As two pals wander the streets of Belfast in search of something better--a better pint, a better job, a better woman, a better now--readers are treated to their hilarious misadventures, political intrigues, and outlandish schemes.

    Filled with useful information for the traveler, this guide includes three-dimensional drawings, floor plans, detailed neighborhood maps with a street-finder index, and even historical timelines.

    Here we encounter a blind piano tuner whose wonderful memories of his first wife are cruelly distorted by his second; a woman in a difficult marriage who must choose between her indignant husband and her closest friend; two children, survivors of divorce, who mimic their parents' melodramas; and a heartbroken woman traveling alone in Italy who experiences an epiphany while studying a forgotten artist's Annunciation. Trevor is, in his own words, 'a storyteller. My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so.' Conscious or not, he touches us in ways that few writers even dare to try.

    On the surface it could be just one of hundreds in which some students will succeed and some will fall along the way. the hopes and dreams of so many people are tied up in the twice weekly lessons. they are ready to set off on the promised trip to Italy at the end of the year, everyone's destiny has changed utterly.

    Each chapter takes the title of a traditional tune, and as in a session played by brilliant improvising musicians, each tune leads into another, melodies and variations weaving in and out in a haze of talk and memory. Carson's inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. A leading Irish poet who is also an accomplished flute player, he tells of his Belfast childhood, of learning to play music, of his travels in Ireland and America, of poteen, pub life, and the special pleasure taken in a well-made Fry "the morning after the night before." Loosely interpreted standards, as Carson points out, achieve a special kind of profundity and resonance - a tune can never be played the same way twice - so this is also a book about the poignancy of lost airs, about music as "a way of renegotiating lost time" and recognizing mortality.

    These stories introduce a new generation of readers to age-old Celtic favorites including "The Magic Shoes," "The Pot of Gold," and the great love story "Tír Na N'Óg." Included with each story are lively illustrations, background notes, motifs from the Celtic tradition, and a pronunciation guide.Author Biography: Una Leavy is the author of Harry's Stormy Night and Goodbye Pappa. Susan Field is a television set designer and the illustrator of The Sun, the Moon and the Silver Baboon and The Smallest Whale.

    McGahern's short stories equal his finest novels, reflecting both the richness of the ordinary, and the extraordinary, in the lives of a variety of individuals: the jilted lover waiting with would-be writers in a Dublin pub on a summer evening; the bitter climax between a father and son as a marriage begins; the fortunes and misfortunes of the Kirkwood family; and many more.For this revised edition, completed shortly before his death, John McGahern edited and deleted a number of stories from the Collected Stories that first appeared in 1992. This is the authorised edition of a modern classic.

    "Maeve Brennan's book is full of small miracles," wrote the New York Times Book Review. "The magnificent title story is wide-ranging, savage, poignant, and should bring [Brennan] back to the table of modern fiction, where her place has been empty too long."

    The Civil War Memoirs of Private William McCarter, 116 Pennsylvania Infantry William McCarter, a 21-year-old Irish immigrant, was present at the storming of Marye's Heights at the battle of Fredericksburg and left behind observations of several prominent Union personalities as well as daily life in the Army of the Potomac.

    Now Darina Allen--the "Queen of Irish Cooking" who cooked breakfast for President Clinton and 150 guests last St. Patrick's Day--presents more than 250 wondrous Irish recipes, from traditional festival food to manor fare.

    In addition to Neil Jordan's complete screenplay for Michael Collins, this book includes the writer-director's personal journal of the making of the movie from its initial conception through its development, on-the-set-shooting and first triumphal screening.

    A biography that looks at how Wilde's formative years in Ireland had a significant impact on his life and writings.

    ‘Islands and Images’ describes the Aran Islands themselves; ‘Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara’, the title-essay, elevates the map-maker’s craft into art; ‘The View from Errisbeg’ integrates the landscapes of Galway Bay, the Burren and Connemara by way of topography, botany and geology; ‘Space, Time and Connemara’, centrepiece to the collection, surveys the archaeology and human geography of the West, its settlement patterns, families, dispersals and privations, its missioners and the modern tide of tourism and mariculture; ‘A Connemara Fractal’ is a fascinating autobiographical digression through Cambridge and the convergences of mathematics, geometry and geology, towards landscape-theory and the Book of Connemara as yet unwritten; ‘Place/Person/Book’ introduces Synge’s masterwork, The Aran Islands; ‘Listening to the Landscape’ takes for its theme the Irish language and placenames as an emanation of the land; ‘Four Threads’ connects four archetypal figures – smuggler, rebel priest, land-agent and wandering rhymer – to their histories in nineteenth century Connemara. Other texts rehearse the potencies of discovery, botanical (Erica mackaiana in Roundstone), archaeological (a Bronze Age quartz alignment in Gleninagh) and personal. Some are anecdotal, some meditative; each is individually conceived as a work of literature. Tim Robinson has been stepping into spacetime since 1972, mapping the unknown by way of the known. With Setting Foot on the Shore of Connemara he captures the numinous in a net of words and images, and creates his own illuminated manual of memory.

