NEW TITLES MERRION PRESS
2021
New Title • IRISH INTEREST
OLD IRELAND IN COLOUR 2 JOHN BRESLIN & SARAH-ANNE BUCKLEY
In Old Ireland in Colour 2, the much-anticipated sequel to their beloved bestseller, John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley have delved even deeper into Ireland’s historical archives to uncover captivating photographic gems to bring to life using their 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 sees all thirty-two counties represented. With over 150 superb images, once again accompanied by insightful captions, the book is the perfect encapsulation of life in Ireland throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the chaos of the revolutionary period 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.
HARDBACK SEPTEMBER 2021 €24.95 / £21.99 9781785374111 272 pages 230 x 190mm
John Breslin is a Professor at NUI Galway, where he has taught engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship over a twenty-year period. He has written over 200 publications and co-authored two books. Sarah-Anne Buckley is a lecturer in History at NUI Galway and President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland. She has published two monographs, four edited volumes and numerous articles. She is co-founder of the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class, and Senior Research Fellow in the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • CHILDREN’S
GIRLS PLAY TOO: BOOK 2
MORE INSPIRING STORIES OF IRISH SPORTSWOMEN JACQUI HURLEY
Irish sportswomen continue to make headlines! Whether it is Kellie Harrington’s dominance in the boxing ring, or Rachael Blackmore’s phenomenal success in the saddle in 2021, Irish women are leading the way through their remarkable sporting achievements. 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 even more. 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, but with a new selection of inspiring Irish female athletes from the worlds of GAA, horse-racing, athletics, hockey, and a host of figures who are excelling in their chosen codes.
Jacqui Hurley is one of Ireland’s leading sports broadcasters. She represented Ireland at basketball and also played camogie for Cork. In 2009, she became the first ever female anchor of Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio One. 2021 has been a particularly busy year for Jacqui, who – in addition to Sunday Sport – has been a key presenter in RTÉ’s coverage of EURO 2020, anchored the live coverage of Ireland versus Japan in rugby, and hosted the Tokyo Olympics coverage. She lives in Dublin with her husband Shane and her children, Luke and Lily.
HARDBACK SEPTEMBER 2021 €14.95 / £13.99 9781785374081 64 pages 238 x 170mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • ART
DUBLIN
IN SKETCHES AND STORIES RÓISÍN CURÉ
Róisín Curé sketches what she sees, wherever she is, from the mundane to the magnificent and everything in between. With her ears and eyes open, she immerses herself in the urban scene and creates a snippet of the world around her in words and pictures with nothing more hi-tech than a fountain pen and a small box of watercolours. The bustling, busy city of Dublin is captured here in all its grit and glory, through its buildings and people, as well as conversations with its inhabitants. You won’t find these stories in any guidebook, as they ebbed and flowed like the ink and paint used to create this very intimate portrait of a city and its people. With more than 125 lively images, Dublin in Sketches and Stories is a joyous snapshot of the beating heart of the Fair City.
HARDBACK OCTOBER 2021 €24.95 / £22.99 9781785373763 176 pages 215 x 225mm
Róisín Curé has drawn all her life and is the author of two books on urban sketching. This is her third. She currently teaches the mindful and colourful practice of urban sketching to students through workshops all over the world and online; the latter is always live, in keeping with the spirit of urban sketching, which is about living life in the now. She is based in Co. Galway.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • ART
DARK BEAUTY
HIDDEN DETAIL IN HARRY CLARKE’S STAINED GLASS LUCY COSTIGAN & MICHAEL CULLEN Dark Beauty focuses on the minute detail in Harry Clarke’s stained-glass windows, particularly in the borders and lower panels of his work. Clarke’s brilliance as a graphic artist is clearly visible in his book illustrations, which are imbued with precise attention to intricate designs. He applied the same lavish focus to every facet of his stained glass. The title Dark Beauty refers to the duality of Clarke’s work that sees delicate angels juxtaposed with macabre, grotesque figures, and references the partially hidden details that dwell in the background of his windows – motifs, accessories, flora, fauna and diminutive characters – which may be missed in light of the dominance of the central subjects. The authors spent many years photographing Clarke’s windows in Ireland, England, America and Australia, and the resulting 60,000 photos have been carefully whittled down to 325 glorious images. Dark Beauty will provide lovers of Clarke’s stained glass with the opportunity to view previously obscured or unnoticed details in all their unique beauty and inspire their own travels to view Clarke’s work.
