Search results for ""the lilliput press ltd""
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Palm House
A monograph of duotone photographs, taken in the Palm House at the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin, beautifully illustrate this building as it was prior to its restoration. The photographs capture the cluttered green jungle, worn by time and held high in affection by the enchanted visitors who stepped inside its lofty paradise. By bringing the reader around the house as it was, drawing the eye to detail upwards, along its unique metal walkway and into the smaller treasure, the orchid house; to look at the intricate glass panels, metal structure, the wooden frames with their own unique patina of the passage of time, The Palm House tells its story visually. Meanwhile, in an accompanying text, Brendan Sayers relates how a visitor felt on entering and exploring this exotic world, the history and the origin of the planting, the unique pot and tub culture, and the importance of the collection.
£35.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Dublin's Other Poetry: Rhymes and Songs of the City
Dublin's writers rarely remain solemn for long: their wicked sense of humour has travelled the world. This is an irresistible new anthology of what used to be called ‘comic and curious verse’ about the city, written by some of her most entertaining poets and songwriters. Fashions in verse come and go. Too often we forget – paradoxically – the most memorable works of wit, sarcasm or absurdity. The ones gathered here were written over four centuries, and were inspired by many things – among them love, injustice, history, politics, animals and alcohol, but most of all by the citizens of Dublin themselves. Whether the lines are satirical, sentimental, subversive, sexy or just plain silly, you will find that many of them show a rare seriousness as well. Each poem comes with background information about where it originated, and each page is illuminated by Hector McDonnell’s wonderful, witty drawings.
£10.65
The Lilliput Press Ltd Pollyhester
In a disused railway tunnel lives Pollyhester, dressmaker to the stars. Celebrities dream of Pollyhester’s designs, teased out of ancient recycled fabrics and her wonderous imagination. But when Fashion Dictators change the fashion, celebrity Iverna makes extraordinary demands on poor Pollyhester. She summons her loyal helpers, who include a fallen dancing angel, a lovesick Viking motorcycle courier and a host of sinister spiders, to save the day. Beautifully illustrated, and simply told, this enchanting tale will captivate both young and old.
£13.50
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Shannon Navigation
The Shannon Navigation traces the history of the River Shannon as a navigation up to the present day from the 1750s when the early works were commenced under the Commissioners of Inland Navigation and subsequently under the Directors General of Inland Navigation from 1800 to 1831. These works, which took many years to complete, were not very successful and were badly maintained. In the 1830s the arrival of steamers focussed attention on the poor state of the navigation, which coincided with the efforts of the government to initiate public works to relieve distress by providing employment. During the 1840s a major scheme was carried out creating the fine navigation that is enjoyed today. The works were designed to address the combined issues of navigation and drainage but only partially improved the extensive problems of flooding. The age of the steamers was cut short by the coming of the railways and a second attempt to provide passenger boats in the early 1900s did not live up to expectations. The subsequent history of the navigation is traced including the harnessing of the river as a hydro-electric scheme, which had a substantial impact on the navigation. The gradual decline in the use of the river for commercial trade saw it entering a trough until recent years, which have seen the growth in the use of the river for tourism and recreation, with the great works of the mid-nineteenth century utilized to their full potential for the first time. This magnificent documentary history is illustrated by over two hundred and fifty photographs, engravings, posters, maps and drawings, and contains invaluable appendices detailing the Acts and parliamentary papers, the works, the tonnage carried, and information about steamers and other boats.
£45.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd South Of The Border
It is autumn 1942, and young Balbriggan teacher Matt Duggan arrives on his first posting at the small town of Rathisland in the Irish midlands, barely alive to the global war raging outside. Lawn tennis alternates with Church and classroom politics, as rehearsals take place for a staging of Hamlet. Beneath the surface are pockets of support for Germany, and plans afoot to link up with the Wehrmacht. Matt has a mesmerizing first encounter with nineteen-year-old Madelene Coll and, as she edges her way out from the watchful eyes of her aunts, she and Matt enter a world they will remember for the rest of their lives. When a Messerschmitt crash-lands in the locality that world is knocked from its axis. Before long the inherent contradictions of Emergency Ireland boil to the surface, involving Matt and Madelene in a misadventure with deeply tragic consequences. This nuanced coming-of-age story rehearses the inner narrative of neutral Ireland as public perception contends with private experience in a series of convergent tableaux. Beautifully evoked and implosive, divided personal loyalties mirror the wider dramas of the wider European stage. South of the Border is a gem of narrative that brings the reader into the heart of a reality that was wartime Ireland.
£12.10
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Companion
Trevor, a film-school dropout from Dublin, signs on as companion to Ed, a rich, wheelchair-bound New Yorker. A bizarre, mutual-dependency pact is ignited and an odyssey into the mind of an off-kilter, rambunctious Irishman begins. The Companion tells a story of obsession and control in which the dynamics of love and patience are tested to breaking point and beyond. Upbeat, defiant, dark and morally ambiguous, it sifts through family secrets and lies, and discloses the survival codes of Manhattan. This Irish take on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest develops into one of those rare, perversely elegiac novels that lodge in the mind. Long after the last page has been turned.
