The Irish Times Books Podcast

The Irish Times Books Podcast

The Books Podcast with Martin Doyle. Sponsored by Green & Blacks.

Episodes

April 1, 2020 1 min
A reading of 'The Little Red Balloon', the winning entry in the 15-18 category of the Children's Short Story competition, by 17-year-old Emma Broderick, of Muckross Park College, Dublin.
Mark as Played
Books Editor Martin Doyle talks to Darran Anderson about his memoir of growing up in Troubles-torn Derry, Inventory: A River, A City, A Family. They discuss the book's themes of family, history and memory, its inspiration found in the ideas of Georges Perec, and how it relates to his previous work, Imaginary Cities, an exploration of urban landscapes that never were, or that existed only on the page or on the screen.
Mark as Played
November 16, 2019 40 mins
Welcome to The Irish Times Books Podcast. In this latest episode, Martin Doyle talk to The Irish Times’s two regular crime fiction reviewers, Declan Burke and Declan Hughes, both acclaimed crime writers themselves, about their favourite crime fiction of 2019. So get your pen and paper ready to take note of some excellent suggestions for your crime reading pleasure.
Mark as Played
On the eve of this weekend’s Echoes festival in Dalkey, celebrating Maeve Binchy and Irish writing, its programmer, author Henrietta McKervey, and Maeve’s widower, Gordon Snell, join me to talk about the thinking behind the festival and the many ways in which Maeve’s memory is being kept alive. The festival always has Maeve at its heart but each year it has a different theme. This year’s theme is Celebrating Community in Contempor...
Mark as Played
It has been some year for Danielle McLaughlin. On Thursday, she won the 2019 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, whose £30,000 (€33,500) prize money makes it the world’s richest for a short story. Last March, she was awarded the $165,000 (€150,000) Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction. The former solicitor from Co Cork, who only took up writing seriously 10 years ago at the age of 40 when illness forced her to stop practicing la...
Mark as Played
Antony Farrell, of Lilliput Press, which this year celebrates its 35th anniversary, discusses his career in publishing, the history of the press and the “genius” authors with whom he has worked over the years, including Hubert Butler – “he was a secular saint to me” – Tim Robinson, John Moriarty and Desmond Hogan. He talks about his background – his father was “a Castle Catholic”, his mother an Ulster Protestant and he was educate...
Mark as Played
Welcome to the latest Irish Times Books Podcast, an interview with Mick Herron, the author of the Slough House series of spy novels. Herron is originally from a working-class background in Newcastle but went on to study English at Oxford, where he still lives. Described as the John le Carré of his generation, he has created the bestselling Slough House series which features a rogue’s gallery of spies who have screwed up or been s...
Mark as Played
June 8, 2019 63 mins
Author Joseph O'Connor talks to Martin Doyle about his new novel Shadowplay, a complicated love affair featuring Dracula creator Bram Stoker, the first Irish writer he fell for. They also talk about his career from Cowboys & Indians to Star of the Sea, and his next project - a novel based on Hugh O’Flaherty, the Kerry priest who saved more than 6,000 lives from the Nazis in Rome.
Mark as Played
May 25, 2019 29 mins
Welcome to The Irish Times Books Podcast, which this week features my interview with Sarah Crossan, Ireland’s Laureate na nÓg. Crossan is one of Ireland’s most successful Young Adult writers, having won the Carnegie Medal in 2016 for her verse novel, One, and been shortlisted twice, for The Weight of Water and Apple & Rain. We discuss her latest young adult verse novel Toffee, about a teenager who runs away from an abusive home a...
Mark as Played
Laura Slattery interviews children's author Shane Hegarty about what it means to write for children, with their surprisingly strong taste for peril and horror, and how his own kids's brutal honesty helps him to create his books. Shane's books for children include the Darkmouth series, which has been praised by critics for its fast-paced action, wit and sophistication. His new book Boot is out now.
Mark as Played
April 13, 2019 45 mins
April’s Irish Times Books Podcast features interviews with Sinéad Gleeson about her acclaimed collection of personal essays, Constellations, and Sarah Davis-Goff, co-founder of Tramp Press, about her own first novel, Last Ones Left Alive, a dystopian novel set in the west of Ireland in the near future.
Mark as Played
March 16, 2019 30 mins
Martin Doyle talks to young author Kevin Breathnach about his acclaimed debut collection of essays, Tunnel Vision, which mixes art history with remarkably candid accounts of his own life. Plus: In the five decades since their inception, the Hennessy New Irish Writing Awards have helped to launch the careers of many of Ireland’s best known authors, including Sebastian Barry, Joe O’Connor, Colum McCann and Mike McCormack. Ciaran Ca...
Mark as Played
November 30, 2018 36 mins
Laura Slattery talks to Lisa Harding, author of Harvesting.
Mark as Played
Books Editor Martin Doyle talks to Helen Cullen about her novel The Lost Letters of William Woolf. Recorded at the Waterford Writers Festival.
Mark as Played
July 2, 2018 45 mins
Grace, the third novel by Irish author Paul Lynch, was the winner of this year’s Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. In this month’s Irish Times Book Club podcast, recorded at the Irish Writers Centre in Parnell Square in Dublin, Lynch tells us how he came to write the story of a young girl as she crosses the famine-stricken Ireland of the 1840s. Lynch, who is also the author of Red Sky in Morning and The Black Snow, talks about ...
Mark as Played
May 31, 2018 58 mins
The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal is May’s Irish Times Book Club choice. Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction even before it was published in late March, it is a tragic Birmingham Irish love story set against the backdrop of the IRA bombings that devastated the city in 1974. Kit spoke to Martin Doyle at the International Literature Festival Dublin last week.
Mark as Played
April 27, 2018 50 mins
This month's guest is Sinéad Gleeson, one of Ireland's leading arts journalists. She is a former presenter of the book show on RTE radio and the editor of three anthologies of Irish short stories. Next year Picador will publish a collection of Sinéad's own essays, provisionally titled 'Constellations'. She talked to Martin Doyle at the Irish Writers Centre to discuss The Long Gaze Back, an anthology of Irish Women Writers whi...
Mark as Played
April 4, 2018 42 mins
This episode features a conversation between Irish Times Books Editor Martin Doyle and June Caldwell, author of Room Little Darker, at the Mountains to Sea festival in Dun Laoghaire last month. As ever, the podcast recording was preceded by a series of articles about Room Little Darker on irishtimes.com, written by fellow authors and critics including Maighread Medbh, Alan McMonagle, Joanna Walsh, Michael Harding, Justine-Delaney...
Mark as Played
November 30, 2017 46 mins
Conversations With Friends, Sally Rooney’s critically acclaimed first novel, has picked up deserved word-of-mouth momentum since it was published earlier this year. In this month’s Irish Times Book Club podcast, recorded live at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin, Rooney explains how it came into being. For those who have yet to succumb to the pleasure of this talented young author’s debut, Conversations With Friends tells the luc...
Mark as Played
November 1, 2017 35 mins
Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty is October’s Irish Times Book Club pick. The Edgar Award-winning thriller is the fifth in the Carrickfergus-born author’s Sean Duffy series about a Catholic RUC man set in Troubles-era Northern Ireland. McKinty spoke with Irish Times Books Editor Martin Doyle in Belfast’s Europa Hotel on Saturday, October 28th as part of the inaugural NOIRELAND International Crime Fiction Festival.
Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    Crime Junkie

    Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.

    NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

    Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    The Breakfast Club

    The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2026 iHeartMedia, Inc.