Best of
Ireland

1984

Station Island


Seamus Heaney - 1984
    Heaney's pilgrim is on an inner journey and proceeds through a series of dream encounters which lead him back into the world that formed him, and then forward to face the crises of the present. Writing in The Washington Post Book World, Hugh Kenner called this narrative sequence "as fine a long poem as we've had in fifty years." It is preceded by a section of richly meditative lyrics ("Wry, spare, compressed, subtle, strange, they have a furtive intensity and exicitement." - Richard Ellmann, The New York Review of Books), and leads naturally into a third group of poems, in which the poet's voice is at one with the voice of the legendary Sweeney, a king of Ulster whose story Heaney translated from the Irish.

A Fanatic Heart


Edna O'Brien - 1984
    Her stories portray a young Irish girl's view of obsessive love and its often wrenching pain, while tales of contemporary life show women who open themselves to sexuality, to disappointment, to madness. Throughout, there is always O'Brien's voice—wondrous, despairing, moving—examining passionate subjects that lay bare the desire and needs that can be hidden in a woman's heart.

The Killing Anniversary


Ian St. James - 1984
    THE PASSION AND TRAGEDY OF DIVIDED IRELAND come vividly to life in this compelling saga of love, hate, power-and revenge.Four families - the Connors, Riordans, Averdales and O'Briens-are majestically chronicled against the historic backdrop of Ireland's bitter struggle for independence.Brilliant journalist Sean Connors, destined to leave the Dublin ghetto to build a broadcasting empire...IRA terrorist Matt Riordan, stripped of home and birthright, learning hatred in the Catholic ghettos of the north...Mark Averdale, ruthless Ulster aristocrat, consumed by hate and by his distorted sexual passions...and beautiful Kate O'Brien, orphaned at an early age and loved by two of the men-four destinies linked by the flames of politics and the human heart igniting in the tragedy that is Ireland today...bound on a collision course to The Killing Anniversary.

Sun and Cross: From Megalithic Culture to Early Christianity in Ireland


Jakob Streit - 1984
    He describes the amazing missionary zeal of monks such as Columba, who established Celtic Christianity throughout Europe during the Dark Ages, until it was suppressed by the Church of Rome during the eighth century.Fully illustrated in color, this is a book to give and cherish.

Only the Rivers Run Free: Northern Ireland, the Women's War


Eileen Fairweather - 1984
    

Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant (Collected Works)


George Bernard Shaw - 1984
    Not the usual tiny London den, but the best sitting room of a furnished lodging in a terrace on the sea front at a fashionable watering place. The operating chair, tvith a gas pump and cylinder beside it, it half nay between the centre of the room and one of the corners. If you look into the room through the window which lights it, you mill see the fireplace in the middle of the mall opposite you, with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, tvith vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to your left, where you can see another window, underneath which stands a writing table, with a blotter and a diary on it, and a chair. Next the writing table, towards the door, is a leather covered sofa. The opposite mall, close on your right, is occupied mostly by a bookcase. The operating chair is under your nose, facing you, with the cabinet of instruments handy to it on your left. You observe that the professional furniture and apparatus are new, and that the wall paper, designed, with the taste of an undertaker, in festoons and urns, the carpet withif symmetrical plans of rich, cabbagy nosegay, theglass gasalier with lustres; the ornamental gilt rimmed blue candlesticks on the ends of the mantelshelf, also glass- draped with lustres, and the ormolu clock under a glass cover in the middle between them, its uselessness emphasized by a cheap American clock disrespectfully placed be...

Ireland: The Key to the British Revolution


David Reed - 1984
    

The Stars And The Stones: Ancient Art And Astronomy In Ireland


Martin Brennan - 1984
    Examines stone age carvings in Ireland, discusses their astronomical significance, and looks at how ancient mounds were oriented towards the rising sun of the solstice and equinox.

The Irish Hand: Scribes and Their Manuscripts from the Earliest Times


Timothy O'Neill - 1984
    It has been substantially revised since the first edition published by Dolmen Press in 1984.The Irish Hand is arranged in two parts. The first is an anthology of high-quality full-page color photographic plates of the thirty most celebrated Irish manuscripts, with a commentary analyzing the contents and history of each manuscript and with notes on their scripts and the scribes. The second part examines the historical evolution of Irish script (the Irish hand), tracing that tradition to our own time.

Castles


Christopher Chant - 1984
    Castles is a collection of stunning photographs of some of the many different types of castle throughout the ages, highlighting some of the best surviving examples from across the globe.

All the Olympians: A Biographical Portrait of the Irish Literary Renaissance


Ulick O'Connor - 1984
    

Thy Tears Might Cease (Arena Books)


Michael Farrell - 1984
    The book centres on the 1916 period and addresses the confusion in the minds of young men who have not yet discriminated between the relative importance of patriotism and personal survival. One of the most irritating questions that all novelists have to field is, "How autobiographical is your book?" In Michael Farrell's case the answer feels as though it must be, "totally" but as he's not here to speak for himself let us accept it for the stirring fiction he intended to create. - Frank Delaney in The Guardian

Rich & Rare


Sean McMahon - 1984
    A rich vein of fantasy, humour and romance, capturing the soul of a nation. A book for everyone who loves Ireland.