John Healy

John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. This Penguin Classics edition includes an afterword by Colin MacCabe.In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when begging carried an automatic three-year prison sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled the parks and streets in search of drink or prey. When not united in their common aim of acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered one another over prostitutes or a bottle, or the begging of money. Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison.John Healy (b. 1943) was born into an impoverished, Irish immigrant family, in the slums of Kentish Town, North London. Out of school by 14, pressed into the army and intermittently in prison, Healy became an alcoholic early on in life. Despite these obstacles Healy achieved remarkable, indeed phenomenal expertise in both writing and chess, as outlined in the autobiographical The Grass Arena. If you enjoyed The Grass Arena, you might like Last Exit to Brooklyn, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Sober and precise, grotesque, violent, sad, charming and hilarious all at once'Literary Review'Beside it, a book like Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London seems a rather inaccurate tourist guide'Colin MacCabe

Nearly four decades after his acclaimed memoir The Grass Arena, John Healy delivers the long-awaited second volume of his extraordinary life. The Glass Cage begins in the wake of sudden literary success and fragile sobriety, as Healy attempts to inhabit a world far removed from the prisons, streets and wino jungle that shaped him. Thrust into publishing, publicity and middle-class expectation, he finds himself disoriented by power, privilege and the subtle humiliations of class. Written with fierce candour and dark, unsparing wit, this is a memoir not of escape, but of exposure - and of the cost of crossing worlds.

'A master storyteller with an ear, an eye and a voice that should be the envy of many weightier reputations' Daniel Day-Lewis on The Grass ArenaWith imaginative prose and startling imagery, Healy takes us on a journey where he first works in a late-night cafe serving whores, pimps, druggies, window-ledgers, handbag snatchers, narks, and the odd psychopath. Situated at the dim end of the counter at the furthest corner from God’s light on earth, he plans his escape and ends up in a world more treacherous and dangerous than he could ever have imagined. In this world of middle-class literature, living hand to mouth, he writes The Grass Arena. To become suddenly famous in an unfamiliar world of power and privilege was completely disorienting. He finds himself thrown into unpredictable situations that call for a tact where he was more used to situations where people achieved their aims through brutality.The Glass Cage is an unrepentant account of a life few of us could imagine. A worthy sequel to The Grass Arena, it is John Healy’s crowning achievement.

Reproduction of the original: Insula Sanctorum Et Doctorum by John Healy

Ancient Irish Church is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1892. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Principles of Irish Torts is a new publication by Clarus Press designed to meet the needs of students of this increasingly demanding and complex subject.Torts is a core subject on all undergraduate law courses, and it must be passed for entrance to professional practice training courses in Ireland. With the escalation of civil litigation in the State over the past twenty years, the body of material it encompasses is now weighty, making timely study or re-acquaintance with the subject more onerous than before. With this in mind, Principles of Irish Torts communicates the breadth of its subject with less of its girth. The book is dedicated to essential elements and themes, and to contrasts between the torts with a view to their proper application to the circumstances of problems and cases. This book achieves its objectives with a deftness of touch and eloquence of exposition that has characterised Mr. Healy's previous works, navigating its reader through the many intricacies, distinctions, and concepts that figure throughout torts law. Principles of Irish Torts will be invaluable to students and lawyers, whether by introduction or re-acquaintance, and will undoubtedly become a leading authority for students who require a comprehensive yet accessible text for the study of Torts.