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In Living With Ghosts renowned veteran journalist Brian Rowan retraces his steps through Northern Ireland's conflict years, as he bravely delves into the darkness of those times. His story takes us beyond the often strict boundaries of the news into the very real dilemmas and fears behind its scenes. In his journalistic career Rowan walked the thinnest of lines, where morals and principles were blurred, and as a result his mind became tortured. This book is an explanation, not a confession. He goes deep into his contacts with the IRA, the loyalist organisations, MI5, Special Branch, the army, and the many other players in the conflict period. And he joins the dots on a path out of 'war' in a place that has not yet found peace of mind. Rowan thinks and writes inside a moral maze, and in this book he invites us into his nightmares of remembering and to times he will never forget. Living with Ghosts is a moving and deeply personal account of one man's doubts and decisions, and the challenges of reporting a war on his doorstep.

Set in 1950s rural Ireland, Rathcormick is the engaging and beautifully written tale of a large and happy Protestant farming family: a stern and domineering Papa, a warm and practical Mama, their two daughters and six sons. For Homan, the youngest, life is a free-spirited awakening in a world of old-fashioned virtue and frugality. But no boyhood lasts forever, and an abrupt turn of events signals an end to the idyll. Exploring the values and mores of an almost lost part of Irish society, Rathcormick is an unforgettable memoir: funny, compelling, and original

On 13 March 2017, the Rescue 116 crew of Capt. Dara Fitzpatrick, Capt. Mark Duffy, Paul Ormsby, and Ciarán Smith took off from Dublin airport just after 2300 hours for a medical evacuation off the west coast. The first indication of disaster came when the crew failed to answer a radio call at 12.46 a.m. At 02.16 hours, sister helicopter Rescue 118 spotted a casualty and debris in the water. There would be no survivors from R116, and extensive searches failed to locate the bodies of two of the four crew. The crash occurred just six months after the loss of another experienced volunteer, Caitriona Lucas from Doolin Coast Guard in Co Clare; and 18 years after the loss of four Air Corps crew who were returning from a night rescue in thick fog off the south-east coast. In Search and Rescue, Lorna Siggins exposes the shocking systemic flaws that led to these tragic deaths, but also looks at successful rescues where, despite all the odds, the courage and dedication of members of the Irish Coast Guard and the volunteers who work with them have saved countless lives, including the dramatic rescue of paddleboarders Sara Feeney and Ellen Glynn off the coast of Clare in 2020.

The Game is a multifaceted reflection on sport. It is part memoir, outlining Tadhg Coakley's time as a player and fan, and how sport has shaped his life. But it also tackles sport on a universal scale--the good and the bad--and its immeasurable influence on our world. For fans, sport can be all-consuming. Indeed, we are consuming sport in ever greater gulpfuls, often blindly. It has a dark side; it is rife with corruption, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, and a raft of toxic masculine behaviour, and Coakley interrogates his own attitudes on each of these fronts. On the other hand, sport builds all manner of valuable connections and communities, and in sport--as in art--people can forge their own identities with grace, imagination, and the possibility of what may be. This duality is one of the most fascinating aspects of sport. Written with warmth, openness, and keen insight, The Game is an entertaining and thought-provoking meditation on the uniquely intense highs and lows of loving sport in today's world.

In a series of layered essays, art critic Cristín Leach writes about the gaps between reality and perception, about writing and anxiety, body and brain, breaking and making, succeeding and failing, conventionality and independence. The non-linear structure of the essays, with repeats, retakes, and deliberately unsaid or missing information, mimics the gaps in memory and understanding that are part of the human condition, especially during times of great stress. It's about art and writing as a fundamental way of explaining and understanding the world, perhaps saying what cannot be said, or revealing without showing. This is a linked memoir about writing as a salve and a means of escape, marriage as a refuge and a trap, the nature of home, and what happened when everything fell apart.

In UDR: Declassified, Micheál Smith reveals what the British establishment, the British government, and its armed forces knew and had to say about the regiment in recently declassified files. From its formation in 1970 as a locally raised militia, the Ulster Defence Regiment developed into the largest regiment in the British Army. For unionists, service in the UDR was a noble act and often a family tradition; for nationalists, an encounter with the UDR was frequently hostile, often brutal, and sometimes fatal. To the British Army, they were 'a dangerous species of ally, ' and a classic militia regiment which was part of a long tradition of the use of such forces by the British Empire. UDR: Declassified is an evidence-based exposé of the UDR through the declassified files of Number 10, the MoD, and the NIO. The denial of access to history is a part of a continuum of British state efforts to obscure its colonial past. This book is a testimony to the value of defying such efforts and uncovering the truths behind our traumatic past.