£12.10
The Lilliput Press Ltd A Bloomsday Postcard
Limited edition of 100 numbered copies, signed by the author, clothbound and slipcased with a 1904 penny inset on the cover. In 1904, the sending, receiving and collecting of postcards had become an essential part of life in Edwardian Dublin. In an age of few private telephones, the postcard was a popular and reliable form of communication – in Dublin there were six mail deliveries a day, and one on Sunday. To celebrate James Joyce and the centenary of Bloomsday, Niall Murphy has assembled a dazzling selection of 240 postcards, all of them posted in the Dublin area during 1904, four of them sent on 16 June that year. Here are the messages of ordinary people who walked the streets of Dublin side-by-side with the characters of Ulysses, with their words eerily mirroring the novel’s events. There is a rescue from drowning in Kingston; crime and punishment in Grafton Street; the Great Storm of 1903; King Edward’s visit; and memories of a ‘departed day’ spent in Howth. Among the many tales of love, three are enacted in varying degrees of intimacy: Millicent and Francisque de Boissieu, Jack Miller and Maud Tighe, and Ina and John McGregor – echoing Joyce’s use of postcards to establish the blossoming romance between Milly Bloom and Alec Bannon. Published in association with the National Library of Ireland, ‘A Bloomsday Postcard’ features the work of the legendary postcard artists – Louis Wain’s strange human cats; Lance Thackery’s satires of upper-class life; and C. Dana Gibson’s exquisite drawings of beautiful women. Here also are cards depicting the Russo-Japanese War, Yukon gold miners, the Dublin Horse Show, and life in Connemara – creating a mesmerizing full-colour mosaic that brings to life the world of Bloomsday, 1904 like never before.
£32.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Junior Dean: R. B. McDowell: Encounters with a Legend
Dr RB McDowell is a legend. To graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, he is a symbol of their years at university, the enduring source of endless amusing anecdotes and memories. Now, for the first time, reminiscences by graduates and friends, recording entertaining encounters with ‘RB’ over a period of some seventy years, appear in book form, enlivened by comments from Dr McDowell himself and illustrated with evocative sketches of College circa 1950 by Bryan de Grineau, archival photographs, many hitherto unseen, and a Derek Hill painting in full colour. The result is an intriguing portrait of the traditions and the way of life at Ireland’s oldest university during the greater part of the twentieth century and the part played by the charismatic and unique RB McDowell. RB MCDOWELL is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. His works include Irish Public Opinion 1750-1800, The Church of Ireland 1869-1969, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution 1760-1801, Land and Learning: Two Irish Clubs, Crisis and Decline: The Fate of the Southern Unionists, and Grattan: A Life.
£10.64
The Lilliput Press Ltd "Cadenus" & "Swift's Most Valuable Friend"
These books are being reissued as they appeared in the first Dolmen Press editions in one composite volume, with a valuable, contexual introduction by 18th-century Swift scholar Andrew Carpenter. He assesses the reaction of Swift's serious biographers and commentators to the original publication. "Cadenus" is primarily concerned with the relationship between Swift and Vanessa (Esther Van Homrigh), "Swift's Most Valuable Friend" with that between Swift and Stella (Esther Johnson). Both help to determine the precise nature of this triangle, and the impact it had on his writing and career.
£27.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Navigations: Selected Essays 1977-2004
£19.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Cadenus and Swift's Most Valuable Friend: Reassessment of the Relationships Between Swift, Stella and Vanessa
These books are being reissued as they appeared in the first Dolmen Press editions in one composite volume, with an invaluable, contextual introduction by eighteenth-century Swift scholar Andrew Carpenter. He assesses the reaction of Swift’s serious biographers and commentators to the original publications: ‘… two remarkable books, driven by sympathetic and intuitive enquiry, which made an important contribution to Swift studies when they appeared in the 1960s and which still remain significant for all those interested in Swift’s life and works’. Cadenus is primarily concerned with the relationship between Swift and Vanessa (Esther Van Homrigh), Swift’s Most Valuable Friend with that between Swift and Stella (Esther Johnson). Both help to determine the precise nature of this triangle, and the impact it had on his writing and career.
£12.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Changing the Times: Irish Women Journalists 1969-1981
This ‘new journalism’ by Irish Times women writers originally appeared on the Women First pages during the 1970s. Together, the pieces reflect the enormous social and political upheaval of the years when, as the first woman’s page editor Mary Maher put it, “Irish women were invented”. The voices of this exciting anthology, diverse, sparkling, irreverent, record with wit and intelligence an Ireland on the brink of transformation. Changing The Times showcases the best of this writing, by Maeve Binchy, Mary Leland, Gabrielle Williams, Christina Murphy, Geraldine Kennedy, Maev Kennedy, Eileen O’Brien, Caroline Walsh, Theodora FitzGibbon, Nell McCafferty, Renagh Holohan, Elgy Gillespie and others. Issues of the day are articulated and explored: pregnancy, fashion, first loves, sexuality, a burgeoning feminism, an imploding Catholic Church, an exploding North. Nell McCafferty profiles a young Ian Paisley, visits New York and talks to the family of a girl tarred and feathered in Derry; Maeve Binchy interviews Samuel Beckett and Iris Murdoch; Mary Holland follows the North, while Renagh Holohan is caught in its explosions; Elgy Gillespie encounters Muhammed Ali, Tyrone Guthrie and Robert Lowell; while Mary Cummins interviews Bernadette Devlin about having her first baby. As the mirror of a confident young nation, and a window onto one of the most eventful decades in recent Irish history, Changing the Times gives these writings the afterlife they richly deserve.
