Poguemahone

A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue by the Booker-shortlisted author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto. Una Fogarty, suffering from dementia in a seaside nursing home, would be all alone without her brother Dan, whose epic free-verse monologue tells their family story. Exile from Ireland and immigrant life in England. Their mother’s trials as a call girl. Young Una’s search for love in a seemingly haunted hippie squat, and the two-timing Scottish stoner poet she’ll never get over. Now she sits outside in the sun as her memories unspool from Dan’s mouth and his own role in the tale grows ever stranger— and more sinister. A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue, Patrick McCabe’s epic reinvention of the verse novel combines Modernist fragmentation and Beat spontaneity with Irish folklore, then douses it in whiskey and sets it on fire. Drinking song and punk libretto, ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is the devastating telling of one family’s history—and the forces, seen and unseen, that make their fate.

It is 1958, and as Laika, the Sputnik dog is launched into space, Golly Murray, the Cullymore barber's wife, finds herself oddly obsessing about the canine cosmonaut. Meanwhile, Fonsey 'Teddy' O'Neill, is returning, like the prodigal son, from overseas, with brylcream in his hair, and a Cuban-heeled swagger to his step, having experienced his coming-of-age in Butlin's, Skegness. Father Augustus Hand is working on a bold new theatrical production for Easter, which he, for one, knows will put Cullymore on the map. And, as the Manchester United football team prepare to take off from Munich airport, James A Reilly sits in his hovel by the lake outside town, with his pet fox and his father's gun, feeling the weight of an insidious and inscrutable presence pressing down upon him.From the closed terraces and back lanes of rural Ireland to the information highway and global separations of our own time, The Stray Sod Country is at once an homage to what we think we may have lost and a chilling reminder that the past has never really passed.With echoes of Peyton Place, and Fellinni's Amarcord, and with a sinister, diabolical narrator at its heart, this is at once a story of a small town - with its secrets, fears, friendships and betrayals - and a sweeping, grand guignol of theatrical extravagance from one of the finest writers of his generation.

'Glorious – funny and wry and wise, and utterly its own lawmaker' Robert Macfarlane 'A rich, strange, oddly glorious brew' Guardian Longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2018 21st-Century Yokel is not quite nature writing, not quite a family memoir, not quite a book about walking, not quite a collection of humorous essays, but a bit of all five. Thick with owls and badgers, oak trees and wood piles, scarecrows and ghosts, and Tom Cox's loud and excitable dad, this book is full of the folklore of several counties – the ancient kind and the everyday variety – as well as wild places, mystical spots and curious objects. Emerging from this focus on the detail are themes that are broader and bigger and more important than ever. Tom's writing treads a new path, one that has a lot in common with a rambling country walk; it's bewitched by fresh air and big skies, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless and prone to a few detours, but it always reaches its destination in the end.

‘If you’re looking for this century’s Ulysses, look no further ... a stunningly lyrical novel’ Alex Preston, Observer ‘Pitched – deliriously – between high modernism and folk magic, between gorgeous free-verse and hilarious Irish vernacular, Poguemahone is a stunning achievement ... profoundly affecting’ David Keenan ‘A blistering, brilliant ballad of mad tales from rural Ireland to London Town. The characters are electric, the narrative fuelled with a brilliant frenetic energy. McCabe is truly original’ Elaine Feeney Dan Fogarty, an Irishman living in England, is looking after his sister Una, now seventy and suffering from dementia in a care home in Margate. From Dan’s anarchic account, we gradually piece together the story of the Fogarty family. How the parents are exiled from a small Irish village and end up living the hard immigrant life in England. How Dots, the mother, becomes a call girl in 1950s Soho. How a young and overweight Una finds herself living in a hippie squat in Kilburn in the early 1970s. How the squat appears to be haunted by vindictive ghosts who eat away at the sanity of all who live there. And, finally, how all that survives now of those sex-and-drug-soaked times are Una’s unspooling memories as she sits outside in the Margate sunshine, and Dan himself, whose role in the story becomes stranger and more sinister. Poguemahone is a huge, shape-shifting epic from one of modern Ireland's greatest writers. It is a wild, free-verse monologue, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale Patrick McCabe has never attempted before.

October 1982: ABC, Culture Club, Shalamar and Survivor dominate the top twenty when the Pogues barrel out from the backstreets of King's Cross, a furious, pioneering mix of punk energy, traditional melodies and the powerfully poetic songwriting of Shane MacGowan. Reviled by traditionalists for their frequently fast, often riotous interpretations of Irish folk songs, the Pogues rose from the sweaty chaos of backroom gigs in Camden pubs to world tours with the likes of Elvis Costello, U2 and Bob Dylan, and had huge commercial success with everyone's favourite Christmas song, 'Fairytale of New York'. Yet, the exuberance of their live performances coupled with relentless touring spiralled into years of hard drinking and excess which eventually took their toll - most famously on Shane, but also on the rest of the band - causing them to part ways seven years later. Here, their story is told with beauty, lyricism and great candour by James Fearnley, founding member and accordion player. He brings to life the youthful friendships, the bust-ups, the amazing gigs, the terrible gigs, the fantastic highs and the dramatic lows in a hugely compelling, humorous, moving and honest account of life in one of our most treasured and original bands.

As lead singer of The Pogues and as a solo artist, Shane MacGowan is a defining figure of modern Irish music. Among the greatest songwriters of his generation, he has infused traditional Irish folk with the spirit of punk and a bleary-eyed romanticism to create a compelling and unique musical brew. Joe Merrick's biography is an incredible story, sometimes sad, sometimes wonderful, and often soaked in a mixture of alcohol and genius.

This paperback edition has been fully updated to include Shane's final months and the response to his passing. Punk protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon. This is the complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogues' notorious frontman from outcast to national treasure. A Furious Devotion vividly recounts the experiences that shaped the greatest songwriter of his generation, including the formative trips to his mother's homestead in Tipperary and the explosion of punk which changed his life. As well as exclusive interviews with Shane himself, author Richard Balls secured contributions from his wife and family, and people who have never spoken publicly about Shane before: close associates, former girlfriends and the English teacher who first spotted his literary gift. Nick Cave, Aidan Gillen, Cillian Murphy, Christy Moore and Sinead O'Connor are on the rollcall of those paying tribute to the gifted songwriter and poet. This frank and extensive biography includes many previously unseen personal photographs.

The story of The Pogues has been as riotous as their most rabble-rousing songs. From the streets of 80s London the Celtic Punks unleashed their hellraising 20-year career and in the process became legends; mythic troubadours whose popularity endures. This Omnibus Enhanced edition of Kiss My Arse has been revamped with an interactive digital timeline which paints the journey of The Pogues with videos and images of live performances, interviews, memorabilia and more. Also included is an integrated Spotify playlist containing the band’s greatest performances. To tell their story author Carol Clerk has interviewed Shane MacGowan, Spider Stacy, Jem Finer, Andrew Ranken, James Fearnley, Cait O'Riordan, and a clutch of associates, friends and fans. All paint a picture of a fiercely loyal group of musicians, their arguments and drunken spats, their love affairs, the drugs, the hirings and the firings, the marriages and deaths… but, above all, the music. This is their story, bared for all.