Patrick 'Paddy' Reilly is an Irish folk singer and guitarist. Born in Rathcoole, County Dublin, he is one of Ireland's most famous balladeers and is best known for his renditions of "The Fields of Athenry", "Rose of Allendale" and "The Town I Loved So Well". Reilly released his version of "The Fields of Athenry" as a single in 1983; it was the most successful version of this song, remaining in the Irish charts for 72 weeks. After years a solo performer, he joined The Dubliners in 1996 as a replacement for long-time member Ronnie Drew. He played with the group for nine years before leaving for New York City. In this memoir, Paddy is gracious and generous about sharing his memories, good and bad, with the readers who have helped make him Ireland's best loved balladeer for almost 60 years.
From the author of the “funny, irreverent, and highly entertaining” (Liane Moriarty, author of The Husband’s Secret) Fine Color of Rust comes a brilliant new novel about a misfit trio who become instant international reality stars, probing the nature of celebrity, disability, and the value of human life. Perhaps every human being was a freak. Hadn’t he read somewhere that every person has at least a handful of damaged genes? That all humans embody a myriad of nature’s mistakes? Meet Leon (stage name: Clockwork Man), a nervous, introverted thirty-year-old man with a brass heart; Kathryn (stage name: Lady Lamb), a brash, sexy woman covered almost entirely with black, tightly furled wool; and Christos (stage name: Seraphiel), a vain performance artist who plays a winged god with the help of ceramic implants inserted between his shoulder blades. These are The Wonders, three extraordinary people whose medical treatments have tested the limits of the human body. When they are brought together by a canny entrepreneur, their glamorous, genre-defying, twenty-first-century circus act becomes a global sensation. But what makes them objects of fascination also places them in danger. With warmth, humor, and astonishing insight, Paddy O’Reilly has written a wonderful novel that will appeal to fans of Sara Gruen’s Ape House, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and Teddy Wayne’s The Love Song of Jonny Valentine—or anyone who’s ever questioned the nature of fame, our kinship with the animal kingdom, and the delicate balancing act of life and death.
Set in the Australian bush, a wryly funny, beautifully observed novel about friendship, motherhood, love, and the importance of fighting for things that matter. Loretta Boskovic never dreamed she would end up a single mother with two kids in a dusty Australian country town. She never imagined she’d have to campaign to save the local primary school. She certainly had no idea her best friend would turn out to be the crusty old junk man. All in all, she’s starting to wonder if she took a wrong turn somewhere. If only she could drop the kids at the orphanage and start over . . . But now, thanks to her protest letters, the education minister is coming to Gunapan, and she has to convince him to change his mind about the school closure. And as if facing down the government isn’t enough, it soon becomes clear that the school isn’t the only local spot in trouble. In the drought-stricken bushland on the outskirts of town, a luxury resort development is about to siphon off a newly discovered springwater supply. No one seems to know anything, no one seems to care. With a dream lover on a Harley unlikely to appear to save the day, Loretta needs to stir the citizens of Gunapan to action. She may be short of money, influence, and a fully functioning car, but she has good friends. Together they can organize chocolate drives, supermarket sausage sizzles, a tour of the local slaughterhouse—whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home. Warm, moving, and funny, The Fine Color of Rust is “a story about love: where we look for it, what we do with it, and how it shows up in the most unexpected packages” (Big Issue, Australia).
A teenager on the tram meets an old man claiming to be Jesus Christ. Six young women band together on a night prowl. A Filipino immigrant clashes with his eldest sister, who has brought him to Australia for a better life. And in a future where dogs have risen up against their owners, a mother is alarmed by her adolescent daughter's behavior. Through such diverse characters, Paddy O'Reilly takes us into the fringes of human nature—our hidden thoughts, our darker impulses, and our unspoken tragedies. By turns elegiac and acerbic, but always acutely observed, Peripheral Vision confirms O'Reilly as one of our most inventive and insightful writers.
When I first arrived in this prison, the cold whiteness of the walls and the thin bedding and the icy cruelty of the guards kept me occupied." Hilda travels to Japan to research The Factory, a controversial arts community that collapsed twenty years earlier. But when The Factory is re-formed by old members, Hilda is drawn into a complex intrigue of love, betrayal and revenge. The secrets she uncovers and the ties she forms will push her to the edge.