    

    Hume recounts the struggle for the nationalist community's rights and presents a blueprint for peace.

    here, together with the complete plays and poems, is The Aran Islands, Synge's chronicle of the life and the people that inspired his work and his words.

    Kenneth McCallister is a dole clerk who tolerates his marriage, his in-laws and Ulster until, on the fateful night in November in Belfast, as the Republic of Ireland qualifies against Northern Ireland for the World Cup, he finds himself watching the sectarian hatred of the crowd rather then the match.

    Subjects covered include the early 'communism' of the Celtic clans ; the role of the Church; the Irish aristocracy and their handover to Henry II; Wolfe Tone’s rising and O’Connell’s betrayal.

    Whether crumbling or perfectly preserved, in the midst of cities or standing alone in isolated landscapes, they bear mute but eloquent witness to the island's rich past. Now, back by popular demand, comes a stunningly illustrated guide to Ireland's historic places. Ranging from the earliest remnants of the prehistoric past to the end of the medieval era, Ancient Ireland provides an outstanding survey of the island's finest archaeological and architectural sites. Peter Harbison provides lively and thoughtful descriptions of megalithic wedge tombs, medieval round towers, and Tudor manor houses--matched by more than 300 hauntingly beautiful photographs by Jacqueline O'Brien. Harbison also provides a narrative overview of Ireland's history, placing the architectural monuments in the context of Roman influence, Celtic migration, Brian Boru's battles, Norse and Norman invasions, Gaelic revival, and Cromwell's conquests. He describes the earliest monasteries against the background of St. Patrick's missionary efforts, examines the cultural impact of the Viking conquests, and explores the literary flowering that took place even as the Anglo-Norman aristocracy asserted its primacy in the twelfth century. The book brims with colorful details. And throughout, the carefully rendered and captioned photographs bring to life the rich physical legacy of the island's tumultuous past. Ireland remains a favorite destination for travelers, whether tourists or scholars of its fabled culture and history. Ancient Ireland provides an essential guide for all who are bound for the emerald isle--a delightful volume for tourists and armchair travelers.

    Other books cover either a longer period (up to the Anglo-Norman conquests) or do not indicate in detail the evidence on which they are based. The book opens with the Irish raids and settlements in Britain, and the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, and ends as Viking attacks on Ireland accelerated in the second quarter of the ninth century.

    He has all the essayists's gifts: a clear, strong prose, a fascination with everyday affairs and their significance sub specie aeternitatis, a readiness to generalize, the ability to digress without wondering from the point, to inform without pedantry and enlighten without condescension, to give us pleasure simply by sharing his thoughts. I have touched only on the provocative riches contained in this excellent book. It will be treasured by those who possess it.' - Hugh Bredin, Fortnight'I soon realized I had stumbled on an Irish talent of European stature.' - Chris Agee, The Linen Hall Review'Opening the contents page, one has an impression of disparateness; closing the book, of having discovered an ouvre ... Butler has the Anglo-Irish antennae for place; his unadorned style expresses atmosphere with extraordinary clarity.' - Roy Foster, The Times Literary Supplement'This is not a book to borrow. It is a book to keep. It is not only intelligent, urbane and scholarly. It is most entertaining.' - Liam Robinson, New Hibernia'Hubert Butler's great figt is his ability to comprehend the workings of the mind of Catholic Ireland.' - Ulick O'Connor, Sunday Independent

    Through analysis of folklore sources, a comprehensive picture of the banshee emerges, and the functions of the belief in this remarkable creature of the folk imagination are examined. Many issues associated with attitudes toward life and death are expressed through the banshee tradition, and changes in such attitudes down through the ages are also revealed in changing beliefs about the banshee's presence and activity. This book unravels that network of beliefs, drawing on a large body of oral and written sources, including literary accounts from the Old Irish period to the present, as well as folklore accounts collected over the past sixty years. Recent fieldwork brings the study up-to-date, showing that in many instances belief in the banshee is alive today.

    During the Ceaucescu years in Romania it was the poets who dared to transmit covert messages of protest, and during the December 1989 Revolution many of them risked their lives on the streets. In Ireland, poets gave voice to the sentiments of the independence movement early in this century and during recent years their work has been read for insights on the violent sectarian divisions in the North. This Bloodaxe anthology of contemporary Romanian poetry is the outcome of a strangely imaginative collaboration between poets from these two countries on either fringe of the new Europe. Ten leading Irish poets have produced their own distinctive version of poems by ten leading Romanian poets.

    This illustrated guide to the valley is also a book of Celtic spirituality, based on a pilgrimage journey through Glendalough.

