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1921
a novel by Morgan Llywelyn



The struggle of the Irish people for independence is one of the epic tales of the 20th century. Morgan Llywelyn has chosen it as the subject of her major work, a multi-novel chronicle that began with 1916 and now continues in 1921. 1921 is the year of the Irish Civil War and the year of the separation of Ireland into two nations, south and north. 1921 is told by Henry Mooney, a journalist (based on the author's grandfather), who struggles for truth in his reporting and falls in love with an Englishwoman in Ireland in the midst of political and military horrors.

Thanx fairlie

A star called Henry
by Roddy Doyle
( The first volume of a trilogy, )



(Amazon Review )
The habit of murder becomes a hard one to break; the hero of Roddy Doyle's novel of the Irish War of Independence, like his father before him, kills to order and kills in cold blood. Where his father was simply the one-legged bouncer at a brothel, whose employers used him for any killing that needs to be done, Henry has motives. Growing up on the street, taught his letters by James Connolly, he believes in not just Irish freedom, but workers' revolution. He learns the hard way that his pious middle-class masters do not have this in mind.
A Star Called Henry--passionate, angry, darkly and wildly comic--has something in it to offend everybody. His stirring, deeply anti-romantic, account of the siege of the Dublin Post Office during the Easter Rising is remarkable, but hardly less so is his account of life on the Dublin docks, or Henry's treks around the countryside as one of Michael Collins' hard men, teaching guerrilla warfare to dairy farmers and clerks. The love affair between Henry and his equally blood-thirsty teacher and wife Miss O'Shea is sweet and touching. The first volume of a trilogy, this is a radical departure for Doyle, and a stunning success.

Oh play that thing
by Roddy Doyle
( second volume in the trilogy )



It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America...

Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart

The Dead Republic
by Roddy Doyle
( Final volume of the trilogy )



The Dead Republic opens in 1951. Henry is returning to Ireland for the first time since his escape in 1922. With him are the stars of Ford's latest film, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and the famous director himself, who has tried to suck the soul out of Henry and turn it into Hollywood gold-dust.

Ten years later Henry is in Dublin, working in Ratheen as a school caretaker. When he is caught in a bomb blast, he loses his leg for the second time. He is claimed as a hero, and before long Henry will discover he has other uses too, when the peace process begins in deadly secrecy...

1949
By Morgan Llywlyn



In this compelling book, Llywelyn tells the story of charming young woman, Ursula Halloran, who comes of age in the 1920s, and experiences the passions and pains of the times in a way that brings them alive for every reader. The horror and tragedy of civil war give way to a repressive Catholic state in which married women cannot hold jobs, divorce is illegal, and the IRA becomes a band of outlaws still devoted to and fighting for a Republic that never lived. Ursula, an idealist, believes in a fiercely independent Ireland. She falls in love, bears a child out of wedlock, and in the war years finds fulfilment running her family farm in neutral Ireland.

Sounds very interesting fairlie

I told you about this series of books before , there are 5 in the series , good reads every one

Oh yes i remember you saying give books

Reading this book at the moment ,"Wherever green is worn ", interesting reading

"Far more Irishmen live outside Ireland than within it. This fascinating study, by Ireland's best known and most controversial contemporary historian, reveals why this is, how it has come about and what the realities are today - political, economic, religious and cultural - for the populations of the 'Irish Diaspora' and the countries they now inhabit. Based on first-hand research in America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe (including, of course, the UK), this book reveals the workings of Irish communities throughout the world, some with great political and economic power (such as in the US, where the Irish political tradition has dominated politics from the 19th century Tammany Hall to presidents Kennedy and Clinton), some with enormous moral authority (including Irish religious communities in Africa) and others living in poverty on the fringes of society."

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