On the morning of 11 October 1921, the world's media watched as the most wanted man in Ireland bounded through the door of 10 Downing Street. Moments later, the 'head of the murder gang' grasped the hands of the Prime Minister.Such was the mind-bending melodrama of the events leading up to what is known in Ireland, very simply, as 'the Treaty'--a document that had been designed to end one violent conflict and soon gave rise to another. A century on from its signing, Gretchen Friemann has produced a gripping and definitive account of the negotiations, shining a fresh light on the complex politics and high-stakes bargaining that produced the agreement.The Treaty is a stunningly vivid piece of narrative history that resonates across the intervening century to the age of Brexit. It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand modern Ireland and the enduring complexities of British-Irish relations.

In Old Ireland in Colour 2, the much-anticipated sequel to their beloved bestseller, John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley have dug even deeper into Ireland's historical archives to uncover captivating photographic gems to bring to life using a unique blend of cutting-edge technology, historical research and expert colourisation.Old Ireland in Colour 2 celebrates more of the rich history of Ireland and the Irish from all walks of life and from all four provinces, as well as the Irish abroad, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.From the chaos of the Civil War to the simple beauty of the islands, from the iconic to the domestic, there is something new and inspiring to be gleaned from every single page.

Early one morning in March 1985, as he climbed the six steps of Margaret Thatcher's prime-ministerial jet on the runway of RAF Aldergrove, little did Willie Carlin know the role Freddie Scappaticci played in saving his life.So began the dramatic extraction of Margaret Thatcher's key undercover agent in Sinn Fin - Willie Carlin, aka Agent 3007. For 11 years the former British soldier worked alongside former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in the republican movement's political wing in Derry. He was MI5's man at McGuinness' side and gave the British State unprecedented insight into the IRA leader's strategic thinking. Carlin worked with McGuinness to develop Sinn Fin's election strategy after the 1981 hunger strike, and the MI5 and later FRU agent's reports on McGuinness, Adams and other republicans were read by the British Cabinet, including Margaret Thatcher herself.When Carlin's cover was blown in mid-1985 thanks to one of his old MI5 handlers being jailed as a Soviet spy, Thatcher authorised the use of her jet to whisk him to safety. Incredibly, it was another British 'super spy' inside the IRA's secretive counter-intelligence unit, the 'nuttin' squad', who saved Carlin's life. The Derry man is perhaps the only person alive thanks to the information provided by the 'jewel in the crown' of British military intelligence - Freddie Scappaticci, aka Stakeknife.In Thatcher's Spy, the Cold War meets Northern Ireland's Dirty War in the remarkable real-life story of a deep under-cover British intelligence agent, a man now doomed forever to look over his shoulder. . .

Irish sportswomen continue to make headlines! Whether it is Katie Taylor's continued dominance in the boxing ring, or Rachel Blackmore's phenomenal success in 2021--as the leading jockey at Cheltenham and the first ever Grand National winner--Irish women are leading the way through their sporting achievements.Based on interviews with the featured athletes and fully illustrated in colour, the second volume of Girls Play Too continues from where the first book left off. Spoilt for choice, Jacqui's selection includes some of the most successful athletes to ever grace a GAA pitch, pioneering horse-racing jockeys, elite figures from the athletics circuit, stalwarts of the Irish football team, members of the hugely successful hockey team, and a host of figures who are excelling in their chosen codes.With her popular fairy-tale touch, RTÉ's Jacqui Hurley tells the real-life stories of women who have proved that gender is not a barrier to success. Each new story in Girls Play Too: Book 2 is one of empowerment and overcoming adversity, and the role models celebrated here are sure to inspire the next generation of Irish sportswomen.