£12.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Through The Gate Of Ivory
Trinity student Charles Stanihurst, the son of a Dublin merchant and a Roscommon chambermaid, flees his native city after assaulting an English officer and heads for the West of Ireland, where he encounters a culture virtually unknown within the pale. Beyond the Shannon much of the old Gaelic way of life is still intact, though under growing threat from the political power and land greed of the ‘foreigners’. Charles is forced to confront divisions between his Anglo-Irish and Gaelic loyalties, while seeking his spiritual father, Bishop William Bedell, who is translating the Old Testament into Irish. Set in post-Flight of the Earls, pre-Cromwellian Ireland of 1641, this novel tells the gripping story of a struggle between two opposing cultures that set the scene for the rebellion sealing the fate of Gaelic Ireland.
£10.64
The Lilliput Press Ltd Song Of Duiske
In south Kilkenny, where Duiske stream joins the river Barrow at Graiguenamanagh, lies one of Ireland’s many Norman-Cistercian abbeys. Song of Duiske is a novella set amongst this monastic community in the year 1304, a century after the abbey’s foundation. It evokes the textures and rhythms of a medieval religious settlement, its peaceful routines as well as occasional trials, and celebrates with quiet lyricism the seasons and their solaces, ‘the open sky, the fields and the woods’.
£9.19
The Lilliput Press Ltd Rhapsody In Stephens Green: And The Insect Play
Using a play by Karl and Josef Capek as source, Flann O’Brien locates his insect drama in Dublin, his most familiar stalking- territory. His adaptation is a vehicle for ridicule and invective, targeting race, religion, greed, identity and purpose. With his extraordinary ear for dialogue, O’Brien creates his own fantastical world, and the outcome is a hilarious satire of Irish stereotypes – as Orangemen, Dubliners, Corkagians and culchies become warring ants, bees, crickets, dung-beetles, and other small-minded invertebrae. The lost text of this play, Hilton Edwards’ prompt copy from the 1943 Gate Theatre performance, was discovered in the archives at Northwestern University, Illinois.
£7.73
The Lilliput Press Ltd Showbusiness with Blood: A Golden Age of Irish Boxing
In Showbusiness with Blood, Eamon Carr beguiles the reader with an insightful account of the world’s greatest boxers, from Steve Collins to Mike Tyson to Tyson Fury and Katie Taylor. Boxing, Ireland’s most successful Olympic sport, became turbo-charged in the mid-90s. A golden age followed as Irish boxers excelled in the harsh, violent and sometimes tragic business that is professional boxing. Having become enamoured of the sport during a period of serious illness as a child, Eamon Carr was on hand to witness the victories and disasters. The core principle of prize-fighting – striking and defence – demands enormous courage each time the boxer steps forward. Surrounded by enthusiastic fans, the ring can yet be the loneliest place in the world. Ireland embodies this tradition with renewed focus over the past three decades in a golden age of boxing. Showbusiness with Blood takes the reader on an intimate journey through Irish boxing’s years of triumph and desolation. Carr’s enthusiasm for the sport illuminates the dark corners of the fight game with stories from gruelling training camps, noisy press conferences, behind-the-scenes hustling and the savage brutality of championship fights. These are stories of aspiration and devastation. Yet amid the chaos and destruction of the boxing ring are inspirational tales of courage, resilience and personal redemption: boxing’s enduring saving grace Featured boxers include: Steve Collins, Wayne McCullough, Bernard Dunne, Darren Sutherland, Tyson Fury, Jamie Conlan, Andy Lee, John Joe Nevin, Katie Taylor, Willie Casey, Carl Frampton, Michael Conlan, Mike Tyson, Seamus McDonagh, Conor McGregor, Martin Rogan, Michael Carruth, Francis Barrett, Matthew Macklin and Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan.
£16.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd A Hut at the Edge of the Village
There is a radical agency in John Moriarty's work that we as readers don't always spot. As our heads spin with mythological cross-referencing, poetical leaps and the philosophical bent, it is clear that there is nothing domestic, nothing tame, about John Moriarty. The power of Moriarty is that he has found a thousand beautiful ways to say something very disturbing: we have to change our lives. In this small book of big thoughts, award-winning author, mythologist and storyteller Martin Shaw situates Moriarty's work with respect to our eco-conscious era and a readership seeking spiritual and philosophical guidance. Moriarty asks of us only one thing - that we move our gaze from seeing to beholding. And there the trouble begins, when we realize there is a world beyond us far bigger than our temporary ambitions. A Hut at the Edge of the Village presents a collection of Moriarty's writings ordered thematically, with sections ranging from place, love and wildness through to voyaging, ceremony and the legitimacy of sorrow. These carefully chosen extracts are supported by an introduction by Martin Shaw and foreword by Tommy Tiernan, a long-time admirer of Moriarty's work. According to Shaw, 'These are not pastoral times we are living in, but prophetic. We are at a moment when the world as we understand it has been turned upside down. The challenge is that there are fewer and fewer people who can interpret such happenings in a deep, soulful way. Moriarty can do that. When culture is in woeful crisis, the insights never come from parliament, senate, or committee; they come from the hut at the edge of the village. Let's go there. There is tremendous, unexpected hope waiting.'