NEW IN PAPERBACK NOVEMBER 2021 €27.95 / £24.99 9781785370755 256 pages 232 x192mm
Lucy Costigan is from Wexford. Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke, by Lucy Costigan and Michael Cullen, was shortlisted for Best Irish-Published Book of the year by the Irish Book Awards in 2010 and for Book of the Decade by Dublin Book Festival in 2016. Michael Cullen is a photographer and cinematographer from Wexford. He photographed the entire stained-glass work of Harry Clarke worldwide from 2008 to 2010 for Strangest Genius.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • ARCHITECTURE
THE DIGNITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE CELEBRATING MICHAEL SCOTT’S BUSÁRAS EOIN Ó BROIN & MAL McCANN Michael Scott’s Áras Mhic Dhiarmada and Busáras is one of the most important modernist buildings in Ireland. Built between 1947 and 1953, it was intended to be a bus station like no other, providing ordinary working people with a range of amenities including a roof-top restaurant, incredible panoramic views of Dublin, a crèche, and a 24-hour newsreel cinema. It was to be a microcosm of the city, providing dignity, comfort, and convenience to bus users. From its inception, the project was gripped in controversy, over the location, design, function, and cost. Battles were waged on the floor of the Dáil, in Dublin Corporation Committee meetings and the letters pages of various newspapers. Construction ground to a halt for three years as Government and opposition argued over the merits and uses of the building. In the end, it became home to the Department of Social Protection and Bus Éireann’s provincial bus services. Despite receiving widespread acclaim for its architectural and design innovations, today it is a much maligned and misunderstood building.
HARDBACK NOVEMBER 2021 €30 / £24.99 9781785374180 224 pages 245 x 210mm
In this exciting collaboration, writer Eoin Ó Broin and photographer Mal McCann celebrate this incredible example of Irish modernist architecture and design.
Eoin Ó Broin is TD for Dublin Mid-West and Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on Housing. He is the author of five books, including Home: Why Public Housing is the Answer (Merrion Press, 2019) and Defects: Living with the Legacy of the Celtic Tiger (Merrion Press, 2021). Mal McCann is from Belfast and he has been working as a photographer since 1994. He joined The Irish News in 2007 and has won a number awards, including NI Press Photographer of the Year in 2018.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • NATURE
LIFE IN IRELAND
A SHORT HISTORY OF A LONG TIME CONOR W. O’BRIEN
This is the story of life in Ireland – a story half a billion years in the making. With its castles, crannogs and passage tombs, Ireland is a land where history looms large. But the saga of life on this island dates back millions of years before the first people set foot here. In Life in Ireland, Conor W. O’Brien guides you on a safari through place and time, from the Jurassic Coast of Antrim to the great Ice Age bone-beds of Cork. Along the way, we’ll meet some of the astonishing creatures that have called Ireland home through the ages: shelled monsters; huge marine lizards; armoured dinosaurs; giant deer; mighty mammoths. Vital strands in the story of life on Earth have left their mark here, including some of the first creatures to crawl onto land or take to the wing. This epic journey will take us from the first fossils to the present day. Through it all, we’ll see how our wildlife has adapted to the human age and explore what the future might hold for life in Ireland.
Conor W. O’Brien has been interested in wildlife and nature from a very early age, and it is a passion that has since taken him around the world. His first book, Ireland through Birds: Journeys in Search of a Wild Nation (Merrion Press, 2019), was shortlisted for Best-Irish Published Book at the An Post Irish Book Awards.
PAPERBACK APRIL 2021 €16.95 / £15.99 9781785373848 272 pages 215 x 135mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • CURRENT AFFAIRS
DEFECTS
LIVING WITH THE LEGACY OF THE CELTIC TIGER EOIN Ó BROIN Across Ireland, thousands of people are living in homes with serious fire-safety and structural defects. Some have made the news, many have not. Defects: Living with the Legacy of the Celtic Tiger tells the horrifying story of how these people came to be trapped in dangerous homes. In this follow-up to his hugely popular Home, Eoin Ó Broin reveals how decisions made by governments from the 1960s to the 1990s led to an alarmingly lighttouch building control regime. When combined with the greed of Celtic Tiger-era property development, this allowed defective properties to be built and sold in huge numbers to unsuspecting victims. The results are clear. Families are living in fire-defective and structurally unsound apartments and houses across the state, and homes in Donegal, Mayo and elsewhere are literally crumbling apart as a result of mica and pyrite in defective building blocks.
