Leonard and Hungry Paul


Book Description

A disarming novel that asks a simple question: Can gentle people change the world? In this charming and truly unique debut, popular Irish musician Ronan Hession tells the story of two single, thirty-something men who still live with their parents and who are . . . nice. They take care of their parents and play board games together. They like to read. They take satisfaction from their work. They are resolutely kind. And they realize that none of this is considered . . . normal. Leonard and Hungry Paul is the story of two friends struggling to protect their understanding of what’s meaningful in life. It is about the uncelebrated people of this world — the gentle, the meek, the humble. And as they struggle to persevere, the book asks a surprisingly enthralling question: Is it really them against the world, or are they on to something?




Biting at the Grave


Book Description

"In an eloquent and haunting book, O'Malley makes the fanaticism of [the hunger strikers] and their supporters, the obdurate and morally discredited tactics of the British Government and the hopeless combat of the Protestant and Roman Catholic factions in the Northern Ireland struggle explicable, and exposes the politics behind it."--The New York Times Book Review




Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland


Book Description

The Great Irish Famine was one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the nineteenth century. In a period of only five years, Ireland lost approximately 25% of its population through a combination of death and emigration. How could such a tragedy have occurred at the heart of the vast, and resource-rich, British Empire? Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland explores this question by focusing on a particular, and lesser-known, aspect of the Famine: that being the extent to which people throughout the world mobilized to provide money, food and clothing to assist the starving Irish. This book considers how, helped by developments in transport and communications, newspapers throughout the world reported on the suffering in Ireland, prompting funds to be raised globally on an unprecedented scale. Donations came from as far away as Australia, China, India and South America and contributors emerged from across the various religious, ethnic, social and gender divides. Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland traces the story of this international aid effort and uses it to reveal previously unconsidered elements in the history of the Famine in Ireland.




Ireland's Great Hunger


Book Description

The papers collected here are a product of the second conference on Ireland's Great Hunger held at Quinnipiac University in 2005. This volume, focused on the theses of relief, representation, and remembrance, contains essays from a broad range of disciplines including works of history, literary criticism, anthropology, and art history.




The 1981 Irish Hunger Strike


Book Description

The hunger strike of 1981 is regarded as one of the most tragic events in Irish history. Ten men died over a period of 217 days in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh (Maze) prison while exercising the most extreme form of civil disobedience available to them. The Troubles that gave rise to the hunger strike had roots in the centuries of socio-economic subjugation and religious persecution in Ireland. In 1971, the British government began internment without trial for persons suspected of belonging to paramilitary organizations. Eventually, the British government granted Special Category Status to these prisoners before later stripping it from the prisons by 1976, leading to a five-year prisoner protest that culminated in the 1981 hunger strike. This book critically examines declassified British government documents that detail how the government's policies led to the 1981 hunger strike, how Margaret Thatcher exacerbated the strike by refusing steps to end it, and how the hunger strike eventually led to peace in the north. Analysis also illustrates how the 1981 hunger strike, and the ten men who died on it, forced a revolutionary change in the political and governmental structure of the north and paved a road to peace that concluded with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.




Pawns in the Game: Irish Hunger Strikes 1912–1981


Book Description

Between 1917 and 1981, 22 Irishmen died on hunger strike. Now, for the first time, the stories of the hunger strikers are chronicled in one book, bringing to light previously hidden histories. From the deaths on hunger strike of Thomas Ashe in 1917 and Terence MacSwiney in 1920, while imprisoned by the British government, to the death in 1981 of Michael Devine, the last republican prisoner to die on hunger strike, Pawns in the Game teases out the tangled mesh of the politics and psychology of those who adopted this radical protest of last resort and those who allowed them to die. It is a story of fanaticism, pride and injustice, and the indifference of former comrades when power in the Dáil beckoned. Key interviewees include Gerry Kelly, Raymond McCartney, Pat Sheehan and Danny Morrison.




Heathcliff and the Great Hunger


Book Description

Heathcliff and the Great Hunger examines Irish culture from Swift to Joyce, in the light of the tortuous, often tragic, history that conditioned it.




The Personality of Ireland


Book Description

An influential study of culture, history, folklore in the great tradition of French historiography







Just Garret


Book Description

InJust Garret, Dr. FitzGerald writes frankly about his upbringing, his parents, his involvement in the Independence movement, their disagreements about the Treaty, his early years in school and college and his gradual entry into politics. He reflects honestly on his time as minister for Foreign Affairs, and later on his tenure as Taoiseach.The book includes new material and opinion on key figures such as Charles Haughey, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, as well as his role in the emerging peace in Northern Ireland, Ireland's role in the EU and Garret's advocacy in the referendas on the European Union also feature. His memoir gently lifts the layers of his public life back to reveal a much-cherished family life and the huge influence his wife Joan had on his career, rendering a portrait of an informal, humane and witty person who was an ever compelling voice in Irish public affairs right up until his passing in May, 2011.