County Kerry saw many of the most vicious episodes in both the War of Independence and the Civil War. Many Republican survivors of these events were reluctant to speak about their experiences, even to their own family. However, they were willing to talk to Ernie O'Malley, who was the senior surviving Republican military commander from the period of those struggles. By transcribing O'Malley's notebooks, where he recorded these interviews, Cormac O'Malley and Tim Horgan have made available previously unpublished first-hand accounts of Kerry's role in the fight for independence. The interviews provide an unrivalled insight into this important period of Irish history, including controversial incidents such as the Ballyseedy massacre, the battle at Headford Junction and executions by the Free State forces.

In the 1940s and 1950s Ernie O'Malley travelled around Ireland interviewing survivors of Ireland's struggle for Independence. These interviews, now being made available to the public for the first, time give a fascinating insight into the times and the people who fought. Many of those who were interviewed were unwilling to talk - even to their own families - about their experience, but because O'Malley was such a well-respected figure they consented to be interviewed by him. This book includes accounts of activities in many parts of Mayo and neighbouring parts of Roscommon and Sligo and most of those interviewed also fought against the Free State in the civil war. The key events described took place in the early months of 1921 in places such as Kilmeena, Tourmakeady and Carrowkennedy.

For the first time in published form 'The Men Will Talk to Me: Galway Interviews' chronicles the experiences of the Galway-based survivors of the War of Independence and the Civil War, recorded in the hand-written notebooks of Ernie O'Malley. Many of the individuals would not talk about their experiences, even to their own families, but were willing to talk to Commandant General O'Malley, the senior surviving Republican military commander, who took on the task of preserving the memories of these participants. The resulting O'Malley notebooks provide an unrivaled insight into this important period of Irish history, including the attack on Clifden and life 'on the run' for the Galway IRA volunteers.

On Another Man's Wound, O'Malley's account of his experiences during Ireland's War of Independence, was first published to instant acclaim in 1936 and was followed by his account of his experiences in the Civil War in The Singing Flame. O'Malley had reported directly to Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy during the War of Independence and was appointed OC of the Second Southern Division, the second largest division of the IRA. When the Treaty with Britain was signed on 6 December 1921, diehard Republicans like O'Malley would not accept it. In the bitter Civil War that followed, O'Malley was in the Four Courts when it was attacked by the Free State army. Later he was OC of the Republicans in Ulster and Leinster. He was eventually captured and imprisoned until July 1924. He was one of the last Republican prisoners to be released. The Free Staters had won and O'Malley, feeling there was no place for him in this new Ireland, went to live in the USA where he wrote his memoirs.

Ernie O'Malley was a revolutionary republican and writer. One of the leading figures in the Irish independence and civil wars, he survived wounds, imprisonment and hunger strike, before going to the USA in 1928 to fundraise on de Valera's behalf. Broken Landscapes tells of his subsequent journeys, through Europe and the Americas, where O'Malley moved in wide social circles that included Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Hart Crane and Jack B. Yeats. Back in Mayo he took up farming. In 1935 he married Helen Hooker, an American heiress, with whom he had three children, Cathal, Etain and Cormac, before a bitter separation. His literary reputation was established with a magnificent memoir, On Another Man's Wound (1936). In later years he was close to John Ford, and worked on The Quiet Man (1952). This vibrant new collection of letters, diaries and fragments opens up the broad panorama of his life to readers. It enriches the history of Ireland's troubled independence with reflections on loss and reconciliation. It links the old world to the new - O'Malley perched on the edge of the Atlantic, a folklore collector, art critic and radio broadcaster; autodidact, modernist and intellectual. It conducts a unique conversation with the past. In Broken Landscapes, we travel with O'Malley through Italy, the American Southwest, Mexico and points inbetween. In Taos, he mingled wiht the artistic set around D. H. Lawrence. In Ireland, he drank with Patrick Kavanagh, Liam O'Flaherty and Louis MacNiece. The young painter Louis le Brocquy was his guest on his farm in Burrishoole, Co. Mayo. These places and people remained with O'Malley in his private writing, assembled for the first time from family and institutional archives. Reading these letters, dairies and fragments is to see Ireland in the tumultuous world of the twentieth century, as if for the first time, allowing us to view the intellectual foundations of the State through the eyes of its leading chronicler.

`Nobody's Business': The Aran Diaries of Ernie O'Malley presents new insights into the contradictions and complexities of the mind of Ernie O'Malley, one of mid-twentieth century Ireland's foremost cultural critics. In 1941, 1955 and 1956, the former revolutionary leader and author of the acclaimed memoir of the War of Independence, On Another Man's Wound, visited the Aran Islands. While on the islands, O'Malley kept diaries recounting his daily conversations and interactions with other visitors and islanders including Elizabeth Rivers, with whom he stayed on one occasion, Charles Lamb and Sean Keating. The diaries, devoid of sentiment and often highly critical, reveal his views on art, literature, history and contemporary Irish life and international affairs as well as his thoughts on the economic, religious and daily life of the Aran islanders. His unvarnished observations on the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of life in post-Independence Ireland make his diaries absorbing and provocative. Edited with introductory essays by Cormac O'Malley and Roisin Kennedy and an afterword by Luke Gibbons, `Nobody's Business': The Aran Diaries of Ernie O'Malley offers fascinating insights into the mind and opinions of a key figure in Irish cultural nationalism.