PAPERBACK AUGUST 2021 €16.95 / £14.99 9781785373961 206 pages 215 x 135mm
Who was responsible? Why did they get away with it? And who will foot the bill to fix these potentially fatal defects? These questions and more are answered in this hard-hitting and shocking investigative work.
Eoin Ó Broin is a TD for Dublin Mid-West and Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. He is author of Matxinada, Basque Nationalism and Radical Basque Youth Movements (2003), Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (2009) and Home: Why Public Housing is the Answer (Merrion Press, 2019). He writes regularly on housing policy issues for a range of newspapers and online publications.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • MEMOIR
THE NATION HOLDS ITS BREATH GEORGE HAMILTON
‘David O’Leary is entrusted with the responsibility of taking the penalty that could send Ireland to the quarter-finals of the World Cup. This kick can decide it all. The nation holds its breath … Yes, we’re there!’ Written with his trademark warmth and candour, The Nation Holds Its Breath is George Hamilton’s eagerly awaited and wonderfully told memoir of a rich and varied career in broadcasting. As the undisputed voice of Irish football, George’s evocative and celebrated commentary is familiar to millions. He first took up the microphone in the mid-seventies and he has been enthralling his audiences ever since, capturing the highs and lows of Irish sport for generations of fans. To read George’s writing is to hear George’s voice and the reader will be captivated from the very first page, as he takes us on an affectionate journey from the Cregagh Road in East Belfast to an emotional farewell salute from Big Jack Charlton on the hallowed Anfield turf in 1995. The destinations – Stuttgart, Genoa, New Jersey – will be familiar, the journeys in between, anything but. A mustread memoir from one of Ireland’s truly undeniable national treasures.
George Hamilton has worked in broadcasting since the seventies. Best known as the chief football commentator for RTÉ, he also covers other high-profile sporting events for the national broadcaster, including the Olympic Games. Since 2003, he has presented The Hamilton Scores, a weekly classical music show on Lyric FM.
HARDBACK OCTOBER 2021 €22.95 / £19.99 9781785373732 272 pages 234 x 156mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • MEMOIR
THATCHER’S SPY
MY LIFE AS AN MI5 AGENT INSIDE SINN FÉIN WILLIE CARLIN
In March 1985, Willie Carlin mounted the steps of Margaret Thatcher’s jet on the runway of RAF Aldergrove, his life threatened by an IRA execution squad. So began the dramatic extraction of Thatcher’s key undercover agent in Sinn Féin. For 11 years the former British soldier worked alongside former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in the republican movement’s political wing in Derry. As MI5’s man at McGuinness’s side, he gave the British state unprecedented insight into the IRA leader’s strategic thinking, and his reports on McGuinness, Adams and other republicans were read by the British Cabinet, including Thatcher herself. When Carlin’s cover was blown in 1985, thanks to one of his old MI5 handlers being jailed as a Soviet spy, it was another British ‘super spy’ inside the IRA’s secretive counter-intelligence unit, the ‘nuttin’ squad’, who saved Carlin’s life – Freddie Scappaticci.
PAPERBACK AUGUST 2021 €12.95 / £9.99 9781785374173 240 pages 215 x 135mm
In Thatcher’s Spy, the Cold War meets Northern Ireland’s Dirty War in the sensational memoir of a deep undercover British intelligence agent, a man now doomed forever to look over his shoulder …
Willie Carlin was born and raised in Derry. Joining the British Army in 1965, he was recruited by MI5 in 1974 (and later by the Force Research Unit) to infiltrate Sinn Féin. Over the next eleven years, he became one of Britain’s most valuable long-term agents in Northern Ireland.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • BIOGRAPHY/ CURRENT AFFAIRS
QUINN TREVOR BIRNEY
The Rise and Fall of the Border Billionaire This is the dramatic story of Ireland’s most controversial self-made billionaire, Sean Quinn. Award-winning Irish journalist Trevor Birney skilfully weaves together the inside story of Quinn’s meteoric rise and fall using exclusive interviews with the man himself. A millionaire by thirty, Quinn’s newfound wealth was literally forged from the sand and stone under his feet. In the 1980s he took on the monopolised Irish cement business, and won. He became an almost mythical character, creating thousands of jobs at a time when the shadows of mass unemployment and the Troubles loomed large over the borderlands. At the height of the Celtic Tiger, he gambled it all on the stock market; this time he lost. Quinn’s senior management team were handpicked, with loyalty prized above all else, but soon the atmosphere in ‘Quinn country’ turned sinister. A campaign of violence and intimidation against his former company culminated in the abduction and brutal torture of one of that management team, Kevin Lunney, in 2019.
