The Bloodied Field
The Bloodied Field

Author: Michael Foley

Publisher: The O'Brien Press Ltd

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1788492293

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On the morning of 21 November 1920, Jane Boyle walked to Sunday Mass in the church where she would be married five days later. That afternoon she went with her fiancé to watch Tipperary and Dublin play a Gaelic football match at Croke Park. Across the city fourteen men lay dead in their beds after a synchronised IRA attack designed to cripple British intelligence services in Ireland. Trucks of police and military rumbled through the city streets as hundreds of people clamoured at the metal gates of Dublin Castle seeking refuge. Some of them were headed for Croke Park. Award-winning journalist and author Michael Foley recounts the extraordinary story of Bloody Sunday in Croke Park and the 90 seconds of shooting that changed Ireland forever. In a deeply intimate portrait he tells for the first time the stories of those killed, the police and military personnel who were in Croke Park that day, and the families left shattered in its aftermath, all against the backdrop of a fierce conflict that stretched from the streets of Dublin and the hedgerows of Tipperary to the halls of Westminster. Updated with new information and photographs.

Bloodied Banners
Bloodied Banners

Author: Robert W. Jones

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1843835614

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Groundbreaking reassessment of the role played by armour, weapons and heraldry in medieval warfare, showing their cultural as well as military significance. `A penetrating investigation of medieval martial display... The reader is struck by its originality, and by its sophisticated and critical interpretative engagement with historical and literary sources. Particularly notable is the author's subtle exploration of the function of armour: not only its practical role, but as a form of display... A refreshingly different approach to the world of the medieval combatant and his place within that "host of many colours" that was a medieval army, it adds a new dimension to our understanding of medieval warfare.' Dr ANDREW AYTON, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Hull The medieval battlefield was a place of spectacle and splendour. The fully-armed knight, bedecked in his vivid heraldic colours, mounted on his great charger, riding out beneath his brightly-painted banner, is a stock image of war and the warrior in the middle ages. Yet too often the significance of such display has been ignored or dismissed as the empty preening of a militaristic social elite. Drawing on a broad range of source material and using innovative historical approaches, this book completely re-evaluates the way that such men and their weapons were viewed, showing that martial display was a vital part of the way in which war was waged in the middle ages. It maintains that heraldry and livery served not only to advertise a warrior's family and social ties, but also announced his presence on the battlefield and right to wage war. It also considers the physiological and psychological effect of wearing armour, both on the wearer and those facing him in combat, arguing that the need for display in battle was deeper than any medieval cultural construct and was based in the fundamental biological drives of threat and warning. ROBERT W. JONES gained his PhD from Cardiff University.

The Field of Blood
The Field of Blood

Author: Joanne B. Freeman

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0374717613

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The previously untold story of the violence in Congress that helped spark the Civil War In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities—the feel, sense, and sound of it—as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.

Cora Staunton
Cora Staunton

Author: Eimear Ryan

Publisher: The O'Brien Press Ltd

Published: 2019-08-12

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1788491572

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Cora Staunton is an elite sportswoman: winner of four All-Irelands, 11 All-Stars and five Club All-Irelands. She is a trailblazer in the Australian Football League, and a hero in her native Mayo for her gaelic football skills. But it's been a long and eventful road for Cora. When she was young, she was small for her age, and had to prove herself at every level: to the boys in her club, to the Mayo selectors who took a chance on her as a teenager, but most importantly to herself. From Croke Park to the stadiums of Sydney, Cora has proved herself to be a master of the game. This is the story of how a young football-mad girl became a living legend. A story of female empowerment for younger readers.

Kings of September
Kings of September

Author: Michael Foley

Publisher: O'Brien Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 9781847171184

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On the 19th September 1982 Kerry ran out in Croke Park chasing immortality. Victory over Offaly in the All-Ireland football final would secure them five titles in a row, a record certain never to be matched again. It had taken Offaly six heartbreaking years under manager Eugene McGee to drag themselves up from their lowest ebb, but now they stood on the cusp of a glorious reward. The result was a classic final that changed lives and dramatically altered the course of gaelic football history. The Kings of September is an epic story of triumph and loss, joy and tragedy, a story of two teams who illuminated a grim period in Irish life and enthralled a nation.

