The last King of the Great Blasket Island was Pádraig Ó Catháin, known as Peats Mhicí, who served for quarter of a century until his death in 1929. The King helped the islanders navigate through life and through national as well as international events, such as the 1916 Rising and the Great War. This book tells how he came to be King of the Great Blasket Island and how his personality and integrity shaped the role. This is the first account of the King's extraordinary life, written in coll...

Mike Carney was born on the Great Blasket Island in 1920 in that unique, isolated Irish-speaking community. Mike left in 1937 to seek a better future in Dublin and eventually settled in Springfield, Massachusetts, with other former islanders. The death on the island of his younger brother set off a chain of events that led to its evacuation, in which Mike played a pivotal role. This is the story of his life and his efforts to promote Irish culture in America, to preserve the memory of The ...

Tomás Ó Criomhthain (1856–1937) is one of the giants of Irish-language literature. His best-known books, Allagar na hInise and An tOileánach, are acknowledged classics. But he was a highly unlikely author. He lived his entire life on the isolated and now-abandoned Great Blasket, in a house he built with his own hands using stones he found on the island. Likewise, he crafted a valuable literary heritage out of island life. With indefatigable persistence, he steadily built...

A hilarious compendium of all that's weird and wonderful about life in the British Isles - the eccentric, bizarre bureaucracy and outright oddity reported over the last year by the nation's newspapers, including: Guardian headline, 'Man with false leg hit with toilet lid.'; The Astrological Magazine, 'announces that it is to cease due to unforeseen circumstances.' Jack Crossley spent some 40 years in Fleet Street and has compiled this laugh-out-loud collection of anecdotes and strange goin...

This book unmasks one of the greatest human interest stories in Canadian history: the emigration of tens of thousands of children from Britain, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, to become home children in Canada. Through first-hand accounts and archived materials, Corbett sensitively and accurately records the pilgrimage of the children who, against great odds, proved that Canada was the promised land. Today Barnardo Children and their descendants are legion, and they are counted amo...

After the runaway success of You Couldn't Make It Up, Jack Crossley returns with his latest cornucopia of wonderful anecdotes and strange goings-on from around the British Isles. In his many years as a newspaper journalist, Jack Crossley has collected literally thousands of these strange but true newspaper items. They are stories that you wouldn't believe if they weren't written down in black and white. You Really Couldn't Make It Up is a wonderful collection of irresistible whimsy, a test...

Are you a football fan? Do you attend as many matches as you can? Have you visited any of the many famous football grounds? Can you name the home grounds of all the UK’s best-loved teams and more besides? If you think you know which team plays where, you are certain to enjoy this quiz book.With 250 questions all about English, Scottish and Welsh Football Grounds, you will need to be quick off the mark to answer some of these brain teasers? What non-League club is moving into the Moston Com...

Another treat for Harry Hill fans! Britain's favourite comedian, Harry Hill, loves it when people make silly mistakes. So much that he has put together a rib-tickling book of howlers, wacky stories and bloopers for all the family. The Bumper Book of Bloopers contains Harry's favourite goofs picked from the world's daftest newspapers and magazines - and believe it or not every single one of them is a genuine boob!

A Brief look at Celtic's 1967-68 season. It is part of the JMD Classic Season series. In May 1967 Celtic were the undisputed champions of Europe. But could they maintain their position? The answer looked like a resounding 'no" after an early failure in next season's European Cup and an ill-fated trip to South America. Even in Scotland, their position seemed to be tottering badly in January 1968. Could they fight back?This ebook supplies the answers.

Fred Trueman was so much more than a cricketing legend.‘The greatest living Yorkshireman’ according to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, he couldn’t help excelling at everything he did, whether it was as a hostile fast bowler for Yorkshire and England, and the first man to take 300 Test wickets in a career, or as a fearlessly outspoken radio summariser for Test Match Special. He was famous for regularly spluttering that, ‘I don’t know what’s going off out there,’ as well as for the amo...

The essential humour gift book of the year returns in the anticipated fourth volume of this bestselling series Ð guaranteed to provoke laughter and amazement.The first volume of unpublished letters to the Daily Telegraph, Am I Alone in ThinkingÉ?, not only became a Christmas bestseller but also established the paperÕs letter-writers as a uniquely waggish, eccentric and maverick institution. They can be relied upon,particularly in the letters slightly too pungent or off-the wall to ...

Spiced with humour, the tales of epic encounters at Clifton Hampden are told alongside more modest affairs at Lords, Headingley and OldTrafford.