Readings

Roddy Doyle's latest book, A Star Called Henry, will be published later this month. For this first part of a trilogy, author Doyle (left) researched through a mountain of books, photographs, maps and song lyrics to produce a behind-the-scenes look at the legends of Irish republicanism. Against the backdrop of Dublin's tenements, the heroes of Republicanism and the 1916 Rising are portrayed through the eyes of 14-year-old Henry Smart. GPO freedom fighter and subsequently Michael Collins' "boy", Henry cycles the highways and byways recruiting and organising, sorting out spies and rozzers and still finding time to entertain a series of women. Subversive, funny and poignant, our hero discovers that all men in the new Republic are not equal. Doyle reads from the book in the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, on Thursday; the BT Studio at The Waterfront, Belfast, on Friday; and the Irish Times reading and conversation with Nick Hornby at HQ in the Irish Music Hall of Fame, Dublin, on Monday, August 30th.