What a Bloody Awful Country
What a Bloody Awful Country

Author: Kevin Meagher

Publisher: Biteback Publishing

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1785906674

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"Highly readable" – Irish News "A gripping appraisal of Northern Ireland's turbulent first century. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we have got to where we are today." – Suzanne Breen, Belfast Telegraph "A timely and lucid analysis of the Troubles that asks hard questions of successive British governments. The good news for the current government is that it also offers some answers." – Rory Carroll, The Guardian *** "For God's sake, bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country!" Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, returning from his first visit to Northern Ireland in 1970 As a long and bloody guerrilla war staggered to a close on the island of Ireland, Britain beat a retreat from all but a small portion of the country – and thus, in 1921, Northern Ireland was born. That partition, says Kevin Meagher, has been an unmitigated disaster for Nationalists and Unionists alike. Following the fraught history of British rule in Ireland, a better future was there for the taking but was lost amid political paralysis, while the resulting fifty years of devolution succeeded only in creating a brooding sectarian stalemate that exploded into the Troubles. In a stark but reasoned critique, Meagher traces the landmark events in Northern Ireland's century of existence, exploring the missed signals, the turning points, the principled decisions that should have been taken, as well as the raw realpolitik of how Northern Ireland has been governed over the past 100 years. Thoughtful and sometimes provocative, What a Bloody Awful Country reflects on how both Loyalists and Republicans might have played their cards differently and, ultimately, how the actions of successive British governments have amounted to a masterclass in failed statecraft.

The Boy in the Field
The Boy in the Field

Author: Margot Livesey

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-08-11

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0062946412

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A New York Times Notable Book of the Year | An O Magazine Best Book of the Year The New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy delivers another “luminous, unforgettable, and perfectly rendered” (Dennis Lehane) novel—a poignant and probing psychological drama that follows the lives of three siblings in the wake of a violent crime. One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back. Duncan, the youngest, who has seldom thought about being adopted, suddenly decides he wants to find his birth mother. Overshadowing all three is the awareness that something is amiss in their parents’ marriage. Over the course of the autumn, as each of the siblings confronts the complications and contradictions of their approaching adulthood, they find themselves at once drawn together and driven apart. Written with the deceptive simplicity and power of a fable, The Boy in the Field showcases Margot Livesey’s unmatched ability to “tell her tale masterfully, with intelligence, tenderness, and a shrewd understanding of all our mercurial human impulses” (Lily King, author of Euphoria).

The Scrolls of the Ancients
The Scrolls of the Ancients

Author: Robert Newcomb

Publisher: Del Rey

Published: 2004-06-15

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 0345478436

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“Plenty of adventure and magic . . . continues Robert Newcomb’s tradition of mixing adventure with an interesting and well-realized magical world.”—SF Site Prince Tristan and his twin sister, Shailiha, are the Chosen Ones, prophesied to unite the opposing magics of the dark Vagaries and the benevolent Vigors. But before they can fulfill their destiny, they must search out the mysterious Scrolls of the Ancients which hold the key to unlocking great mystical secrets. They are not the only ones on a dire quest. Krassus, a devoted servant of the Vagaries, has located one of the Scrolls and through it has attained great and ominous powers. Now he needs but one thing: a man who unknowingly possesses magic in his blood almost as potent as that of the Chosen Ones. Tristan and Shailiha must find that man before Krassus’s dark enchantments turn him into the most dangerous weapon of evil the world has ever known—if it’s not already too late. . . .

Blood Upon the Rose
Blood Upon the Rose

Author: Gerry Hunt

Publisher: O'Brien Press

Published: 2019-09-16

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 9781788491471

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The Easter 1916 Rising: an unlikely band of freedom fighters - teachers, poets, writers, patriots, trade unionists - declare an Irish Republic. From this dramatic gesture, a nation is born... The rebellion that set Ireland free, told as a graphic novel.

Wake of the Bloody Angel
Wake of the Bloody Angel

Author: Alex Bledsoe

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-07-03

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0765327457

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Swordsman Eddie LaCrosse must take to sea in the company of a former pirate queen in search of the infamous Black Edward Tew ... and his even more legendary treasure.