Britain viewed through a cathode ray tube, from the 1950s to the 1980s. For television heads everywhere, this is a brilliantly conceived combination of nostalgia and social history.
It's 1962, the Cuban missile crisis is in full swing but nothing, of course, is happening in World's End Close. Until a runaway girl is found in the coalshed... Exciting historical thriller ... read more
Born in Dublin in 1934, McGahern has corresponded with all his contemporary Irish writers. The letters are wonderful, and form a snapshot of late C20 Irish literature.
A pair of achingly clever young women email each other about the state of the world. They are young, Irish, anxious and in love with unsuitable men. So far so Rooney. But this much-hyped thi... read more
Catherine was the sister of Christian; in WW2 she worked with the French Resistance but was arrested in 1944 and sent to Ravensbrück. Miraculously she survived, and was awarded both the Cro... read more
Wolf set the works of thirty-six poets to music. Here the genial professor of lieder at the Royal College of Music translates the poems, introduces the poets and Wolf's connections with them... read more
A powerfully written novel about a sculptor facing the end of her life, sexual chemistry, confinement and the transformative power of art. The other actor (apart from her new lover) in the n... read more
The melancholic pathologist Quirke and the Dublin detective St. John Stafford find themselves at work in a sun-dappled San Sebastián. Previously Banville published the Quirke crime series p... read more
When Crane died at 28, he was a star: the adventurous veteran of the Wild West and Cuba during the Spanish American War, the author of a masterpiece (The Red Badge of Courage), and an exile ... read more
It's the shortest, coldest day of the year and Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant in a small Irish town, busies himself with the last few deliveries. An elegant and carefully distilled... read more
A 'howdie-skelp' is apparently the slap in the face a midwife gives a newborn. We are to understand that this new collection by the much-lauded Irish poet is a Call To Action; although what ... read more
Following his much-praised Greece: The Biography of a Modern Nation, RB turns towards the global influence of Greek history and culture, from the Mycenaeans to the modern-day Greek diaspora.
A reprint of her sensational 1941 memoir from the frontline of wartime Europe. She wrote from Madrid during the Spanish Civil War; Paris as it fell to the Germans; London during the Blitz: b... read more
The Nobel Prize winner's new novel is set against the backdrop of the 1954 CIA-backed military coup against the putatively pro-communist Guatemalan government: a story of high politics, corr... read more
This new collection by the wonderful Reid concerns itself with place and displacement, even in the smallest of places. It is affirmation of the value of international perspectives, which are... read more
In 1864 the Austrian Archduke Maximilian went to assume a distant throne. The operatic episode ended in his death by firing squad, famously memorialised by Manet.