Tales of passion and romance, love on the battlefield, affairs kept secret on pain of death …
From the bride who married in a prison cell, to the leader caught in a love triangle, to the revolutionaries who did their loving on the run, the romantic lives of Ireland’s most famous characters have been predictably turbulent.
Some Irish lovers have shocked a nation and brought down governments, some have produced the world’s most beautiful poetry, some have reached across oceans – not to mention deep divisions at home – to find love.
Marian Broderick views historical Irish romances through a contemporary lens, from the legendary lovers of prehistory to more modern convention-defying pioneers.
The greatest Irish romances from history. With chapters on Inspirations, Love & War, Love Across the Divide, Secrets & Scandals and When Love Goes Wrong, among others, Marian Broderick tells of the men and women whose passions drove them to be together: often in the face of society, family, and even their own safety.
From the legendary Deirdre and Naoise to WB Yeats and Maud Gonne, Charles Stuart Parnell and Katherine O'Shea to Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir, romantic Ireland is far from dead and gone!
Inspirations
Maud Gonne & WB Yeats page 11
James Joyce & Nora Barnacle 19
Molly Allgood & JM Synge 27
George Bernard Shaw & Stella Tanner 35
Love & War
Kit Kavanagh & Richard Walsh 45
‘Eva’ Kelly & Kevin O’Doherty 53
Michael Collins & Kitty Kiernan 61
Samuel Beckett & Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil 69
Love Across The Divide
Sean O’Casey & Eileen Carey 81
Estella Solomons & Seumas O’Sullivan 87
Winifred Carney & George McBride 93
Grace Kelly & Prince Rainier 99
Love Out Loud
Sarah Ponsonby & Eleanor Butler 109
Eva Gore-Booth & Esther Roper 115
Micheál Mac Liammóir & Hilton Edwards 121
LegendaryLovers
Deirdre & Naoise 129
Emer & Cú Chulainn 139
Maeve & Ailill 145
Sabina & Orwin 150
Secrets & Scandals
Richard Brinsley Sheridan & Eliza Linley 159
Andrew Jackson & Rachel Donelson 167
Daniel & Mary O’Connell 173
Friedrich Engels & Mary Burns 181
Charles Stewart Parnell & Katharine O’Shea 189
Elizabeth Bowen & Charles Ritchie 201
When Love Goes Wrong …
Mary Anne Knox & John McNaghten 209
Dora Jordan & the Duke of Clarence 215
Harriet Smithson & Hector Berlioz 223
Oscar Wilde & Lord Alfred Douglas 229
Love Fast, Die Young
Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill & Art Ó Laoghaire 241
Robert Emmet & Sarah Curran 249
Charlotte Brontë & Arthur Bell Nicholls 259
Grace Gifford & Joseph Plunkett 269