£13.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd A State Of Mind
In mid-1970s rural Wicklow, John Hughes, a once-feted journalist/author with writer’s block, reflects on recent events. When English author William Cromer and his German lover Ingrid move to the Old Rectory nearby, their lives are transformed and an alcohol-fuelled affair begins. Hughes puts at risk everything he has ever loved – his wife Laura, teenage daughter Rachael and the bucolic ease of their quiet corner of Ireland. Nationalist resentment of this tax-free haven enjoyed by foreigners is sparked by events in Northern Ireland, and John finds himself in the middle of extortion, blackmail, marital betrayal and a suicide. As old and new friendships unravel, even lunchtime visits to the local pub become points of attrition. Losing his friends and mistress, John is forced to take responsibility for his actions in order to save his family and his integrity, and to find release as a writer.
£11.25
The Lilliput Press Ltd Youth
Youth dives into the lives of four teenagers in Ireland's most diverse town, Balbriggan. Angel is about to finish school and discover if Drill music and YouTube fame can deliver on their promises. Princess is battling to escape her claustrophobic surroundings and go to university and Dean is ready to come out from under his famous father's shadow, while Tanya, struggling with the spotlight of internet infamy, is still posting her dream life for all of her faithful followers. Isolated and disorientated by the white noise and seemingly insurmountable expectations of adolescence, our protagonists are desperate to find anything that helps them belong. Oblivious to one another's presence, potential and struggles, they pass each other on the street as strangers. But when their paths cross, the connections they make will change the course of their lives. Twenty-first century life - hyper-sexualized, social media saturated, anxiety-plagued - is here. Living inside its characters' heads, and negotiating their interior landscape, this book is a love song to the possibilities of youth. Using insights gained from the young people he works with, Curran's evocative writing yields the authenticity this novel demands. With instinctive affection and admiration for his characters' strengths and complexities, Youth is a journey through streets less travelled.
£16.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Dolmen Press: A Celebration
The Dolmen Press, which operated under the guiding hand of Liam Miller from 1951 to 1987, was a beacon in a dark time for Irish publishing and occupies a central position in the story of Irish poetry after Yeats. This collection of essays, edited by the scholar and poet Maurice Harmon, is a testament to the achievement of Dolmen from the hands of the people who were closest to the Press. Essays by Rory Brennan, Terence Browne, Liam Browne, John Calder Raymond, Nuala Gunn, Maurice Harmon, Jarlath Hayes, John V. Kelleher, Thomas Kinsella, Louis le Brocquy, John Montague, Thomas Dillon Redshaw, Bernard Share, plus interviews with Liam Miller by Kevin Casey and Andy O’Mahony
£19.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Revolutionary Imperialist: William Smith O'Brien, 1803-64
By 1848 all peaceful means of giving Ireland an equal place within the British Empire seemed exhausted and William Smith O’Brien found himself a reluctant revolutionary leader. An aristocratic Protestant landlord, O’Brien nevertheless commanded unrivalled respect amonst all Irish classes. This scion of an ancient dynasty and tireless campaigner for Catholic Emancipation and Repeal of the Union had advocated a host of improving laws and policies in a parliamentary and political career spanning more than twenty years. Disilllusioned by parliament, dismayed at Ireland’s imminent disintegration during the Great Famine, and pressured by Young Irelanders of the Irish Confederation, O’Brien strove to reunite with fellow-nationalists loyal to the memory of Daniel O’Connell. The first full biography of the leader of the 1848 Rebellion paints a convincing picture of O’Brien’s private nature and public personality. Davis provides an in-depth anlysis of his long and varied political career and argues that O’Brien was a far more consistent political thinker and active nationalist than previously understood.
£17.95
The Lilliput Press Ltd The World Of Mary O'Connell: 1778-1836
In 1800 Daniel O’Connell, a young Kerry barrister who had just made his first forays into national politics, began a clandestine correspondence with his distant cousin Mary O’Connell of Tralee. Two years later Daniel secretly married the dowerless Mary in Dublin, jeopardizing his inheritance and forging a bond that would last until Mary’s death in 1836. Husband and wife corresponded voluminously from the beginning of their courtship until Mary’s death, and over a thousand letters between them have survived. The World of Mary O’Connell, based on examination of these letters and of Mary’s correspondence with other family members and friends, is more than a portrait of the Liberator’s wife. Through the life and letters of Mary O’Connell, Erin I. Bishop has produced a fascinating study of social and domestic life in Ireland in the early nineteenth century. In chapters dealing with love and marriage, motherhood, domesticity, family and kin, sickness and health, and religion Bishop paints both an intimate picture of the life of one woman and a panoramic view of a time and a social stratum – the Catholic middle class – that have hitherto received inadequate scholarly attention.
£15.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Wordlessness: Silence, Perplexity, Bewilderment
£15.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Whole Matter: The Poetic Evolution of Thomas Kinsella
This is the first comprehensive study of the works of one of Ireland’s most significant contemporary poets. Thomas Kinsella, who first became well known in Ireland in the 1950s, now ranks among the most important of his generation of Irish poets. Although he is considered by many to be the most serious and the most experimental of the contemporary Irish poets, his work has received little critical attention. Kinsella is often credited with bringing the techniques of international modernism to Irish verse. Jackson presents a rounded critique of the later poems, whose art engages, analyses and morally restructures the content of the poet’s world. What emerges from The Whole Matter is a picture of Kinsella’s astonishingly far-reaching evolution, culminating in an art deeply engaged with the culture around it and with the entire human predicament.
