Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhaoibh!
Fiction
- Wannabes: a 1990s story, by Dave Rudden – the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble go to Dublin
- The Professor in Erin, by L. McManus – alternative history where the Irish side won the Battle of Kinsale in 1602, and in 1914 Ireland is a proudly independent European state
- A Brilliant Void, ed. Jack Fennell – collection of science fiction by Irish writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
- Reminiscences of a Bachelor, by Sheridan Le Fanu – creepy eighteenth century Dublin
- Collected Plays and Teleplays, by Flann O’Brien – some very good stuff
Helen Waddell
- The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett – biography by someone who knew her personally
- Helen Waddell Reassessed: New Readings, ed. Jennifer FitzGerald – collection of academic essays
Northern Ireland
- Fifty Years On, by Malachi O’Doherty – autobiography but also how Belfast has changed
- Burned: The Inside Story of the ‘Cash-for-Ash’ Scandal and Northern Ireland’s Secretive New Elite, by Sam McBride – the scandal that rocked Northern Irish politics in 2017
- Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem, Good Vibrations, by Terri Hooley and Richard Sullivan – punk music in Belfast
- Flying from Malone: Belfast’s First Civil Aerodrome, by Guy Warner – when Taughmonagh was (briefly) Belfast’s gateway to the world.
- Belfast: Approach to Crisis, by Ian Budge and Cornelius O’Leary; and Belfast: The Story of a City and its People, by Feargal Cochrane – two very different books about my native city
Modern Ireland
- Paddy Machiavelli: How to Get Ahead in Irish Politics, by John Drennan – a journalist’s eye view
- Yes, Taoiseach: Irish Politics From Behind Closed Doors, by Frank Dunlop – an insider’s account; there was no corruption at all, you see
- Imagining Ireland’s Independence: The Debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, by Jason K. Knirck – the ideology of Republicanism
Eighteenth century Ireland
- Memoirs of Mrs Margaret Leeson / Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore, by Julie Peakman – sex work in eighteenth century Dublin; the original account is better
- Hallelujah: The Story of a Musical Genius & the City That Brought His Masterpiece to Life, by Jonathan Bardon – the inside story
Sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland
- The Tudor Discovery of Ireland, by Christopher Maginn and Steven G. Ellis – deep analysis of a 16th century manuscript preserved in Hatfield House
- Church and State in Tudor Ireland: A History of Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics, 1543-1603, by Robert Dudley Edwards – what it says
- Ireland under Elizabeth and James I, ed. Henry Morley – primary source material
- Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait – what happens at the end
My favourites of these are the two autobiographical books about Belfast, Belfast: The Story of a City and its People, by Feargal Cochrane (which you can get here) and Fifty Years On, by Malachi O’Doherty (which you can get here). A Brilliant Void, edited by Jack Fennell, is very interesting on an underexplored part of Irish culture (and you can get it here).