Mercier Press

A Quick Link | Dublin Opinion » Paddy Moran Commemoration Programme – 8 to 14 March 2011

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Executed For Ireland: The Patrick Moran Story was one of the titles I commissioned while at Mercier, an excellent book and an fascinating topic, sounds like an interesting series of events:

Monday 14th March 2011 (The anniversary of execution)

7.00p.m. Mass in the Dun Laoghaire Club premises, 3 Eblana Avenue, Dun laoghaire. Celebrant: Monsignor Dan O’Connor PP, Dun Laoghaire.

8.00p.m. LECTURES on the life and times of Patrick Moran, Dun Laoghaire Club, 3 Eblana Avenue, Dub Laoghaire.

SPEAKERS: May Moran, author of Executed for Ireland and niece of Paddy Moran; Padraig Yeates, author of Lockout: Dublin 1913 and forthcoming A City in Wartime: Dublin 1914-1918.

Chairman: John Douglas, General Secretary, MANDATE, trade union.

via Dublin Opinion » Blog Archive » Paddy Moran Commemoration Programme – 8 to 14 March 2011.

For more on May Moran, the author of the book, check out this audio clip!

 

Some Sad News

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

I’ve just heard that an author I worked with at Mercier Press, Dermot Walsh passed away this week.

Dermot was a fascinating and interesting man who talked with passion about his subject, in this case the intriguing and bizarre murder of Nurse Catherine Cooper by Michael Manning in Limerick city in 1950s.

For me he encapsulated much of what it is to be an author of a book on a specific topic. He was like many of his peers, gripped by a subject and unable to let it go until he had dug as deeply into it as he could. The resulting book, Beneath Cannock’s Clock, is here and is well worth a read.

I’ve no doubt he will be missed terribly by those he leaves behind and I hope they can find some comfort in the days and months ahead.

Things I Like | January, February, March, March, March – The Irish Times

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned Blood & Thunder on this site before, it was one of the commissions I made at mercier Press. Well it got a full review this weekend from The Irish Times. And a favourable one at that!

Loyalists tend to be cautious about opening up to journalists, but the former Castlederg bandmaster and former Ulster Unionist assembly member Derek Hussey paved the way for MacDonald to get to know the band and its workings. But he said pointedly to MacDonald, “Pity it’s a Taig who’ll be [writing the book]”, a warning against any stitch-up – again a long-standing fear among many loyalists when dealing with the fourth estate.

But it’s the generous and different-footed perspective that makes this book. With objectivity, perception and a strong degree of empathy MacDonald tells the story of the band, interweaving through the narrative the political, religious, cultural and social impulses that drive its members and in a broader sense drive unionism, loyalism and Protestantism.

via January, February, March, March, March – The Irish Times – Sat, Sep 18, 2010.

Things I Like | Liffey Ships and Shipbuilding – Pat Sweeney | The Irish Catholic

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Nice review in The Irish Catholic for Pat Sweeney’s Liffey Ships & Ship Building, one of my commissions while at Mercier Press.

The book is not only the result of very detailed archive research, it shows too the benefit of Pat Sweeney’s skills as a professional photographer in recording so many of the ships while they were still sea-going.

Attractively produced, this is not just a book for the enthusiast, but for anyone at all interested, not just in Dublin’s past, but in a much neglected aspect of our national history.

Over the last few months I have heard three different Government ministers, including Mr Cowen, extolling the importance of ”heritage” to tourism and the creation of those all important ”bed-nights” around which our economy seems to spins.

The ship builders chronicled in these pages are part of that heritage, part of the heritage which the Maritime Institute of Ireland museum was set up to foster, but which central funding has neglected. Let us hope that Pat Sweeny’s excellent book will be a foundation on which a new future for Ireland’s total maritime heritage may be built.

via Books: Liffey Ships and Shipbuilding – Pat Sweeney | The Irish Catholic – Ireland’s biggest and best-selling Catholic newspaper since 1888.

Things I Like | The cabbage plot rebels | Irish Examiner

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

What a week for books I’ve commissioned it is turning out to be! Laurence Fenton’s The Young Ireland Rebellion and Limerick was featured in the Irish Examiner at the weekend. I’m delighted, it’s a fine book on a fascinating topic:

LAURENCE FENTON has written a tantalising introduction to the events leading to the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848.

The author’s goal was to “explore the manner in which the men and women of Limerick reacted to the tumultuous year of revolutions”.

via The cabbage plot rebels | Irish Examiner.