£25.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Zoology: On (Post)Modern Animals in the City
An exploration of urban wildlife published by the Lilliput Press.
£15.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Whole Matter: Poetic Evolution of Thomas Kinsella
£12.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd The Road to Riverdance HB
Riverdance exploded across the stage at Dublin's Point Theatre one spring evening in 1994 during a seven-minute interval of the Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Ireland. It was a watershed moment in the cultural history of a country embracing the future, a confident leap into world music grounded in the footfall of the choreographed kick-line. It was a moment forty-five years in the making for its composer. In this tenderly unfurled memoir Bill Whelan rehearses a lifetime of unconscious preparation as step by step he revisits his past, from with his Barrington Street home in 1950s Limerick, to the forcing ground of University College Dublin and the Law Library during the 1960s, to his attic studio in Ranelagh. Along the way the reader is introduced to people and places in the immersive world of fellow musicians, artists and producers, friends and collaborators, embracing the spectrum of Irish music as it broke boundaries, entering the global slipstream of the 1980s and 1990s. As art and commerce fused, dramas and contending personalities come to view behind the arras of stage, screen and recording desk. Whelan pays tribute to a parade of those who formed his world. He describes the warmth and sustenance of his Limerick childhood, his parents and Denise Quinn, won through assiduous courtship; the McCourts and Jesuit fathers of his early days, the breakthrough with a tempestuous Richard Harris who summoned him to London; Danny Doyle, Shay Healy, Dickie Rock, Planxty, The Dubliners and Stockton's Wing, Noel Pearson, Sean O Riada; working with Jimmy Webb, Leon Uris, The Corrs, Paul McGuinness, Moya Doherty, John McColgan, Jean Butler and Michael Flatley. Written with wry, inimitable Irish humour and insight, Bill Whelan's self deprecation allows us to to see the players in all their glory, vulnerability and idiosyncracy. This fascinating work reveals the nuts, bolts, sheer effort and serendipities that formed the road to Riverdance in his reinvention of the Irish tradition for a modern age. As the show went on to perform to millions worldwide, Whelan was honoured with a 1997 Grammy Award when Riverdance was named the 'Best Musical Show Album.' Richly detailed and illustrated, The Road to Riverdance forms an enduring repository of memory for all concerned with the performing arts.
£35.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd The State of Dark
Judith Mok was born in the Netherlands, to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. She trained as a classical singer and travelled the world performing as a soloist, while publishing a novel and poetry collection there. For the last twenty years she has been based in Ireland, where she has become the country's leading voice coach, working with classical singers and many international pop stars. In recent years she started to write in English, publishing a novel and poetry collection and contributing to publications like the Irish Times. The State of Dark is a memoir and detective story. Like many children of Holocaust survivors, she was raised with the emotional trauma of having no other family members, while her parents tried to rebuild their lives in postwar Europe. Despite the constant and occasionally intrusive presence of the past - Anne Frank's father Otto makes an emotional visit to her father to hand over some letters - she had little concrete information about the hundreds of members of her family who died. All the same, the Holocaust and its consequences continued to haunt her life. At one point in her career she worked with the great German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. It was only years later that she discovered the full extent of Schwarzkopf 's collaboration with the Nazi regime. Not only was she a full member of the National Socialist Party, but was also the mistress of Hans Frank, the notorious 'Butcher of Poland'. Later, Mok would discover that Schwarzkopf had entertained the German troops in Poland at around the same time her family were being murdered there. A chance phone call made from her Dublin home in search of more information unleashes a whole process whereby Mok disovers, in shocking and intimate detail, the terrible fate of her family. The State of Dark is a highly original, moving and beautifully written memoir of the so-called Second Generation trauma, which documents how the Holocaust continues to be a living issue in European life and culture, including in Ireland.
£14.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Midfield Dynamo
£10.65
The Lilliput Press Ltd Undernose Farm
In this slim, attractive collection of short stories, Harry Crosbie colourfully describes life in Dublin in the 1960s. These funny and poignant pieces are told from the perspective of a teenage boy working in Dublin’s docklands and illuminate an older Dublin that will be familiar to many readers. Written during the lockdown of 2020, writes from the heart and will charm and delight with tales of docklands life.
£13.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Hugh Lane 1875-1915
Available for the first time in paperback, Robert O’Byrne’s landmark biography of Hugh Lane remains the essential work on this enigmatic art dealer and patron. From his birth in Cork in 1875, to London, South Africa and Dublin, Hugh Lane is primarily remembered for establishing Dublin’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, the first known public gallery of modern art in the world. He never married and, though rumoured to have been homosexual, never had a documented relationship with a man. He was also a person of great social energy who befriended and sometimes crossed swords with the leading cultural figures of his day: Yeats, Gregory, Orpen, Augustus John, Rodin, Beerbohm, and many others. Robert O’Byrne writes with clarity and insight about a man who, since his untimely death on R.M.S. Lusitania in 1915, has been something of a mystery.
£22.50
The Lilliput Press Ltd Over The Backyard Wall: A Memoir Book
According to Thomas Kilroy, his captivating memoir materialized in response to a cataract operation in 2006, shocking his memory into being and imparting him with a uniquely tactile and sensuous perception of his own past. Over the Backyard Wall describes a coming of age embodied by escape, self-discovery and a struggle to contend with the rigid culture of a small Irish town in Co. Kilkenny during WWII, with parents representing both sides of the civil war conflict of the 1920s. He describes encounters with fellow Kilkenny artists Tony O’Malley and Hubert Butler, and writers such as Flannery O’Connor during his tour of the southern US states in the 1950s. In keeping with Kilroy’s previous works, Over the Backyard Wall utilizes the silences of the past to liberate the imagination, making use of social and political history to reinvigorate the shard-like nature of his own narrative memory.