PAPERBACK JANUARY 2022 €19.95 / £17.99 9781785373992 272 pages 234 x 156mm
Ten years after losing it all, Quinn is a brooding figure, refusing to accept blame for his downfall. This book is the truly remarkable story of the Irishman everyone said was too big to fail. Oscar-nominated producer, director and journalist Trevor Birney has won a Justice Media Award, two RTS awards and was named NI Broadcaster of the Year in 2002. In 2017, with Barry McCaffrey, he produced the ground-breaking documentary No Stone Unturned, about the 1994 murder by UVF gunmen of six Catholics in Loughinisland, County Down.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • BIOGRAPHY
ALBERT REYNOLDS RISKTAKER FOR PEACE CONOR LENIHAN 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 showbusiness 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 successes and his failures. 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 1994. 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.
During his career as a journalist and a fourteen-year stint in politics, Conor Lenihan worked and became friends with Albert Reynolds, who co-opted him, behind the scenes, to help with the peace process. A member of one of Ireland’s best-known political families, Lenihan’s first book, the bestselling Haughey: Prince of Power, was published in 2015.
HARDBACK SEPTEMBER 2021 €22.95 / £19.99 9781785374050 256 pages 234 x 156mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • BIOGRAPHY
ERNIE O’MALLEY A LIFE
HARRY F. MARTIN & CORMAC K.H. O’MALLEY
This is the compelling life story of Ernie O’Malley (1897–1957), one of Ireland’s most complex and influential republican figures, and later an acclaimed writer. Born in Castlebar in 1897, O’Malley became devoted to Ireland’s fight for freedom at an early age. As a twenty-three-year-old IRA commandantgeneral, leading 7,000 volunteers in the brutal War of Independence, and later IRA senior commander during the Civil War, he was captured three times, severely tortured, escaped twice, wounded fourteen times and survived a forty-one-day hunger strike. What distinguishes O’Malley’s story as remarkable is the stark difference between his dramatic life as a soldier and his subsequent role as an intellectual and renaissance man. After the establishment of the new state, he left Ireland and travelled throughout Europe, America and Mexico, mixing with the likes of Jack B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and John Ford, and embarked upon a tumultuous marriage to American heiress-sculptor Helen Hooker.
PAPERBACK OCTOBER 2021 €18.95 / £16.99 9781785373909 272 pages 226 x 153mm
Enriched with valuable unpublished material from his diaries, letters and military dispatches, and the unique perspective of his son Cormac, Ernie O’Malley: A Life is the fascinating biography of an extraordinary Irishman.
Harry F. Martin was born in Massachusetts and following his education at Harvard and time in the US Army, he began his esteemed career encompassing law and finance. Cormac O’Malley was born in Ireland, moved to the USA in 1957, and worked in law. In retirement, he has pursued research on Irish history and the legacy of his parents, Ernie O’Malley and Helen Hooker O’Malley.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • BIOGRAPHY
PSYCHIATRIST IN THE CHAIR
THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY OF ANTHONY CLARE BRENDAN KELLY & MUIRIS HOUSTON ‘The remarkable story of a remarkable man … A fascinating book.’ Gyles Brandreth ‘Marvellous’ Joanna Lumley ‘This book explores his life in the same depth that Clare himself would have expected as one of our greatest broadcasters.’ Irish Independent ‘The insight that this biography provides into this key figure makes for essential reading.’ Irish Examiner Born in Dublin in 1942, Anthony Clare was the bestknown psychiatrist of his generation. His BBC Radio 4 show, In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, which ran from 1982 to 2001, brought him international fame and changed the nature of broadcast interviews forever. Famous interviewees included Stephen Fry, Anthony Hopkins, Spike Milligan, Maya Angelou and Jimmy Savile, each of whom yielded to Clare’s inimitable gentle yet probing style. Clare made unique contributions to the demystification and practice of psychiatry, most notably through his classic book Psychiatry in Dissent: Controversial Issues in Thought and Practice (1976). This book, the first official biography of this much-loved figure, examines the man behind these achievements: the debater and the doctor, the writer and the broadcaster, the public figure and the family man.
