before visited. With little experience or money they set about renovating a derelict farmhouse and building a new life together.

An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man's world, passionately sexual yet, she said, a virgin, Elizabeth I was to be famed as England's most successful ruler. This absorbing new book, by concentrating on the early years from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558, shows how her experiences of danger and adventure formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs.

Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it.

Colin Bateman grew up in the pleasant seaside town of Bangor in Northern Ireland. Ten miles away, the IRA, the UDA and the UVF were blowing Belfast apart, but he was more concerned with making his first million through the GBA – the Gerbil Breeding Association (sadly short-lived when his gerbils turned out to be cannibals). Inspired by All the President’s Men and The Odessa File to become a crusading journalist, Bateman joined the local paper when he was a seventeen-year-old punk rocker, where instead of bringing down Presidents and finding Nazis, he found himself being hunted down by ...

Inspired by a true story. In 1825, in a remote Irish valley lying between the mountains and Flesk River of Killarney, three women are brought together by strange and troubling events. Nora Leahy, a widow, has lost her daughter and her husband in the same year and is now burdened with the care of her grandson, Michael. The boy cannot walk or speak, and Nora has kept him hidden from neighbours, who might see in his deformity evidence of supernatural interference.

The stories of two undercover agents: the man known as Stakeknife, Force Research Unit (FRU) agent and deputy head of the IRA’s infamous ‘Nutting Squad’, the internal security force which tortured and killed suspected informers; and Brian Nelson, who worked for the FRU, aiding loyalist terrorists and murderers in their bloody work. The inside story on: – How the British Secret Service uses informers – The recruitment, briefing and handling of spies – Murders and set-ups in Northern Ireland.

When Manny McDonnell was 12, he awoke to discover British troops surrounding his home in the toughest area of trouble-torn Belfast. Encouraged by a fiercely Republican mother, he took to the streets with other school kids, throwing bricks, bottles and petrol bombs at soldiers. Jailed at 15 for having IRA links, he became a unit commander leading deadly missions for the INLA before joining the IPLO, a group so vicious even the IRA ordered it to disband. But his decades of commitment to a free united Ireland turned to disillusion when bombs killed two little boys in mainland Britain.

When a violent incident in his stationed town led John Sweetman into the Garda Technical Bureau with incriminating evidence, the course of his life changed dramatically. As a young garda struggling with personal demons, he went from being on verge of leaving the force to finding his true calling. Identity is both a fascinating insight into specialist forensic fields - that peeks behind the curtain of how crimes are solved - and a bravely told story of a misfit detective in a remarkable career.

When it comes to Irish history, the lives and achievements of Irish women have long been ignored. Seeking to rectify this, Passion & Plight: The Women Who Shaped Ireland, takes you on a fascinating journey through Irish history where you will meet the voracious Queen Medbh who claimed to take 30 lovers a day, healer of people and animals Biddy Early who was brought to court in Ennis on charges of witchcraft, and pirate queen Grace O Malley who held Queen Elizabeth in her thrall.

From New York Times reporter and Pulitzer finalist Ali Watkins, this true-crime saga is the long-buried story of how a group of Philadelphia gunrunners armed the IRA at the height of the Troubles. A ragtag band of carpenters, family men and fugitives, the Philadelphia Five, as they came to be known, banded together, bolstering the fight for a united Ireland but fuelling the Troubles at an untold cost.

Oliver Cromwell was an English army and statesman who led Parliamentary armies against King Charles I throughout the English Civil War. Why was he so hated by so many? And is this image of him historically correct? The reason why people thought he was so evil is because of his brutality against the Irish at that time. Several Irish and English scholars agree that Cromwell was too cruel in Ireland. Other academics accuse him of "ethnic cleansing", or the systematic expulsion of a certain ethnic population from a territory. Is this true? And why did he do this?

This is the true story of an unknown American politician who played a critical role in ending centuries of conflict in Northern Ireland. Without the president's permission, and breaking every conventional rule about how to deal with terrorists, former congressman Bruce Morrison helped end a conflict that most observers thought would continue indefinitely.

Antonia Fraser deals with each woman in turn with sympathy - the sympathy they deserve for having had the unenviable fate of being Henry's wife. Inevitably, there was great rivalry between them; there was jealousy too: the desperate jealousy of queens who found themselves abandoned, but also the sexual jealousy of the king who discovered himself betrayed. The story Antonia Fraser tells is romantic and cruel, funny and sad, dramatic and enthralling. This is historical biography at its best.

Lindsay Ireland enjoyed an idyllic childhood. She spent her summers in Vermont with her movie-star relatives where she rode horses, played detective with her cousin, and drank ice-cold lemonade. After the summer months, Lindsay returned to her loving family where her biggest worry was getting good grades in school. Then one day, Lindsay noticed blood in her stool.

On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland. It was a trip that would cost four lives—and change his own forever. The IRA bomb that exploded in their boat killed Knatchbull's grandfather Lord Mountbatten, his grandmother Lady Brabourne, his twin brother Nicholas, and local teenager Paul Maxwell. In telling this story, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy.

Lead singer of the hugely successful Irish rock band Kodaline, Steve Garrigan plays to thousands of fans worldwide - his business is being in the spotlight. But for years, Steve was privately battling his own demons. Here in this deeply personal memoir, he shares his experiences.