Best Irish Biographies of 2003

The acclaimed first volume of this definitive biography of William Butler Yeats (now available in paperback) left him in his fiftieth year, at a crossroads in his life. The subsequent quarter-century surveyed in this book takes in his rediscovery of advanced nationalism and his struggle for an independent Irish culture, his continued pursuit of supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, and a series of tumultuous love affairs. Throughout he was writing his greatest poems: 'The Fisherman', and 'The Wild Swans at Coole' in their stark simplicity; the magnificently complex sequences on the Troubles and Civil War; the Byzantium poems; and the radically compressed last work - some of it literally written on his death bed.

The drama of his life is mapped against the history of the Irish revolution and the new Irish State founded in 1922. Yeats's many political roles and his controversial involvement in a right-wing movement during the early 1930s are covered more closely than ever before, and his complex and passionate relationship with the developing history of his country remains a central theme. Throughout this book, the genesis, alteration, and presentation of his work (memoirs and polemic as well as poetry) are explored through his private and public life. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers, family, collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment, and verve. Yeats constantly re-created himself and his work, believing that art was 'not the chief end of life but an accident in one's search for reality': a search which brought him again and again back to his governing preoccupations, sex and death. He also held that 'all knowledge is biography', a belief reflected in this study of one of the greatest lives of modern times.

Gerry Adams has brought the oldest revolutionary movement in Ireland on an extraordinary journey from armed insurrection to active participation in government. An author as well as an activist, he brings a vivid sense of immediacy and a writer's understanding of narrative to this story of the triumph of hope in what was long considered an intractable bloody conflict. He conveys the tensions of the peace process, the sense of teetering on the brink, and he has a sharp eye and acute ear for them humorous foibles of political allies and enemies alike.

He reveals previously unpublished details of the peace process: secret contacts with the Catholic Church; the inside story on the covert talks between republicans and the British government; the Irish-American role and meetings in the White House; the importance of the South African role; differences within republicanism and the emergence of dissidents; the breakdown of the first IRA cessation. He speaks candidly about being shot, and discloses details of his discussions with the IRA. He details for the first time ever the secret talks to reinstate the IRA cessation, involving Irish, British and US governments, the IRA leadership and then opposition leader Tony Blair; and he describes the making of the Good Friday Agreement, what was agreed and what was promised.

He paints revealing portraits of the other leading characters in the drama that was acted out through ceasefires and stand-offs, discussions and confrontations. Amongst these are Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, Mo Mowlam, Martin McGuinness, Albert Reynolds, Bill & Hilary Clinton, Jean Kennedy Smith, David Trimble, John Hume, Nelson Mandela, John Bruton and Charles Haughey.

As the pre-eminent republican strategist of his generation, he provides the first authentic account of the principles and tactics underpinning modern Irish republicanism. And in a world where peace processes are needed more urgently than ever, this book provides a template for conflict resolution processes internationally.

Along with his close comrades Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, Harry Boland was probably the most influential Irish revolutionary between 1917 and 1922. His sway extended to almost every aspect of republican activity. Already prominent as a hurler before 1916, he was convicted and imprisoned after an energetic Easter Week. He subsequently became Honorary Secretary of Sinn Fein, T.D. for South Roscommon in the First Dail, President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood's Supreme Council, and a republican envoy in the United States between May 1919 and December 1921. He broke with Collins over the Treaty, but became chief intermediary between the factions. Early in the Civil War, however, he was killed by National army officers in the Grand Hotel, Skerries.

Boland's influence was the product of charm, gregariousness, wit and ruthlessness. After his rebel father's early death, Boland's mother raised him in a spirit of intransigent hostility to Britain. Yet he was also stylish, cosmopolitan, and humane. His celebrated contest with Collins for the love of Kitty Kiernan is perhaps the most intriguing of all Irish political romances. Attractive yet elusive, his personality helped shape the Irish revolution.

This biography draws upon documents in Irish, British and American archives, including his American diaries and thousands of letters to, from, and about Boland. Extensive use has been made of family papers and de Valera's vast archive on the Irish campaign in America. These and other recently released documents illuminate the inner workings of Irish republicanism and the critical importance of brotherhood in the revolution. As an old-fashioned republican and advocate of 'physicalforce', Boland is still venerated as a martyr by revolutionary republicans. Yet, in his conduct, he practised the ambiguities associated with Sinn Fein in today's Northern Ireland. Doctrine was subordinated to the twin quests for republican unity and political supremacy, entailing reiterated compromise, systematic duplicity and mastery of propagandist techniques. If his outlook seems archaic, his practice was astonishingly modern.