NEW IN PAPERBACK AUGUST 2021 €16.95 / £14.99 9781785373329 328 pages 234 x 156mm
Brendan Kelly is Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College. His books include Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland (IAP, 2016) and Coping with Coronavirus (Merrion Press, 2020). Muiris Houston is a medical writer and health strategist, a specialist in occupational medicine, and Adjunct Professor of Narrative Medicine at Trinity College. He is a columnist with the Medical Independent and The Irish Times.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • MEMOIR
A CITY IMAGINED BELFAST SOULSCAPES GERALD DAWE
‘The greatest influence on a writer is the past, and its relevance is pervasive in what follows and is the source on which this short book is based. Often it is only when that past is unearthed that a poet begins to make sense of his or her imaginings.’ 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.
Gerald Dawe is a former Professor of English and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College Dublin. He has published ten collections of poetry and several volumes of essays, including The Wrong Country: Essays on Modern Irish Writing, The Sound of the Shuttle: Essays on Cultural Belonging & Protestantism in Northern Ireland, In Another World: Van Morrison & Belfast, and Looking Through You: Northern Chronicles.
HARDBACK JULY 2021 €16.95 / £14.99 9781785373930 112 pages 205 x 130mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • MEMOIR
BELFAST AURORA
A MEMOIR OF A FALLS CHILDHOOD, 1971–1973 SEAMUS KELTERS
‘Soon the summer storms became mainly manmade, rumbling and crackling their way up from the terraces and rolling in from the sprawling new estates. Troubles had come again to Belfast, this city of history, hard men and hatred.’ This is a story of the most brutal years of Belfast’s recent history, told from the perspective of a young boy who loved to write. In Belfast Aurora Seamus Kelters poignantly reflects upon his years growing up on the Falls Road at the height of the Troubles, where he witnessed the Ballymurphy massacre, the fallout of Bloody Sunday and soldiers in the playground. However, this is not just a Troubles book. It’s a testimony to the love of family and friends in the midst of chaos and tragedy. Within these fifteen stories there are lessons, laughter and all of life in the unique place he called home. It offers not just the tapestry of a life touched by war, but also the brilliant colours of a child’s world bursting like a bright waving flare in his very own Belfast aurora.
Acclaimed Belfast journalist Seamus Kelters began his career at The Irish News. In the 1990s, he joined the BBC as a broadcast journalist, before moving behind the camera, becoming Assistant Editor of BBC Newsline. He is best known as one of the authors of the landmark book Lost Lives (1999), which documented every death that was caused by the Troubles. He died in 2017, at the age of fifty-four.
HARDBACK OCTOBER 2021 €16.95 / £14.99 9781785374142 170 pages 205 x 130mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • POLITICS
POLITICAL PURGATORY
THE BATTLE TO SAVE STORMONT AND THE PLAY FOR A NEW IRELAND BRIAN ROWAN This is a book about political stasis; the purgatory that Stormont became, and the sins of that long standoff. The story begins in January 2017, with Martin McGuinness’s dramatic resignation as Deputy First Minister, and chronicles all the behind-thescenes negotiations that ultimately resulted in the restoration of the Executive in January 2020, with the ‘New Decade, New Approach’ agreement. Then, that new fight with a fearsome and unknowable foe: coronavirus. Political Purgatory charts the three years from the collapse and then the restoration of the northern Executive to Covid-19 in the wider frame of building peace after conflict. It also turns the next corner into the centenary of Northern Ireland and that louder call for Irish unity since Brexit, like a piece of heavy machinery on fragile ground, has left cracks across the Union. Spanning several decades, some of the biggest names on the inside of Irish and British politics, including Gerry Adams, Naomi Long, Peter Robinson, Julian Smith and Simon Coveney, help veteran journalist Brian Rowan turn the pages in what President Clinton has called the ‘long war for peace’.
Brian Rowan is a journalist, author and broadcaster. He was the BBC security editor until 2005, and reported on the major developments in the transition from conflict to peace. He was a category winner in the Northern Ireland Journalist of the Year awards four times, including twice as specialist journalist.
PAPERBACK APRIL 2021 €19.95 / £17.99 9781785373817 254 pages 234 x 156mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • HISTORY
AGENTS OF INFLUENCE
BRITAIN’S SECRET INTELLIGENCE WAR AGAINST THE IRA AARON EDWARDS Recruited by British Intelligence to infiltrate the IRA and Sinn Féin during the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles, they were ‘agents of influence’. With code names like INFLICTION, STAKEKNIFE, 3007 and CAROL, these spies played a pivotal role in the fight against Irish republicanism. Now, for the first time, some of them have emerged from the shadows to tell their compelling stories. Agents of Influence takes you behind the scenes of the secret intelligence war which helped bring the IRA’s armed struggle to an end. Historian Aaron Edwards explains how the IRA was penetrated by British agents, with explosive new revelations about the hidden agendas of prominent republicans like Martin McGuinness and Freddie Scappaticci, and lesser-known ones like Joe Haughey and John Joe Magee. Bringing to light recently declassified TOP SECRET documents and the first-hand testimonies of agents and their handlers, Edwards reveals how British Intelligence gained extraordinary access to the IRA’s inner circle and manipulated them into engaging with the peace process.
