Popular Irish comedian Brendan O'Carroll chronicles the comic misadventures of this large and lively family with raw humor and great affection. Forced to be mother, father, and referee to her battling clan, the ever-resourceful Agnes Browne occasionally finds a spare moment to trade gossip and quips with her best pal Marion Monks (alias "The Kaiser") and even finds herself pursued by the amorous Frenchman who runs the local pizza parlor. Like the novels of Roddy Doyle, The Mammy features pitch-perfect dialogue, lightning wit, and a host of colorful characters. Earthy and exuberant, the novel brilliantly captures the brash energy and cheerful irreverence of working-class Irish life.

    Her mother's death split the family part and her alcoholic father was unable to cope. She was sexually abused and escaped an orphanage for destitution on the streets of Dublin. Years later, overworked and dealing with a violent husband, Christina realised she needed a dream. Drawing on her own experiences, she reached out to the swarms of children on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Within two years 'Mama Tina' had set up a Medical and Social Centre and achieved world-wide renown. Christina's is one of the bravest, most astonishing stories ever told.

    Journalist Marie Heaney skillfully revives the glory of ancient Irish storytelling in this comprehensive volume from the great pre-Christian sequences to the more recent tales of the three patron saints Patrick, Brigid, and Colmcille.

    Ponder the brooding landscapes and windswept coast, soak up music and literary sites in Dublin, and explore centuries of history; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Ireland and begin your journey now!Inside Lonely Planet’s Ireland Travel Guide:Colour maps and images throughoutHighlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interestsInsider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spotsEssential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, pricesHonest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks missCultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, art, literature, music, architecture, landscapes, wildlife, sport, and the Irish way of lifeCovers Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, Wexford, Waterford, Carlow, Kilkenny, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Clare, Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Belfast, Armagh, Londonderry, Antrim, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and moreThe Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Ireland, our most comprehensive guide to Ireland, is perfect for both exploring top sights and taking roads less travelled.Looking for a guide focused on Dublin? Check out Lonely Planet’s Dublin guide for a comprehensive look at all the city has to offer; Best of Ireland, a photo-rich guide to the country’s most popular attractions; Ireland’s Best Trips , a guide to the best short and long road trips, or Pocket Dublin , a handy-sized guide focused on the can’t-miss sights for a quick trip.About Lonely Planet: Since 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel media company with guidebooks to every destination, an award-winning website, mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves.

    For it is a place where change comes slowly. drowned in the lake, and then the gossip runs wild. The consequences for Helen's husband, her son, but above all for her daughter, Kit, are unimaginable and will leave not one of their lives unchanged.

    But how do these images compare with the evidence revealed by the excavator's trowel? Recent archaeological research has transformed our understanding of the period. Reflecting this new generation of scholarship, Professor Barry Raftery presents the most convincing and up-to-date account yet published of Ireland in the millennium before the coming of Christianity.The transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age in Ireland brought many changes, not least the proliferation of imposing hillforts. Did these have a purely defensive role, or were they built for ceremonial or commercial purposes? When did the Celtic character of early Ireland emerge? New findings indicate that the construction of the country's great royal centers, such as Tara and Emain Macha, coincides with the first appearance in Ireland of the material culture of the European Celts - so-called La Tene artifacts. The author argues that these were the portable trappings of a rising aristocratic elite, which expressed its power by building highly visible monuments.Professor Raftery also discusses the significant advances that took place in travel and transport, including the creation of the largest roadway in prehistoric Europe; the elusive lives of the common people; the idiosyncratic genius of the local metalsmiths; and the complex religious beliefs exemplified by standing stones, and offerings in rivers and lakes. He presents fascinating new material about Ireland's contacts with the Roman world, and in a final chapter he reviewsthe whole question of whether La Tene culture spread to Ireland through invasion or peaceful diffusion. Pagan Celtic Ireland is the definitive statement of what we currently know about the country's shadowy, Celtic origins. Generously illustrated throughout, it will be read avidly

    

    Mediated by stories and personal excursions in literature, philosophy and sacred texts, and containing a new Epilogue, Dreamtime takes issue with the Cartesian consciousness of a Cartesian world.. "Although Dreamtime is often thought of as an Australian aboriginal phenomenon, this book posits a European, Christian and Irish Dreamtime, as much cultural as geo-physical. The task of the poet-philosopher, it suggests, is to enlarge our capacity for symbolic understanding, while keeping the path to Connla's Well open and inviting us to inhabit a shared Dreamtime.

    The target is PinMan - a member of the Royal Family. Once the plot is started, there are no cut-outs; not even the Army Council of the IRA can stop it.

    She was careful not to show her annoyance. The more she considered their relationship, the more her fury mounted. Somehow, in the course of time, she would bring him down. There was no doubt about that in her mind.