    The title derives from the diver myth found in Siberia and North America, in particular among the Maidu Indians of California. Diving to the floor of the abyss to find intuitions of the world, the work is a mystical quest, from form to void and back, and enacts one of the central themes of European literature, the journey from Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained. In a century in which the human being first set foot on the moon, it attempts ‘to come ashore upon the earth in its perennial first morning’. And just as Homer’s Odyssey underpinned Joyce’s Ulysses, so Turtle is informed by the eschatological journey of the soul as Ancient Egyptians understood it-the post-mortem experience of an underworld, its powers and terrors, yielding to fields of light. The Overture or introduction is a synoptic rehearsal of what follows: three nocturnes in a Tenebrae. ‘Engwura Now’ contains forty poems enlarged by prose commentaries-rites of passage proposing an emergence into instinctive maturity, a New Heroism. In profound dialogue with religions and cultures, it seeks to ‘make them more hospitable to more of what we are’. ‘Tenebrae Now’ is composed of six parables or stories drawn from everyday life in the West of Ireland. They form a pilgrim’s progress towards Good Friday, not as traditionally interpreted but as a mystical journey. ‘Tep-zepi Now and Tai-wer’ returns to the mornings of infinite possibility, and to the potencies-cosmic and cultural-of the beginning. Crossing the Kendron [John 18:1] offers a series of texts describing one individual’s spiritual initiations and transformations, Gethsemane self-encounters and purifications. Ambitious, Dantesque, shamanic, this Beagle voyage across Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Aboriginal and Native American waters seeks the myths, stories, parables and great sayings that will guide and enlighten us in our openness, and availability, to the earth in which each reader is invited to plumb his own depths, and to emerge sacrilized and renewed. Not least, it announces a major contribution to Irish literature and philosophy. Out of print for over a decade, Crossing the Kedron also contains Moriarty’s personal selection of his best poems.

    Morgan Llywelyn gives a fascinating account of the wider picture - how the Vikings significantly influenced Irish art and trade and the growth of towns and cities.

    

    Some of his poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Southern Review, and Potpouri. He won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1989.

    

    A first-hand account of the early days of World War I.

    

    It traces the roots of the social divide, and outlines the emergence of Nationalism and Unionism. It discusses the partition of Ireland in 1921, how Northern Ireland was governed, and its decline into instability and war. It deals with the Civil Rights movement, the twenty-five years of violence between Republicans and Loyalists and British forces, and the 1994 ceasefires.

    The book includes pieces from "Seers and Healers", "West Irish Ballads", "The Kiltarten Poetry Book", "Laughter in Ireland", "Kathleen ni Houlihan" and also extracts from her journals "Volume 1" (1916-1925) and "Volume 2" (1925-1932).

    A regimental history and official account of the Irish Guards in the First World War, written by Rudyard Kipling in honour of his son, John, who served in the Irish Guards and was killed in his first action at the battle of Loos.This book also contains a listing of the battle rolls of honour and casualty lists of all officers and men who served with the First and Second Battalion.

    

    Increasingly, golfers on this side of the Atlantic have discovered that some of the most magnificent courses in the world-- and some of the most beautiful countryside-- are to be found not in Scotland, but in its near neighbor, Ireland. From the opening drive at Lahinch, just thirty miles from your arrival point at Shannon International Airport, to the spectacular dune-framed holes at Ballybunion, Ireland boasts an extraordinary collection of seaside links. Royal Country Down, Royal Portrush, Portmarnock, Portstewart, Waterville and the Island, the European Club and Baltry-- any one of these would be reason to cross an ocean, and the concentration of all of them on a land mass smaller than the state of Maine makes for a golfer's paradise limited only by your budget and your time. For the tourist or the dreamer, there can be no better guide than James W. Finegan. A passionate advocate and a charming storyteller, Finegan combines a writer's eye, a historian's knowledge, and a golfer's sense of wonder and apprehension to provide an impossibly ambitious grand tour of this beautiful land. In a loop that begins in the West at Lahinch and continues clockwise through both the Republic and Northern Ireland, Finegan covers more than fifty courses, visiting those that have become true shrines of the game, the courses that are well known and respected, and the little-known gems you might otherwise pass right by. He shares the history of the courses, and writes marvelously about the scenic and strategic charms to be found as you play them yourself. And he provides all the information you need to make your arrangements to do just that-- because unlike most championship courses in the United States, the great courses of Ireland are available to the public. In addition to his delightful descriptions of the golf to be f

    Each has a tremendous sense of the beauty and humour to be found in ordinary life, however tragic its immediate circumstances. Full of brightness and fun, The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, October 1995) follows its heroine in her uneasy transition from English seaside music-hall star to Anglo-Irish lady. The Steward of Christendom (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, April 1995) sees Lear-like Thomas Dunne, ex-Chief Superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, now in the county home, trying to break free of history and himself. White Woman Street (Bush Theatre, London, April 1992) trails Trooper O'Hara across the plains of Ohio in Easter 1916, as he seeks redemption from his memories in the train of gold.

    It differs from other treatments of English foreign policy in this period by emphasizing that diplomacy, trade and warfare cannot be studied in isolation from domestic culture. It also insists, unlike most studies of domestic politics in the period, that England's place in Europe and the wider world was central to political and cultural developments in this revolutionary age.

    This account of the Dublin Slums tells the story of daily life in the notorious tenements of old Dublin through the voices of people who lived in them or who worked in the tenement areas.

    Arranged in chronological order, they provide an insight into the progress of Irish comic writing down the years.