PAPERBACK APRIL 2021 €19.95 / £17.99 9781785373411 320 pages 226 x 153mm
With new insights into the spymasters behind the scenes and Britain’s international intelligence network, 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. Aaron Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is the author of several books, including Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law: Aden and the End of Empire (2014) and UVF: Behind the Mask (Merrion Press, 2017).
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New Title • HISTORY
THE TREATY
THE GRIPPING STORY OF THE NEGOTIATIONS THAT BROUGHT ABOUT IRISH INDEPENDENCE AND LED TO THE CIVIL WAR GRETCHEN FRIEMANN 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 British Prime Minister. Such was the extraordinary melodrama of the events leading up to what is known in Ireland as simply ‘the Treaty’ – a document that had been designed to bring one violent conflict to an end and soon gave rise to another. A century on from its signing, Gretchen Friemann has produced a gripping and definitive account of the tense and protracted negotiations between the Irish and British delegations, 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.
Gretchen Friemann is an award-winning journalist whose work has featured in The Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Business Post, The Sunday Times and The Australian. She lives in Dublin and The Treaty is her first book.
PAPERBACK NOVEMBER 2021 €16.95 / £14.99 9781785374203 300 pages 234 x 156 mm
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New Title • HISTORY
BALLYMACANDY
THE STORY OF A KERRY AMBUSH OWEN O’SHEA
On 1 June 1921, at the height of Ireland’s War of Independence, a cycling unit of members of the RIC and Black and Tans was ambushed by the IRA at Ballymacandy, between Milltown and Castlemaine in County Kerry. During an hour of fighting, five policemen were killed, among them a father of nine who lived in the same village as many of the men who attacked him. The dramatic story is told from the perspectives of the IRA gunmen, the local Cumann na mBan, the terrified villagers, the priest who prayed into the ears of the dying, the IRA’s informer within the police, and the doctor accused of neglecting a dying man. This book comes on the centenary of an ambush that continues to resonate in its community and in a county in which the battle with Crown forces was more virulent and violent than most. Drawing on newly published witness statements and previously unpublished official records, Ballymacandy details what happened to the five men who died and to those who led the attack against them, and sets the incident against the backdrop of the wider revolutionary struggle in the county.
Owen O’Shea is Communications Officer with Kerry County Council. A former Labour Party press officer and election candidate, he is the author of Heirs to the Kingdom: Kerry’s Political Dynasties (2011) and A Century of Politics in the Kingdom: A County Kerry Compendium (Merrion Press, 2018).
PAPERBACK MAY 2021 €14.95 / £12.99 9781785373879 230 pages 215 x 135mm
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New Title • HISTORY
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
THE STORY OF IRISH IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S. AND HOW AMERICA’S DOOR WAS CLOSED TO THE IRISH RAY O’HANLON 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. This book looks at the full historical background to Irish migration across the Atlantic, how it helped shape the young republic, and how the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 brought a near total halt to this westward flow. Nevertheless, the Irish would not be denied and continued to make the journey, no longer into the light of a full and legal American life, but rather into the shadows of an undocumented existence. Successive organisations championed the undocumented Irish, and the fight continues to this day, but this is a new America, where, in recent years, there has been growing hostility to immigrants of every nationality. Ray O’Hanlon has spent over three decades reporting on battles over comprehensive US immigration reform, and Unintended Consequences is the story of the Irish past, present and most uncertain future in the ‘land of the free,’ now in the presidency of Joe Biden, a man who fully embraces his Irish immigrant family story. Through Biden, the great Irish of America story continues, and with renewed hope.
Ray O’Hanlon is the editor of New York’s Irish Echo newspaper. A native of Dublin, he is a frequent contributor to US, Irish and British media outlets reporting on Ireland, Irish American affairs, and Anglo-Irish relations. His book The New Irish Americans (1998) was the recipient of a Washington Irving Book Award.