£13.50
The Lilliput Press Ltd Oona
What is the sound of a voice that is alienated from itself? How can one truthfully represent the creative process of an artist? Oona, an artist-in-the-making, lives in an affluent suburban culture of first-generation immigrants in New Jersey where conspicuous consumption and white privilege prevail, and the denial of death is ubiquitous. The silence surrounding death extends to the family home where Oona is not told while her mother lies dying of cancer upstairs. Afterwards, a silence takes hold inside her: her inner life goes into a deep freeze. Emotionally hobbled, she has her first encounters with sex, drugs and other trials of adolescence. Lyons’ first novel gives voice to a female character on her fraught journey into adulthood and charts her evolution as an artist, as her adolescent dissociation is thawed through contact with the physical world, the materials of painting and her engagement with Irish community, culture and landscape. Set during the era of the Celtic Tiger and its aftermath, this is a resonant story conveyed in an innovative form. Written entirely without the letter ‘o’, the tone of the book reflects Oona’s inner damage and the destruction caused by hiding, omitting and obliterating parts of ourselves.
£12.10
The Lilliput Press Ltd IRELAND
This full-colour kaleidoscope of over 150 photographs by one of North America's leading photographers evokes a pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland, recording a world on the cusp of radical change: a time-capsule of personalities and landscapes, professions and activities, caught in the amber of the camera's eye. Beginning with an Irish assignment from British Vogue in 1969, Woods' interest deepened with marriages to two Irish husbands, and she developed an abiding love for the people and places documented in subsequent decades. This Valentine to Ireland is now gathered into one resonant volume of images and visual epiphanies. The work ranges across the Irish countryside. Departing from Dublin and Wicklow, it extends to Roscommon and the Shannon estuary, recording street scenes, Travellers, the hunt, cattle marts and pub, cottage and country-house interiors. Six of the eight photo-essays focus on leading personalities: Garech Brown of Luggala, founder of Claddagh Records; the late Desmond FitzGerald, last knight of Glin; Marina Guinness, chatelaine; the late J.P. Donleavy, novelist, at home in County Westmeath; Hector McDonnell, artist, at home in Glenarm; and Tim Pat Coogan, historian.
£25.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Writer To Writer: The Republic of Elsewhere
Margaret Atwood, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney and Salman Rushdie feature in this collection of over forty interviews with award-winning authors. This is a genre-crossing collection of interviews and essays that recounts in intimate detail encounters with many of the world’s foremost writers. Interspersed are photos as well as a charismatic commentary, provided by editor and veteran journalist Ciaran Carty, revealing a surprising, often unexpected interconnectedness between these otherwise distinct figures. Individually, these pieces provide a rare glimpse inside some of the world’s most creative minds; collectively, they address topics such as history, politics, sexuality, and class, while also reflecting the distinguished and wide-ranging career of one of Ireland’s leading critics and broadcasters. Filled with laugh-out-loud anecdotes, personal confessions, and passionate declarations, this book is the definitive collection for literature enthusiasts and aspiring writers alike.
£14.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd This Tumult
The Tottenham family is falling apart. There is no money to maintain the crumbling house and farm in County Westmeath, so decisions have to be made. Brothers Nick and Tony, with no prospect of a future in rural Ireland, make the long journey to their uncle’s ranch in Australia. As World War Two looms, the entire family signs up to fight: mathematician mother Eleanor calculates flight paths; sister Rose repairs radar masts in Lincolnshire; Nick and Tony, like thousands of others, enlist in Australia; even their ageing father Gerald signs up for duty in the Far East. Little does each foresee what terror, starvation and heartache lay ahead, and what it would take to survive. In a gripping narrative that spans four generations and encompasses the battlefields of Syria and Egypt, the Australian outback, night sorties over Germany, English airfields and the horrors of a Sumatran prison camp, this is a harrowing story of hardship and heroism, based on an Irish family’s experience.
£13.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd A Life In Postcards
Many people will remember Melosina’s voice from ‘Sunday Miscellany’, where these pieces were first broadcast, or have read them in ‘Irishwoman’s Diary’ in The Irish Times. Fewer may have discovered her intriguing short stories, most of them published here for the first time. Though all of her writing conveys her distinctive slant on things, relatively few of her essays were directly concerned with her personal life. Several of these are collected here, including a moving account of her first experience of the cancer from which she eventually died in 2011. Growing up as a tea-planter’s daughter in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), evacuated with her mother to Africa during the war, Melosina Lenox-Conyngham acquired early on a taste for travel and an interest in the curiosities of life. Certainly these qualities are well illustrated in this collection. Her many years as Secretary to the Butler Society gave her expertise at rallying the clan as well as a special interest in key figures from Kilkenny local history. Vignettes of Irish social life take us to houses that have never been sold or fill readers in on the strange eventful history of a portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire. Some of the most intriguing of the essays cover her travels to remote parts of the globe, to Yemen, the home of the legendary Queen of Sheba, to Nagaland in the far north-east of India, or to Timbuktu in Mali. But even if it is only a visit to a restaurant in Barcelona where food is served entirely in the dark, or an artistic centre high in the Pyrennees, the amused gaze of the writer brings the experience vividly to life. Edited by her niece Sophia Grene, the volume is divided into several sections each of which is introduced by members of the family or friends who round out the sense of the writer’s life. This anthology of Melosina Lenox-Conygham’s writings, so rich in her delightful sense of humour, her ironic and quizzical pleasure in the world around her, has something for everyone to enjoy.
