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The warm, rich and fascinating memoir of beloved broadcaster Tommie Gorman. When Tommie Gorman was growing up in Sligo in the 1960s, struggle was never far away but his household had a surplus of love and warmth. From modest beginnings as a local reporter at the Western Journal, where his deadlines were dependent on the bus schedule, Tommie landed at RTÉ, taking up the post of North-West correspondent in 1980. Over the next four decades he became a familiar presence in Irish homes, known for his coverage of Europe and Northern Ireland, as well as his unforgettable interviews with controversial figures including Gerry Adams, Roy Keane, Ian Paisley and Arlene Foster. While revelling in his life as a journalist, he was also coping with the cancer diagnosis he received in 1994 and seeking ways to access life-saving treatments for patients who shared his rare form of the disease. In this insightful and generous book, Tommie takes readers behind the scenes and shares some of his memories from Sligo to Stormont, via Brussels and Sweden, as he recounts forty extraordinary years of Irish history from his front-row seat and looks at what may lie ahead for the island.
Fragments of an Analytic Pub Crawl traces the journey of my life, its memories, the events and the places where I have been and what I have read. The book title is not to be confused with the traditional drinking pub crawl, it is a way of describing the psychogeographical nature of this book. Patrick ffrench, the writer, described psychogeography as “an analytic pub crawl”, a lived experience – one drifts from one place to the next; observing, noting, reacting. We may drift through a city, or a life and absorb. This is the “dérive”. Charles Baudelaire named this person, the flâneur. Just as the past left traces in today’s built environment, so have we, and so have I. This book traces those memories, it’s part memoir, part history, and part essay, The subjects reflect a variety of interests: growing up in Northern Ireland, the Troubles, my life in IT education, Irish humour, life-skills, reading, writing, music, emigration, family, urban liveability, the pandemic and much much more.
In February, 1919, three Irish revolutionary prisoners walked out of Lincoln Jail without having dug a tunnel or fired a shot. The escape was the culmination of months of planning that involved some of the greatest intellects in Ireland and Britain. Peter DeLoughry (1882–1931) was one of the founding fathers of modern Ireland. His most famous achievement was to make a key that allowed three of his fellow prisoners in Lincoln Jail to escape in February 1919. The key became a symbol of the success that could be achieved by co-operation and hard work. However, as the years went on, the key became a matter of poisonous dispute between DeLoughry and Michael Collins on one side and Eamon de Vale...
At the dawn of sound, he wrote the story for the Academy Award-winning musical The Broadway Melody and collaborated memorably with Gloria Swanson and Joseph Kennedy for The Trespasser. He excelled at anti-war drama (White Banners, The Dawn Patrol, We Are Not Alone), fantastic Bette Davis weepies (Dark Victory, The Old Maid, The Great Lie), lilting romantic dramas (The Constant Nymph, Claudia), big-budgeted literary adaptations (The Razor's Edge), and even film noir (Nightmare Alley).
Mary Lou McDonald is the bookies' favourite to be Ireland's next Taoiseach. She would be the first woman to reach the office, and the first Sinn Féin leader ever to enter government in the Republic of Ireland. But how did a quintessentially bourgeois woman become the leader of a political party with such recent links to terrorism? This exhaustively researched biography unearths new details of her family background and her privileged education, as well as her initial foray into politics through the more traditional Fianna Fáil party. It explores her unusually late commitment to political life and traces her mysterious but meteoric rise through the ranks of Sinn Féin and her relentless drive to reach the top of the party. Scrupulously fair and balanced, Mary Lou McDonald illuminates its subject's political awakening and her interactions with the hard men of the IRA, while posing important questions about the evolution and future of Sinn Féin.
The greatest achievement in GAA history finally gets its due: Adrian Russell's The Double is a singular triumph. - Michael Moynihan On 16 September 1990, Cork's footballers ran out on the Croke Park pitch chasing immortality. The Rebel County hurlers, watching on from the Hogan Stand in suits, had won an unlikely All-Ireland a fortnight earlier; their thrilling final victory over Galway capped a hugely fun come-from-nowhere season. Now, if Billy Morgan's footballers could overcome their rivals in Meath, they'd secure sporting history for the county; a Senior All-Ireland double. After hitting a historically low ebb the previous year, the hurlers arrived with a bang led by a hurling fanatic pr...
This is the gripping inside story of Ireland’s bankrupt billionaire, Sean Quinn, who went from rags to riches before he gambled it all on Anglo-Irish Bank shares and became the world’s biggest personal loser of the economic collapse of 2008. A millionaire by thirty, Quinn took on the Irish cement business in the 1980s and won. He became an almost mythical character, creating thousands of jobs at a time when the dark shadows of mass unemployment and the Troubles loomed over the borderlands. Then he gambled on the stock market, and this time he lost. Quinn’s senior team was hand-picked, with loyalty prized above all else. But they have now become the sole focus of his obsession, as he holds them responsible for what happened. The atmosphere in ‘Quinn Country’ turned dark and ominous, culminating with the horrific abduction and attack on Kevin Lunney in 2019. Ten years after losing it all, Quinn is a brooding figure in a monstrous house, refusing to accept any blame for his downfall. Featuring exclusive interviews with the man himself, and prominent figures from his inner circle, this is the truly remarkable story of the man everyone said was too big to fail.
Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom is a collection of stark, brutal and courageous stories written by some of Ireland and Britain’s most renowned journalists, camera men and broadcasters. They write about how their careers impacted their mental health, left some with PTSD, others anxiety and depression – and even made some walk away from their hard-fought for dream jobs after being worn down by a conveyor belt of trauma. These are stories of vulnerability, courage and resilience, stories that will resonate with journalists worldwide. These are stories that will help start an important global conversation on nurturing good mental health in the newsroom, stories that will smash the damaging mindset that journalists need to be hard-nosed and thick skinned in order to survive in the tough world of news. Breaking takes the reader from the troubled back streets of Belfast to the carnage of war in Lebanon, from the minefields of Iraq, to a claustrophobic courtroom in Mauritius, to the starving refugee camps of Bangladesh and back around the world again in a collection of raw, powerful and poignant chapters from the frontline of modern journalism.
Charles "Charlie" Bird has had a long and distinguished career in Irish Journalism. He joined RTE – The National Broadcaster– in 1974. He has been at the heart of every big news event for over thirty years, breaking exclusive stories and interviewing presidents and prime ministers. He made his name as a front of camera reporter covering the news as it happened not only at home in Ireland but also on the International scene. During his career as a news journalist he reported on the upheavals of the Haughey/Fitzgerald years: Irish prime minister Charlie Haughey even once said jokingly that he was his favourite reporter. He also covered the formation of the Progressive Democrats; Labour's S...