PAPERBACK APRIL 2021 €19.95 / £18.99 9781785373787 368 pages 226 x 153mm
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New Title • HISTORY
FROM WHENCE I CAME
THE KENNEDY LEGACY, IRELAND AND AMERICA EDITED BY BRIAN MURPHY & DONNACHA Ó BEACHÁIN Elected in 1960 as the 35th President of the USA, John Fitzgerald Kennedy remains to this day the office’s youngest incumbent and he was its first Roman Catholic. His term in office was short, but arguably no US President has inspired more people around the globe than JFK. Even today, for generations born decades after his death, President Kennedy’s legacy has an enduring appeal. This insightful book contains specially commissioned pieces by a range of respected academic and political figures, including former Obama speechwriter Cody Kennan, the President of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organisation, Kerry Kennedy, and former senior adviser to Bernie Sanders Tad Devine. With the presidency of Joe Biden seeing a renewed focus on broader themes within Irish, American and global politics, 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.
PAPERBACK MARCH 2021 €19.95 / £18.99 9781788551410 288 pages 226 x 153mm
Brian Murphy lectures at the Technological University Dublin. He is the author of Forgotten Patriot: Douglas Hyde and the Foundation of the Irish Presidency and Brian Lenihan: In Calm and Crisis. He was Co-Director of the Kennedy Summer School from 2016–2018. Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at Dublin City University. His books include Destiny of the Soldiers: Fianna Fáil, Irish Republicanism and the IRA 1926–1973 (2010), Political Communication in Ireland (2014), and From Partition to Brexit: The Irish Government and Northern Ireland (2018).
MERRION PRESS
New Title • HISTORY
BIRTH OF A STATE THE ANGLO-IRISH TREATY
MÍCHEÁL Ó FATHARTAIGH & LIAM WEEKS
The Irish state came into being as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Signed by a Sinn Féin delegation and the British government at 10 Downing Street in the early hours of 6 December that year, the Treaty was the culmination of both a revolutionary movement that had begun in the previous decade, and of centuries of separate nationalist attempts to gain autonomy from the United Kingdom. Although it is the founding document of the Irish state, the Treaty has been the subject of very little critical analysis, certainly in proportion to its significance. In its centenary year, this book examines the Treaty’s legacy and its implications for the state that it created. It explores three key elements of the Treaty: the contemporary circumstances that produced it; its significance from a comparative and an international perspective; and its historical and political consequences. Birth of a State is unique in that it is written by academics from two different disciplines – history and political science – who each bring their own perspectives on the Treaty and its impact, both then and now.
Mícheál Ó Fathartaigh is a lecturer and historian based in the Social Sciences Research Centre, National University of Ireland, Galway, and Dublin Business School. This is his fourth book. Liam Weeks is a lecturer and political scientist in the Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork. This is his fifth book.
PAPERBACK NOVEMBER 2021 €19.95 / £17.99 9781788551595 272 pages 234 x 156mm
New Title • POLITICS
RECONCILING IRELAND
FIFTY YEARS OF BRITISH–IRISH AGREEMENTS EDITED BY RICHARD HUMPHREYS
‘This book is an indispensable guide to half a century of agreements between Ireland and Britain and the parties of Northern Ireland.’ Tony Blair Reconciling Ireland is a unique guide to the history of the last half-century, compiling all the texts of the key British–Irish legal and political agreements relating to Northern Ireland for the first time. These forty documents, presented alongside expert analysis by author and Irish High Court Judge Richard Humphreys, chart the evolution of the principles of the political and peace processes, from their inception right up to the present day, from the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, to the 1985 AngloIrish Agreement, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the New Decade, New Approach deal of 2020 that resolved the 2017–20 Stormont stalemate. This definitive collection demonstrates the tremendous progress made towards peace and functioning politics, despite huge obstacles, and gives grounds for optimism for the future. Given the need to renew British–Irish relationships following Brexit, as well as the outstanding question of implementation of existing agreements, and the increased debate on Northern Ireland’s constitutional arrangements, Reconciling Ireland will be an invaluable reference work for generations to come. Richard Humphreys is a Judge of the Irish High Court. He is a graduate of UCD and the King’s Inns, and holds a PhD in Law from Trinity College Dublin. As a government adviser in 1996, he attended the launch of All-Party negotiations in Stormont that ultimately led to the Good Friday Agreement. This is his fourth book.
