Peig McManus shares an extract from her memoir, I Will Be Good Mam said it was cold the day she brought me home to our tenement room on North King Street in Dublin 7. Gran, my dad’s mother, had the fire lighting. Mam sat in front of it, cradling me on her lap, heating her hands to warm my cold feet. Very soon I got the hang of things and stretched out my tiny feet o meet her warmed hands. …
Category: History
I’m often asked where I get the ideas for my books, and the answer is different every time. The Last Lifeboat began with a nugget of history I discovered back …
Sheila O’ Flanagan, briefly tells us about her first historical novel, The Woman On The Bridge. The story of a young woman caught up in Ireland’s fight for freedom. The …

Imbolc (or Imbolg); the first day of spring in Ireland! Imbolc also marks the publication of this wonderful new memoir In Ordinary Time by Carmel McMahon. While this is the …
My new novel, The Witches of Vardø is inspired by the true events of a series of witch trials on the arctic island of Vardø in Northern Norway in 1662, …
The Trial of Lotta Rae is the tale of a woman who believes in justice. Who becomes notorious as she seeks that justice at an Old Bailey trial. It is set against …
A few years ago, I was researching an article about mother-and-baby institutions in Ireland for my job at the BBC and had gotten stuck. The assignment felt like wading through …
The irony is not lost on me that I was on the tube to the National Archives in London, of all places, the first time I read the name Edith …

#ReadIrishWomenChallenge22 #RIWC22 It’s April so I’m back once again with the Read Irish Women Challenge – the month where we celebrate outstanding books by Irish women. Starting on April 1st, …
As a toddler, my son was obsessed with Janet & Alan Ahlberg’s Peepo! It’s a day in the life of a baby, but in the background is the London Blitz: …
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