Enlivened by a wry sense of humor, this collection uses narrative voices that express subtlety and experience in stories that place the characters in a variety of settings--from Japan and Australia to fantastical places where incredible things are possible--and experiments with different perceptions of reality, creating unique situations that span a broad range of experiences.
Patrick 'Paddy' Reilly is an Irish folk singer and guitarist. Born in Rathcoole, County Dublin, he is one of Ireland's most famous balladeers and is best known for his renditions of "The Fields of Athenry", "Rose of Allendale" and "The Town I Loved So Well". Reilly released his version of "The Fields of Athenry" as a single in 1983; it was the most successful version of this song, remaining in the Irish charts for 72 weeks. After years a solo performer, he joined The Dubliners in 1996 as a replacement for long-time member Ronnie Drew. He played with the group for nine years before leaving for New York City. In this memoir, Paddy is gracious and generous about sharing his memories, good and bad, with the readers who have helped make him Ireland's best loved balladeer for almost 60 years.
An outstanding new collection of stories from 'a significant Australian talent' (Australian) A teenager on the tram meets an old man claiming to be Jesus Christ. Six young women band together on a night prowl. A Filipino immigrant clashes with his eldest sister, who has brought him to Australia for a better life. And in a future where dogs have risen up against their owners, a mother is alarmed by her adolescent daughter's behaviour. Through such diverse characters, Paddy O'Reilly takes us into the fringes of human nature - our hidden thoughts, our darker impulses and our unspoken tragedies. By turns elegiac and acerbic, but always acutely observed, Peripheral Vision confirms O'Reilly as one of our most inventive and insightful writers.
After twenty years five old friends are reunited for the funeral of an acquaintance on an abandoned island off the west coast of Ireland. Trapped by a sudden storm, they end up stranded overnight, alone, drunk and marooned on this desolate windswept rock; but when morning comes only four of them leave. Bonded by this terrible pact, this crippling secret which forces them to rekindle old fires, they desperately try and stay one step ahead of the law. And each other.
Perhaps every human being was a freak. Hadn't he read somewhere that every person has at least a handful of damaged genes? That all humans embody a myriad of nature's mistakes? Meet Leon (stage name: Clockwork Man), a nervous, introverted thirty-year-old man with a brass heart; Kathryn (stage name: Lady Lamb), a brash, sexy woman covered almost entirely with black, tightly furled wool; and Christos (stage name: Seraphiel), a vain performance artist who plays a winged god with the help of ceramic implants inserted between his shoulder blades. These are The Wonders, three extraordinary people whose medical treatments have tested the limits of the human body. When they are brought together by a canny entrepreneur, their glamorous, genre-defying, 21st century circus act becomes a global sensation. But what makes them objects of fascination also places them in danger." --
Cuckoo Spit follows the lives of four close friends and their daily struggle to keep themselves occupied in the dreary little town that time forgot. Abandoned by the modern world, in a place void of jobs women and opportunities, they drink and smoke their time away, outcasts in a town of nutters, dreaming of the day when their ship will come in and free them from their tedious fate. But just when it seems things can't get any worse a Community Employment Scheme threatens to turn their world upside down, forcing them to take drastic measures to avoid having to get a job, until a plan is finally hatched that will make them all rich, once and for all. Filled with amusing and borderline insane characters, scathing dialogue, and plenty of home truths, Cuckoo Spit is a hilarious observation on the absurdities of everyday life in a small rural Irish town.
This book presents a ‘Traveller’s Guide’ to Deaf Culture, starting from the premise that Deaf cultures have an important contribution to make to other academic disciplines, and human lives in general. Within and outside Deaf communities, there is a need for an account of the new concept of Deaf culture, which enables readers to assess its place alongside work on other minority cultures and multilingual discourses. The book aims to assess the concepts of culture, on their own terms and in their many guises and to apply these to Deaf communities. The author illustrates the pitfalls which have been created for those communities by the medical concept of ‘deafness’ and contrasts this with his new concept of “Deafhood”, a process by which every Deaf child, family and adult implicitly explains their existence in the world to themselves and each other.
After twenty years five old friends are reunited for the funeral of an acquaintance on an abandoned island off the west coast of Ireland. Trapped by a sudden storm, they end up stranded overnight, alone, drunk and marooned on this desolate windswept rock; but when morning comes only four of them leave. Bonded by this terrible pact, this crippling secret which forces them to rekindle old fires, they desperately try and stay one step ahead of the law. And each other.