£12.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Intimacy With Strangers: A Life of Brief Encounters
Intimacy with Strangers offers a dazzlingly original, thought-provoking approach to celebrity interviewing. Ciaran Carty draws upon a career involving many of the world’s leading writers, artists, actors and directors as they explore intimate concerns, ranging from love and rejection to the smallest physical sensations of pleasure and pain, and to the great issues of politics and war, God and atheism – the big and small of the human condition. Interweaving recent cultural and social history, Carty exposes unexpected affinities shared by his eclectic cast of subjects. Through chains of happenstance and six-degrees-of-separation, Intimacy with Strangers mirrors the cinematic cuts, fades and dissolves of its author’s sensibility as film critic and writer. By creating this magical memoir, Ciaran Carty offers an idiosyncratic portrait of a kaleidoscopic Ireland in a global setting.
£14.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Ink-Stained Hands: Graphic Studio Dublin and the Origins of Fine Art Printmaking in Ireland
Ink-Stained Hands fulfils a considerable gap in Irish visual arts publications as the first book to present the activities of printmakers in Ireland from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The central narrative of this profusely illustrated and documented book is the foundation of Graphic Studio Dublin in 1960, an event which revolutionized the graphic arts in Ireland and made the European tradition of printmaking available to Irish artists.
£50.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Another Europe?: After the Third No
After the French and Dutch electorates decisively rejected the EU Constitution at the polls in 2005, the Irish delivered a resounding 'Third No' in June 2008, triggering a political earthquake in the capitals of Europe. Forcing the Irish to vote again in 2009 having given the 'wrong' answer reveals divergent visions of Europe's future. In this defining moment Another Europe? comes as a timely stimulus to debate about the future of the EU. Just as The Federalist papers of 1788 lent the stage to Publius at an equally pivotal time in the history of the United States of America, so his sister 'Publia', with her friend 'Lydia', jointly address the peoples of Europe on the future of their Continent. Their inspired exchanges contain the ideas of over seventy distinguished thinkers and political actors across the European Union. They expose two logically consistent if irreconcilable routes towards a democratically legitimate Europe. Authoritative and highly readable, Another Europe? aims to bridge academic and popular discourse and open up all the key issues, from law to environment, identity, citizenship, finance and foreign policy. It is essential for anyone who wishes to engage in Ireland's – and Europe's – great debate.
£10.29
The Lilliput Press Ltd Leaving Ardglass
In 1961, MJ Galvin, an Irish building contractor in London, brings over his kid brother, Tom, to join the family business. Educated, sensitive and naive, and destined for the seminary, Tom witnesses a killing, learns about dead men and the start in Camden Town, experiences drunken brawls and the excitement of dancehall nights in the Galtymore. He faces a decision that will shape his future: will he join his successful brother and make a fortune, or follow an inner voice towards the priesthood? The inner voice prevails, Tom enrolls as a seminarian, goes to Rome, becomes a monsignor and is tipped for a bishopric, only to renounce power and prestige, and be relegated to a quiet country parish disillusioned by the betrayal of principles within his Church as a new century dawns. This powerful family saga evokes the tensions and transformations within a new Ireland as traditional values give way to consumerism and one man’s odyssey becomes everyman’s.
£12.10
The Lilliput Press Ltd Stimulus Of Sin: Selected Prose of John Broderick
Athlone-born writer John Broderick was an astringent commentator on the rapidly shifting mores of Ireland from the 1950s to the 1980s. Better known for his novels, he was also a prolific reviewer and essayist. This new collection brings together a fascinating and eclectic selection of his book reviews and other journalism, as well as some previously unpublished short fiction. Between 1956 and 1988 Broderick produced over three hundred review columns on a wide range of books and topics. A carefully chosen selection of these include his thoughts on Francis Stuart, Lee Dunne, Padraic Fallon, Oscar Wilde, Kate O’Brien and Liam O’Flaherty, among others. His journalism also gave him space to reflect on other preoccupations, such as Athlone, Irish society, the Church, books, writers and human nature. It allowed him freedom to write humorously, seriously, sometimes pessimistically, even savagely. His writings are of increasing relevance and interest in today’s Ireland.
£14.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Century Of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical View of the Twentieth Century in Ireland
This series of memoirs covers successive attempts by father and son to address the problem of building a rational, inclusive, national political superstructure on an all-Ireland basis, making use of the best of available European experience, and trying to counter the extremes of Catholic nationalism and Orange Protestant hegemonism.
