Our Books
As an Irish Secular Priest and Missionary in New Zealand, Michael Kickham experienced discrimination. Michael and 17 other seculars petitioned Pope Leo XIII about this.
He was reprimanded by Bishop Grimes for his expressed nationalist views.
Following acrimonious correspondence with the Bishop, he got permission to serve in Australia.
He returned to Ireland in 1899. In 1901 he departed for an undisclosed destination. His parting words to his sister were: “Goodbye Kit. It may be for years and it may be forever”. In 1907 the family discovered by chance that he was in Buenos Aires, no longer a priest. He died there in 1909.
The book is based on numerous letters, contemporaneous newspaper articles and extensive research.
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The book relates many episodes in the life of Declan Gould, which spans Ireland, USA, and Zimbabwe, all influenced by his affliction with the bi-polar condition. Declan relates stories of episodes in his life in a disarmingly frank and humourous style. A must read for anyone interested in the bi-polar condition and its effects on the individual.
Part 2 deals with Stigma and Mental Health, reproducing an address delivered by Declan at the Gilbert Centre in Mallow.
Part 3, Under Observation – A Patient View from the Psychiatric Ward contains many apt and interesting observations about the fate of psychiatric patients in hospital.
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From Three Yachts is Conor OBriens memoir of his various voyages on Kelpie, Saoirse and Ilen.
His first was was Kelpie, in which he ran guns for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, together with Erskine Childers in the Asgard. Kelpie sank off the coast of Scotland in 1921.
Conor OBrien sailed around the world 1923 – 1925 in his second yacht Saoirse, the first person to circumnavigate via the Southern Ocean in a small private craft, for which he was awarded the Royal Cruising Club Challenge Cup in 1923, 1924 and 1925.
When he returned to Ireland he received a commission to supply a boat for inter-island trading on the Falklands / Malvinas. This was Ilen, which he delivered himself.
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This book takes an overview of the life of Edward Conor Marshall OBrien, born in 1880, grandson of William Smith O’Brien of the Young Ireland Movement in the mid 1800s.
A keen sailor, in 1922 he designed his own Yacht Saoirse and had it built in the Baltimore Fisheries School in West Cork. It was in this yacht that he undertook his ground-breaking circumnavigation of the globe 20th June 1923 to 20th June 1925. He was the first person ever in a small private yacht to circumnavigate West to East and south of Cape of Good Hope, south of Australia and south of Cape Horn. The Clipper route, southern ocean all the way.
This short book let gives an overview of Conor’s intriguing life with especial focus on the circumnavigation.
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