In 1948, an ambitious 20 year-old Irish journalist with law and law-reporting experience, arrived in Shrewsbury at 9.15 a.m to join a national press agency, tired and hungry after the night boat from Dublin, two trains, and a six hour wait at Crewe Junction. His new boss shook hands in the office at Shoplatch and sent him back up the town to a divorce court. He bought himself a Mars bar for breakfast. After an hour of taking down the most lubricious evidence he had ever heard, about womens underwear draped over a chair, a man in her bed and his shoes under it, the court rose, the clerk sent the bailiff out for a policeman who took him downstairs to a cell. The constable shut the door. The clerk arrived and offered the prisoner a cigarette, declined. He took off his wig and sat down beside him to ask who he was, who he worked for, where did he come from, and when? The reporter replied - Paddy McGarvey, Bryce Thomas Press Agency in Shoplatch, from Dublin, this morning, and the clerk roared with laughter You are not allowed to write down evidence in divorce; it is illegal. You should have been told that by your editor. You must wait to hear the judges summary and decision, to report that if you wish. Resuming his wig, he told the police there would be no charge, and to release him. The clerk told the resumed court he comes only this very this morning from a country which forbids divorce, and the court roared with laughter. His meekly polite employer, Leslie Bryce Thomas, arrived and took him back to the office, on this, his first morning, job, court, day, police cell, in England.
Paddy Armstrong was one of four people falsely convicted of The Guildford Bombing in 1975. He spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Today, as a husband and father, life is wonderfully ordinary, but the memory of his ordeal lives on. Here, for the first time and with unflinching candour, he lays bare the experiences of those years and their aftermath. Life after Life is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness. It reminds us of the privilege of freedom, and how the balm of love, family and everyday life can restore us and mend the scars of even the most savage injustice. 'This book captures the sweet soul of Paddy. Beautifully written. For lovers of freedom everywhere.' Jim Sheridan
Mary Elmes is the great unsung heroine of modern Ireland. Risking her life to save Jewish children during the Holocaust, she turned her back on a promising academic career to help others. She is the only Irish person to be honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel for this work. In 1937 she travelled to Spain as an aid worker, where she ran children’s hospitals, moving from one bombed-out building to the next in the midst of a horrific civil war. Moving to France after Franco’s victory, she continued to work in the wretched refugee camps hastily thrown together by the French authorities for 500,000 escaping Spanish Republicans. Soon, Jews fleeing the Nazis were also imprisoned in the internment camps. Mary initially sought to relieve the suffering of all the inmates but when the deportations to the east began she worked to save hundreds of Jewish children from the death camps, going so far as to smuggle children out of the camp in her own car. Eventually her actions came to the notice of the collaborationist Vichy government and in 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo and jailed for six months. The Extraordinary Story of Mary Elmes tells the gripping story of one woman’s heroism during two of the twentieth century’s bloodiest conflicts. It includes a number of interviews with some of those who owe their lives to Mary Elmes, as well as photographs and a wealth of archival material.
Help business leaders encourage their teams to be more innovative by changing the way they work, including focusing better, connecting with others, tweaking one's responses to challenges, filtering the good from the bad, navigating company politics and persisting despite obstacles. 15,000 first printing.
The first edition (1981) took a critical look at the accepted wisdom of historians who interpreted battlefield events primarily by reference to firepower. It showed that Wellington's infantry had won by their mobility rather than their musketry, that the bayonet did not become obsolete in the nineteenth century as is often claimed, and that the tank never supplanted the infantryman in the twentieth. A decade later, the author has been able to fill out many parts of his analysis and has extended it into the near future. The Napoleonic section includes an analysis of firepower and fortification, notably at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Additional discussions of the tactics of the American Civil War have been included. The evolution of small-unit tactics in the First World War is next considered, then the problem of making an armored breakthrough in the Second World War. Following is a discussion of the limitations of both the helicopter and firepower in Vietnam. The author points to some of the lessons learned by the U.S. military and the doctrine which resulted from that experience. Concluding is a glimpse at the strangely empty battlefield landscape that might be expected in any future high technology conflict.
