Colm Tóibín has called Thomas Moore ‘the most influential figure in shaping the Irish political psyche’. In Bard of Erin, Ronan Kelly tells the story of Moore’s extraordinary life – from humble beginnings in Dublin to glittering social and literary success in London (at one point his popularity was eclipsed only by that of Sir Walter Scott and his close friend Lord Byron). Ronan Kelly’s biography is a gripping and definitive account of a great romantic figure.

Colm Tóibín has called Thomas Moore 'the most influential figure in shaping the Irish political psyche'. In Bard of Erin, Ronan Kelly tells the story of Moore's extraordinary life - from humble beginnings in Dublin to glittering social and literary success in London (at one point his popularity was eclipsed only by that of Sir Walter Scott and his close friend Lord Byron). Ronan Kelly's biography is a gripping and definitive account of a great romantic figure. 'A stirring tale of the diminutive would-be duellist whom his friend Byron described as "Masking and humming, / Fifing and drumming, / Guitarring and strumming" in a way we'd not quite see again until the rise of Bob Dylan' Paul Muldoon, TLS Books of the Year 'Thanks to Ronan Kelly's enthralling new biography, [Moore] is about to become an important part of our cultural landscape again ... There hasn't been a better biography published in Ireland for many a year' Irish Independent 'Vividly absorbing ... an enthusiastic, persuasive and highly readable attempt to restore a full picture of the man ... Everything in this eloquent and intelligent life shows that Moore's achievement decisively transcended the "poetical"' Roy Foster, The Times 'a major reassessment ... scholarly and comprehensive ... Kelly makes it clear what fun Moore was' Irish Daily Mail 'This new biography of Thomas Moore delights in the reading. Ronan Kelly has done his groundwork well ... A substantial, highly readable examination of the life, social development and cultural significance of a figure who occupies a pivotal position in Irish history, both as an Irish writer of the Romantic period and as "Ireland's National Poet" of a pre-partition era' Sunday Business Post 'Definitive ... a fascinating story' John Montague, Irish Times

FELIMID MAC FAL IS BACK . . . WITH THE BEAUTIFUL PIRATE GUDRUN BLACKHAIR AT HIS SIDE! I am called Felimid mac Fal. I am a bard of the old blood, a lesser degree of Druid. Where I come from, bards have been known to sing armies to defeat or victory and kings off their thrones or on to them. Descended from the faery folk, the Tuatha de Danann, my line's been poets and harpers in Erin since the world was new, and magic's in our heart-marrow. She is called Gudrun Blackhair . . . as well as names a good deal less polite. She is the most dangerous pirate on the open seas, master of the enchanted ship Ormungandr, and the woman of my heart. If you wish to know more than that, ask the ballad, singers and gossip mongers at any tavern. Half of what you hear will be fact, half will be lies, and even I can no longer separate the two. Yet this story perhaps the strangest of them all, of shapeshifters and sorceresses and the sea-dwelling Children of Lir, is naught but the gods' own truth. . . . on my honor as a bard.

THE ANCIENT MAGIC OF IRELAND LET LOOSE IN THE STRINGS OF A HARP…. The wilderness of oak, ash, and thorn that men call the Forest of Andred existed long before the Saxons en­tered Britain, or Caesar's legions pressed against Kentish resistance, and even before the first iron-using Celts set foot on the island. Here lives the clan of mandrake—the strange, gnarled vegetable folk. Here trods the unicorn, with blue vapor curling softly from nostrils soft as a woman's breast and dainty, precise hooves lethal as maces. Here are the sacred groves long abandoned, where Druids once fed the trees with human blood. Through this forest of sorcery and a society governed by the sword travels Felimid mac Fal, Bard of Erin, descendant of Druids and the Tuatha de Danann—the ancient faery race of Ireland, armed only with his harp and the fierce magical power of his poetry....

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