In Albert Reynolds: Risktaker for Peace, Conor Lenihan takes the reader on a journey through the former Taoiseach's fascinating life. From his early days in Roscommon, Reynolds' determination and hard work saw him rise from a humble clerical job with Irish Rail to become one of Ireland's best-known showbiz promoters. But it is as creator of the template for peace on the island of Ireland that he, deservedly, will be best remembered. Reynolds' extraordinary progress from the cut-throat world of business to local politics, and, ultimately, government ministries, was driven by the entrepreneurial spirit and impatience that became the hallmark of his success and his failure. Appointed as Taoiseach in 1992, by 1994 he had been drummed out of office, yet in that brief period he confounded his critics by fast-tracking an end to the violence of the Troubles, with the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires. In the first complete biography of Reynolds, former Minister of State Conor Lenihan delivers an insider's account that reveals the courageous personal risks Reynolds took to create the template for peace in Ireland, and the highs and lows of a tempestuous, risk-taking life.

A City Imagined is a paean to the city of Belfast and its writers. Written in his highly regarded wry and lyrical style, Dawe's memoir sketches the outlines of his life as he starts to understand the city in which he was born, before embracing some of the local writers whose early work had such an influential part in nudging him in the direction of writing-- poets, in the main, whose first books were read with the enthusiasm of a young man beguiled by the language and music of poetry.Building on the critical acclaim of In Another World: Van Morrison & Belfast and Looking Through You, this third and final volume of the Northern Chronicles trilogy completes a fascinating and rich portrait of the celebrated poet's tangled and ever-evolving relationship with his native city.

On 1 June 1921, at the height of Ireland's War of Independence, a cycling patrol of members of the RIC was ambushed by members of the IRA at Ballymacandy, County Kerry. After an hour of fighting, four police officers lay dead and another died a day later. Ballymacandy tells their story, and that of those who led the attack against them.

This is the story of life in Ireland - a story half a billion years in the making. This epic journey will take us from the first fossils to the present day, to see how our wildlife has adapted to the human age and explore what the future might hold for life in Ireland.

Political Purgatory charts the three years from the collapse then restoration of the northern Executive to Covid-19 in the wider frame of building peace after conflict, and it turns the next corner into the centenary of Northern Ireland and that louder call for Irish unity since Brexit.

Unintended Consequences reveals how America's door closed on legal Irish immigration in the 1960s, and how America's Irish mounted a counterattack when nation-changing political forces were sweeping the country during the era of civil rights, political assassinations, and the Vietnam War.

From Whence I Came is a fascinating and timely collection that offers a fresh perspective on the Kennedy legacy and the politics of Ireland and the United States.

Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora' reveals a labyrinth of social and cultural connections that conspired to create and sustain an image of Ireland for the nation and for the Irish diaspora between 1893 and 1939. This era saw an upsurge of interest among patrons and collectors in New York and Chicago in the 'Irishness' of Irish art, which was facilitated by gallery owners, âemigrâes, philanthropists, and art-world celebrities. Leading Irish art historian, âEimear O'Connor, explores the ongoing tensions between those in Ireland and the expatriate community in the US, split as they were between tradition and modernity, and between public expectation and political rhetoric, as Ireland sought to forge a post-Treaty international identity through its visual artists.0Featuring a glittering cast of players including Jack. B. Yeats, George Russell (AE), Lady Gregory, and Seâan Keating, and richly illustrated in colour with images from archives on both sides of the Atlantic, 'Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora' presents a wealth of new research, and draws together, for the first time, a series of themes that bound the Dublin art scene with that in New York and Chicago through complex networks and contemporary publications at an extraordinary time in Ireland's history.

Agents of Influence offers a rare and shocking glimpse into the clandestine world of secret agents, British intelligence strategy and the betrayal at the heart of militant Irish republicanism during the vicious decades of the Troubles.

Sequel to renowned poet and writer Gerald Dawe's highly acclaimed In Another World: Van Morrison and Belfast.Evocative record of the musical and literary influences that inspired and forged Dawe's awakening as a poet.

In Another World is a unique trip through Belfast, mapped into the mystic through the timeless music of Van 'the Man' Morrison. The aptly soulful and inventive prose stems from the electric wit of acclaimed poet and fellow Belfast man, Gerald Dawe.Struck by the extraordinary brand of rhythm and blues that was Morrison's brainchild, Dawe's book is a celebration of the inspirations that underlie Morrison's music. Silhouetted in the work is Belfast, moody and vibrant, and the formative influence of the pre-Troubles northern capital on Morrison's musical direction.Dawe's writing transmutes the tender and unforgettable strains of Morrison's work, from the release in 1968 of Astral Weeks to the publication in 2014 of Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics. A powerful tribute to mark Van Morrison's accomplishments, In Another World taps into his legacy's eclectic soul and is kin to its enchantments.