£30.00
The Lilliput Press Ltd Paddy Mo: A Biography of Dr.Patrick Moriarty 1926-1997
This biography charts the life of Paddy Moriarty, the Kerryborn Chief Executive of ESB, a man who revolutionized corporate life during his leadership of the largest semi-state company in Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s. Born in Dingle in 1926, he became one of Ireland's leading business people of the twentieth century as he transformed ESB into a world-class electricity provider and a highly efficient, commercially driven company. Having built the power infrastructure of the new State, ESB played a critical role in the revitalization of the Irish economy and, on Moriarty's watch, proceeded to assist in developing the foundations of the Celtic Tiger economy. His vision was to make ESB 'the best electricity utility in the whole world', developing the highest standards of infrastructure at home while developing an international business in the economies of North and Central America, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. Moriarty joined ESB as a clerical officer in June 1945 at the age of nineteen and quickly gained a reputation as a young man with a determined view on how business should be run. He rose rapidly through the company ranks. He was head of Research and Audit in 1961, Assistant Chief Financial Officer in 1967 and Director Personnel in 1970, before becoming Chief Executive in 1981 and Chairman ESB in 1991. The man they called Paddy Mo conducted comprehensive and difficult industrial relations negotiations with the trade unions, ensuring harmony in the workplace during the 1980s – a decade of fast-moving change, massive technological reform and associated redundancies. His interpersonal skills, as well as his business instincts, became legendary. With Taoiseach Charles Haughey he helped pioneer the North-South Erne Waterways project in a bid to revitalize border communities. He was also a significant patron of the arts, encouraging sponsorship of painters, sculptors and musicians. His wide-ranging interests included sports and horse racing, with one of the Leopardstown classics being named in his honour. A sense of family, which included his younger brother Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh the renowned GAA broadcaster and commentator, was central to his world view.
£14.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Larks' Eggs: New and Selected Stories
Desmond Hogan is one of most remarkable literary talents to have come out of Ireland in the past half-century. Larks’ Eggs affirms that stature. Here, with twenty-two classic stories taken from earlier collections and twelve fresh narratives, Hogan displays anew his lyricism, compassion and sheer prismatic brilliance. His subject is exile and self-image, explored through isolates and eccentrics, brittle lives trapped by poverty, personal histories and restless identities, giving a voice to those on the margins – travellers, the misplaced, the dispossessed. Larks’ Eggs‘ compelling tales of diaspora are both global and local, telling of subsumed identity and allurement, of past merging with present through landscape and mindscape. Desmond Hogan’s fragmented personas are repositories for childhood memory and a collective unconscious that is distinctly Irish and history-burdened, while exhilaratingly and wholly universal and modern. ‘Here’s to the storytellers. They made sense of these lonely and driven lives of ours.’ The Lilliput Press is proud to reintroduce one of Ireland’s most evocative prose writers. Desmond Hogan takes his place alongside Joyce, Plunkett, Trevor, O’Faolain, Kiely and McGahern.
£12.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Crystal Clear: The Selected Prose of John Jordan
Writer, poet, lecturer, broadcaster and man-of -letters, John Jordan (1930-88) was a distinguished scholar-critic in the Dublin of his day, teaching English at University College Dublin (1955-66) and at the Memorial University of Newfoundland at St John’s (1966-7). A true cosmopolitan, and formidably read, his interests ranged from drama to literature in all its forms. This gathering of prose essays and reviews are taken from the columns of the Irish Press, Hibernia, The Crane Bag and Irish University Review and Poetry Ireland (a magazine he refounded in 1962), as well as from private unpublished papers. They focus on the mid-century canon of Irish and Anglo-American writing: Joyce, Yeats, Lawrence, Eliot, Kavanagh, O’Casey, Behan, Clarke, Stuart, Bowen, Gregory, Synge, Shaw and Wilde, as well as on the new voices of a succeeding generation: Kinsella, Cronin, Hutchinson, Heaney, and Durcan. With occasional literary detours to Russia, France and Spain, Jordan brings a continental sensibility to bear on his literary milieu.
£19.99
The Lilliput Press Ltd Death Of A King: And Other Stories
A gypsy king dies, and a group of villagers seek to save him from the dishonour of a pauper’s grave. The dispute over the inheritance of a well-field becomes a struggle between the ‘old stock’ and the ‘new people’ for the very ownership of their town. A terrier pup reveals the truth of the relationship between a poacher and gamekeeper. A seasoned drinker subverts the ‘dry’ policy of a train chartered by a Pioneer pilgrimage. An old man puts on his best suit for this own wake, telling his family he will be dead by nightfall. And a blind woman only truly realizes her blindness when forced to abandon her home. Stories of enduring friendships and close family ties form the heart of Death of a King. Often hilarious, and as fresh as the day they were written, these stories delicately but potently reveal their characters’ lives in all their toughness and tenderness
£10.64
The Lilliput Press Ltd Historical Essays 1939-2001: A Miscellany
This miscellany gathers together essays and papers written over a span of sixty-odd years. Some are hitherto unpublished, others disinterred from rare and learned periodicals: Together they form a scholarly and diverting mosaic of political and social life in Ireland over the past half-millennium. They take for subjects both individuals and institutions. McDowell examines Swift as a political thinker, Burke and the law, John Hely-Hutchinson, provost and controversialist, and the Ulster leader Edward Carson. More minor characters and events are linked to his lively sketches of Trinity College, from its foundation in the sixteenth century to the Second World War; of Dublin Castle and the viceregal court in its glory and decline; of the Dublin Society of the United Irishmen; of the Anglican episcopate. A nuanced and fascinating portrait of an era, and of Irish-English affairs, emerges, drawn with an unerring eye for human foible and idiosyncrasy. Historical Essays is testimony to the enduring energy and wit of one of Ireland’s most distinguished historians.
£17.99