Gill Books: 392 books

Nowhere in the annals of sport is there a family so gifted. In 1982 the seven Casey brothers were inducted into the Irish Sports Hall of Fame, the only family ever to receive that honour. The brothers, from Sneem in County Kerry, starred as Olympic-class oarsmen, Tug-O’-War champions, professional...

Kerrygold butter. The Dublin Spire. The Buntús Cainte booklet. The DeLorean sports car. All of these things are an indisputable part of Irish history, yet never quite made the school curriculum. Damian Corless uses his trademark wit to trawl through our past and capture fleeting moments on the way...

The spectacular Dingle Peninsula in southwest Ireland extends westward into the Atlantic from Tralee to Slea Head. Voted among the Top 100 destinations in the world by TripAdvisor and referred to as ‘the most beautiful place on earth’ by National Geographic, its landscape includes soaring mountaintops,...

In November 1940 the body of Moll McCarthy, an unmarried mother, was found in a field in Tipperary. She had been shot. The man who reported the discovery was neighbour Harry Gleeson. Although Harry had an alibi, he was swiftly convicted and hanged. This travesty of justice suited the parish priest,...

Micheal 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, living in a thatched cottage and speaking no English. He ended his days in a large slate-roofed house in the same place. First published in Irish...

The last King of the Great Blasket Island was Pádraig Ó Catháin, known as Peats Mhicí, who served for quarter of a century until his death in 1929. The King helped the islanders navigate through life and through national as well as international events, such as the 1916 Rising and the Great War....

Nestling on the River Bandon, Kinsale emerged as a settlement in the sixth century and has seen many changes. Its deep, secure harbour provided a safe anchorage and prospered during the seventeenth century’s ‘golden age of sail’, victualling ships bound for the West Indies and the American colonies,...

In size and tone, Denis Barry’s funeral cortège in the midst of a bloody civil war was similar to those that marked the burials of Tomás MacCurtain and Terence McSwiney and, in more peaceful times, of Christy Ring and Jack Lynch. Who was ‘the Unknown Commandant’? A martyr and a hero to his...

Taking his backdoor as a starting point, Joseph Horgan explores the natural world. The book spans one autumn and one winter, framed by the departure of the swallows from the author’s backyard and concluding with their return. In between, Horgan travels on foot or by bicycle along some still-quiet...

The traditional view of the IRA in Ireland in the period 1916–1921 of heroes living only for the republic, courageous and undeterred, has come in for close scrutiny in recent years. Who joined and what were their motives and backgrounds? What was their general character like? Were there lapses in...

High on any list of Polar explorers would be the names Crozier, McClintock, McClure and Shackleton. But how many know they were all Irish? Seek the Frozen Lands unveils an array of Irish heroes largely unknown in modern Ireland. The sage begins with Edward Bransfield, who made one of the first sightings...

There is no crime in detecting and destroying in wartime the spy and informer...I have paid them back in their own coin. - Michael CollinsMichael Collins' development of a formidable intelligence network transformed, for the first time in history, the military fortunes of the Irish against the British....

On 17 March 1912, Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates crawled bootless from a tent to his death in blizzard conditions of -40°C. Oates, always an outsider on Scott’s Polar expedition, died on his 32nd birthday. His parting words were: ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ Oates was the epitome...

The decade between the labour conflict (the ‘Lockout’) of 1913 and the end of the Civil War in 1923 was one of seismic upheaval. How the GAA – a major sporting and national body – both influenced and was influenced by this upheaval is a rich and multifaceted story. Leading writers in the field...