    In these essays Roy Foster explores the patterns of resentment, exploitation, dependence and rejection which were created by centuries of proximity, colonization and emigration. Often seen through the individual experiences of people 'caught' between England and Ireland (a varied gallery including Randolph Churchill, Thackeray, Trollope, Yeats, Parnell and the notorious Mrs O'Shea), these intersections also cut across subjects like the representation of the Irish in Victorian journalism and fiction, the roots of constitutional nationalist agitation, and the making of literary reputations. The last essay, 'Marginal Men and Micks on the Make', is a wide-ranging discussion of the uses of exile, both to and from Ireland. Against the cut and dried stereotypes of Anglo-Irish relations, an overall ambiguity is asserted here, whether the topic examined is the flawed structure of the Act of Union, the way words are used in Irish political rhetoric, or the divided allegiances of Parnell, Yeats and Bowen. These closely linked essays stress assonances as well as dissonances, and provide a commentary on neglected aspects of literary history and national identity.

    There are seventeen of them in this Reader, and the best of them, in the words of Richard Ellmann "stir those facial muscles which, we are told, are the same for both laughing and weeping." Except for the masterpiece, "Guests of the Nation," the stories included here have been out of print for twenty years, and one story had been previously unpublished.But this is a Reader and it celebrates the creative diversity of one of this century's finest writers. Here one can also sample O'Connor's skillful translations of Irish poetry, including "The Lament for Art O'Leary." There are a number of self-portraits, including "Meet Frank O'Connor" and "Writing a Story-One Man's Way."The final section includes a number of O'Connor's finest essays, from pieces on Yeats, Joyce, and Mozart, to ones on English and Irish pubs and one simply titled, "Ireland": "No one who does not love the sense of the past should ever come near us; nobody who does, whatever our faults may be, should give us the hard word."

    At midwinter sunrise, Martin Brennan and his research partner observed a beam of light shining into the central chamber at Newgrange, illuminating a series of glyphs on the back wall. They went on to observe significant solar and lunar events at other chambers and stone complexes in the Boyne Valley and Loughcrew Mountains. Through a combination of careful observation, analysis of the astronomical alignment of the sites, and personal insight into the meanings of megalithic symbols and carvings, Brennan demonstrates conclusively that the passage mounds and chambers are actually sophisticated calendar devices, and that the abstract wheels, spirals, zigzags, and wavy lines are symbols of solar and lunar timekeeping.

    A truly remarkable literary collection, the Edna O'Brien Reader will be welcomed by all who cherish masterful, satisfying storytelling.

    

    This is an aspect of Irish society with which too few are acquainted. O'Connor's research covers the planning and construction of the workhouses, the daily deadly routine of life therein, the impact of the famine, the land clearances, and the emigration to Canada and the U.S.. An eye opening read.

    What emerges is a story of a warrior who fought for his clan, his Catholic religion and his Highland world - against the supremacy of Clan Campbell, The Lowlands and England.

    In between, we learn of the sequence of events that has led him there. Set in Ireland at the time of the Black and Tans, Declan is a young man who sets out to join the cause full of doomed idealism.

    

     Strangely, in a landscape dominated by men in uniform, the household at Number 2 in the Married Quarters revolves around Mammy, the gentle mother who heals all boyhood aches from wounded knees to wounded pride, and in many respects this book is a sustained lyrical narrative of the intense relationship between boy and mother. Neither cutely naive nor wise beyond his years, the young Kevin’s observations on family and barracks, on town and school are by turns humorous and poignant, but spiced always with the incisive innocence of childhood. The ‘Line’ of the title is the path linking home and barracks with the boy’s other world of town and school; in Brophy’s limpid prose both worlds come richly to life. Walking the Line is an important contribution to the literature of childhood and Ireland. The Epilogue, written from the mature perspective of middle age, is a poignant tribute to a way of life that is forever gone – the Married Quarters are no more. About the Author... Kevin Brophy was brought up in Galway, in the west of Ireland, and was educated locally by the Patrician Brothers and at University College, Galway. He spent most of his adult life in Dublin and London, but has now settled again in ‘the city of the tribes’.

    A man of many parts - militant labour organiser, socialist leader, military commander, newspaper editor, writer, political theorist - his life's work was dedicated to the establishment of an Irish Republic as well as to socialist revolution, and as such provides a fascinating example, one might even say 'model', of a revolutionary life. This book examines Connolly's political theory and practice as it developed over the quarter-century of his active commitment to socialist revolution, and then explores the extent to which his political legacy provided the Irish Left with a practical and theoretical instrument of revolutionary socialism. The questions which concerned Connolly related to the immediate problems and demands of effective labour organisation and revolutionary strategy - pressing problems which he encountered during his daily activities as a labour leader and revolutionary. He was always willing to learn from experience and to grasp new opportunities whenever they arose. This, of course, meant that his political positions altered over time, and that his thoughts and writings on issues underwent considerable change over the years. The first part of the book charts and analyses those changes. A political figure of Connolly's stature was bound to exert some influence on Irish political life and on the Irish Left in particular and the second part of the book is devoted to an exploration and assessment of the nature and extent of this impact.