The investigations continue and Garzon is still attempting to establish the full extent of the relationship between the former Spanish Government and the GAL's death squads."--Jacket.
Philosopher Paddy McQueen provides a detailed examination of the nature of regret and its role in decision-making. Additionally, he explores how experiences of regret are shaped by social discourses, especially those about gender and parenthood.
Hillwalking is one of Ireland's most popular leisure activities today. Rock climbing has developed to a level of technical excellence with crags in almost every county and numerous indoor climbing walls. Irish mountaineers have completed winter ascents in the Alps, scaled the highest Himalayan peaks and other previously unclimbed giants, and explored hitherto unknown valleys. Paddy O'Leary recounts the history of hillwalking and mountaineering in Ireland: from the early activists – some were involved in gunrunning, others died at Gallipoli – until the turn of the millennium, when mountaineering in Ireland was no longer the preserve of the middle class. This history recounts the adventures, dangers, successes and failures which make this multifaceted activity such a fascinating one, and mirrors the spirit of all who love these places. * Also available: The Longest Road by Sean Rothery
From blue collar to billionaire ... Hunter Valley mine electrician Nathan Tinkler borrowed big in 2005, made a fortune from several speculative coal plays, and by 2011 was a self-made billionaire. He had gambled and won, but his volatility and reluctance to pay his debts were making him enemies. He lived the high life as only a young man would, buying luxury homes, private jets, sports cars and football teams, and splurging massively to build a horseracing empire. But Tinkler’s dreams had extended beyond even his resources, and his business model worked only in a rising market. When coal prices slumped in 2012, Tinkler had no cash flow to service his massive borrowings and no allies to help him recover. Within months he was trying desperately to stave off his creditors, large and small, and fighting to save his businesses and his fortune. In this impressive new biography, leading business writer Paddy Manning tells the story of Tinkler’s meteoric rise to wealth, and captures the drama of his equally rapid downfall.
Ireland: A country of 13-verse-long ballads, outspoken lunatics, strongly held trivial opinions and friendly exchanges about the day's names in the death notices. A place where flattened fizzy drink is treated as a medical panacea, and where celebration can be squeezed out of anything from a major sporting victory, to a valiant quarter-final exit. From Fionn MacCumhail to the FAI, Do You Know Who's Dead? is a hilarious celebration of all things unmistakably Irish, as it describes our distinguishing features - big and small - in politics, music, culture, sport and more. If you find it hard to end a phone call, have ever driven several miles out of your way for slightly cheaper petrol, or spend just a little too long surveying the death notices, this is the book for you.
Shinners, dissos, and dissenters is a long-term analysis of the development of Irish republican media activism since 1998 and the tumultuous years that followed the end of the Troubles. It is the first in-depth analysis of the newspapers, magazines and online spaces in which strands of Irish republicanism developed and were articulated in a period in which schism and dissent underscored a return to violence for dissidents. Based on an analysis of Irish republican media outlets as well as interviews with the key activists that produced them, this book provides a compelling snap shot of a political ideology in transition as it is moulded by the forces of the Peace Process and often violent internal ideological schism that threatened a return to the 'bad old days' of the Troubles.
Born to Rule is the unauthorised biography that unravels the many layers of the man who has just become the 29th Prime Minister of Australia. The highs and lows of Malcolm Turnbull's remarkable career are documented here in technicolour detail by journalist Paddy Manning. Based on countless interviews and painstaking research, it is a forensic investigation into one of Australia's most celebrated overachievers. Turnbull's relentless energy and quest for achievement have taken him from exclusive Point Piper to Oxford University; from beating the Thatcher government in the Spycatcher trial to losing the referendum on the republic; from defending the late Kerry Packer—codenamed Goanna—in the Costigan Royal Commission to defending his own role in the failure of HIH, Australia's biggest corporate collapse. He was involved in the unravelling of the Tourang bid for Fairfax, struck it rich as co-founder of OzEmail, and fought his own hotly contested battle for Wentworth. As opposition leader he was duped by Godwin Grech's 'Utegate' fiasco; as the most tech-savvy communications minister he oversaw a nobbled NBN scheme. And now he has assumed the leadership of the Liberal Party for the second time after wresting the prime ministership from first-term PM Tony Abbott. Will Turnbull crash and burn as he has before or has his entire tumultuous life been a rehearsal for this moment?
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