This book chronicles the action-packed life of the Commander of the Third West Cork Flying Column and one of the great architects of modern guerrilla warfare in Ireland's fight for freedom. 'The false surrender' controversy, during the decisive Kilmichael ambush, is brought into sharp focus in this book, as is the controversy regarding sectarianism during the 1920-22 period. The story of Tom Barry's life, peppered by his battles with the State and the Church, and his constant endeavours to obtain an All Ireland Republic, makes him a unique and important figure in Irish history. In 1949, when he addressed huge crowds in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Boston, his voice rang out: 'My one aim is to unite the Irish people - one race … the border will not fade away, of the Partition will not be ended until such time as the united strength is used in a supreme effort to get rid of it.' The book details his involvement on the fringes of the Treaty negotiations; his Republican activities during the Civil War; his engagement in the ceasefire/dump arms deal of 1923; his term as the IRA's Chief-of-Staff and his participation in IRA conflicts in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, right up to his death in 1980. This biography draws on an extensive body of source material, including Tom Barry's papers.

Robert Emmet (1778-1803) was one of the most romantic of all Irish revolutionaries. Born in Dublin, Emmet was the youngest son of the state physician. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he was a leading member of the College Historical Society until his expulsion for radical activity in 1798. Prevented from pursuing a profession, he visited the continent where he discussed plans for liberating Ireland with Napoleon and Tallyrand. He returned to Ireland in 1802 and soon became involved in a conspiracy for a new rebellion.

This book reveals for the first time the complex and ingenious plans that Emmet devised for the rebellion. His youthful idealism and military talent proved insufficient, however, and his attempt to seize Dublin on 23 July 1803 was a dramatic failure. Captured soon after, he won an unlikely victory with his extraordinary speech from the dock that is considered to be one of the greatest courtroom orations in history. He died bravely on the scaffold the next day.

This book draws on new archival material from Ireland, the United Kingdom, France and the United States and is the first modern study of Robert Emmet in almost fifty years.

Through a life the encompasses Irish tradition, culture, language, scholarship and poetry, as well as national and international politics, Maire Cruise O'Brien is uniquely placed to tell the complex story of the emergence and growth of Ireland as an independent country. Her life not only parallels that development; her family played an active part in it.

Born in 1922, she intimately remembers the generation of the 19th century - her grandparents - and their way of life and values. Her own parents' dangerous involvement in the struggle for freedom, in the company of Eamon deValera and Michael Collins, was a hugely important element in her young life, as was her father's subsequent work as a senior government minister. Part of the new Irish elite, she went on to become an Irish scholar, to study Celtic languages in Paris immediately after the Second World War, and was called to the Bar but chose instead to join the Department of External (now Foreign) Affairs. She was the 'token woman' on the first Irish UN delegation in New York; and she was charge d'affaires in Franco's Spain in the 1940s, with experiences both 'baroque and absurd'.

There she met and married Conor Cruise O'Brien, a rising star in the UN. Thereafter, her life took her to the Congo, Ghana, Europe and America, where Conor worked both academically and politically in highly dramatic situations. From her unique vantage point she vividly recalls the workings of the international community. Their return to Ireland and Conor's position as a government minister took her full circle.

Maire offers a fascinating insight into her eighty-plus years, drawing together threads from Celtic roots to far-flung political and diplomatic activities. Her interests are wide-ranging and her observation acute. Both homely and worldly, this book presents a rare personal perspective on the complete span of the twentieth century both in Ireland and around the world.

Backbreaking, blister-making work, followed by pints of the black stuff in the Admiral Rodney, the Shamrock, the Cattle Market Tavern and many others, well-told stories, fine songs, characters like Connemara lads, Cockney Woods, Pigfoot Paddy and occasional punch-ups. These are the people and events that make this book an extraordinarily vivid picture of an Irish navvy's life in the England of the 1950s. Workless and foodless days, the hardships of work camps, lonesome partings after trips home, periods of intense isolation and occasional bitterness were also part of the picture. This book is an honest account of how the average Irish labourer worked, lived in and contributed to the country of the ancient enemy. Originally published in Irish as 'Dialann Deorai' too wide acclaim, this translation was first published in 1964 and has been unavailable in English for many years.

Michael MacGowan was born in 1865 in the parish of Cloghaneely in the Donegal gaeltacht. He was the eldest of twelve children in a poverty-stricken family owning one cow, living in a three-roomed thatched cottage and speaking no English. He ended his days in a large slate-roofed house in the same place. First published in Irish as 'Rotha Mor an tSaoi', this is his account of the fate dealt to him by 'the Wheel of Life'. From the age of nine he was hired out for six consecutive years from May to September at a hiring fee of 30 shillings. After emigration to Scotland and the drudgery of farmwork, he left for America and worked his way across the USA in steelmills and mines to Montana. He then took part in the Klondike gold-rush and vividly recounts the adventures of himself and his 'sourdough' companions, their privations and hardships in the primitive harsh icy wastes of the Yukon. Home on holiday in 1901, he fell in love and stayed, using the money from the gold to buy some land and the house. Told with the certainty and authority of someone who has 'lived' what he described, this book reflects the author's indomitable spirit and loyalty to his native place and culture. This translation was originally published in 1962 and has been long out of print.