HARDBACK MAY 2021 €35 / £29.99 9781788551571 475 pages 234 x 156mm
New Title • MYTHOLOGY
EARTHING THE MYTHS
THE MYTHS, LEGENDS AND EARLY HISTORY OF IRELAND DARAGH SMYTH In Ireland, the link between place and myth is strong, and there is no more enlightening way to understand the rich tapestry of Irish mythology, and its relationship to our true history, than by reading the landscape. Earthing the Myths is an engaging and exhaustive county-by-county guide to the vast number of fascinating places in Ireland connected to myth, folklore and early history. Covering the period 800 BC to AD 650, this book spans the Late Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the early Christian period. It explores the ways in which the land evolved, and with it our catalogue of myths and legends. Smyth chronicles sites the length and breadth of the country, where druids, fairies, goddesses, warriors and kings all left their mark, in tales both real and imagined. With over one thousand locations recorded, from Rathlin Island to the Beara Peninsula, Earthing the Myths breathes life into places throughout Ireland that find their origins in our pre-Christian and preGaelic past, and shows that they still possess unique wisdom and vibrant energy.
Daragh Smyth is a retired lecturer from the Dublin Institute of Technology and co-founder of Saor Ollscoil na hÉireann (The Free University of Ireland). He was in charge of the Erasmus programme at D.I.T., where he taught Irish Cultural studies to students from Europe, Australia and North America. Smyth has published two books with Irish Academic Press: A Guide to Irish Mythology (1996) and Cú Chulainn: An Iron Age Hero (2005).
NEW IN PAPERBACK NOVEMBER 2021 €24.95 / £22.99 9781788551397 392 pages 245 x 180mm
New Title • ART
VICEREINES OF IRELAND PORTRAITS OF FORGOTTEN WOMEN EDITED BY MYLES CAMPBELL This book tells the untold story of the women who were the faces of the British administration in Ireland. As the wives of the country’s viceroys, the vicereines were once the fashionable figureheads of social, cultural and charitable life at Dublin Castle, in the days before Irish independence. Exploring the portraits, papers and personal objects they left behind, this book sets out to recapture their lost legacies. Fabrics shimmer, flowers blossom and pearls glint in the painted world of the vicereines. But behind these genteel images were activists and advocates who, as the studies in this book reveal, touched almost every facet of Irish life. Campaigns to develop hospitals, relieve poverty, promote Irish fashions, and, remarkably, mitigate what several perceived as the injustices of British rule in Ireland, are just some of their overlooked initiatives. The experiences and papers of the vicereines have much to tell us, not only about official Ireland but also about those whose identities are largely lost to history, such as orphans, artisans and the working poor. Often sympathetic but sometimes apathetic, the contrasting attitudes of the vicereines suggest a fresh, more inclusive reading of the British administration in Ireland, as viewed not only through its men but also its women. Featuring essays by leading scholars and based on original sources, this beautifully illustrated book brings together text and image to create new and illuminating portraits of forgotten women. Myles Campbell is Research and Interpretation Officer for the Office of Public Works at Dublin Castle. In 2017 he was co-editor of Making Majesty: The Throne Room at Dublin Castle, A Cultural History (Irish Academic Press), research for which earned him the inaugural George B. Clarke Prize.
HARDBACK MAY 2021 €45 / £40 9781788551335 320 pages 245 x 210mm
New Title • ART
GAZETTEER OF IRISH STAINED GLASS REVISED NEW EDITION
NICOLA GORDON BOWE, DAVID CARON (ED.), MICHAEL WYNNE ‘This book will now become the definitive study on Irish stained glass and has rightly set the standard for future research on the subject.’ Irish Arts Review Some thirty years since its first publication, David Caron returns with an updated, redesigned, and greatly expanded edition of the Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass, the definitive guide to Irish stained glass from 1900 to the present day. This is a practical and comprehensive guide that lists all of Ireland’s significant stained glass works county by county, as well as the most noteworthy pieces abroad by Irish artists. Beautifully illustrated with vibrant new photography, the Gazetteer is bursting with colour and brimming with information about our most famous stained glass artists, those who deserve to be better known, and the best contemporary artists working in the medium today. With over 2,500 entries, two essays, and biographical notes on major artists, this is the key reference book for both academics and all who wish to learn more about Ireland’s celebrated stained glass and where it can be found.
David Caron studied Visual Communication at NCAD, Dublin, to which he returned as lecturer and later as Head of Department. He undertook a Masters at the Pratt Institute, New York, and his PhD at Trinity College Dublin. Since availing of early retirement, he has focused on cataloguing Ireland’s stained-glass heritage.
HARDBACK JULY 2021 €35 / £29.99 9781788551298 320 pages 225 x 170mm
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