Very funny and genuinely moving, THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND is an inspiring portrait of the unique and improbable friendship between Christopher Robbins, then an impoverished writer in his twenties, and Brian Desmond Hurst, Ireland's most prolific film director. It began when the author -- a journalist who had never read a script -- was asked to write the screenplay for Hurst's swansong movie, an ambitious biblical epic intended to be his ticket to heaven. As work commenced on the 'Box Office Blockbuster', and later the director's life story, the 'Big Bestseller', an unlikely but uproarious rapport was born. Full of character, incident and humour, Robbins' memoir is a warm and wonderful tribute to friendship and to one of life's true originals.

His warm, hilarious, immensely readable report... is hard to put down.

Christopher Robbins is a screenwriter and author. His previous books include AIR AMERICA, which was made into a film starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr, and THE TEST OF COURAGE, a biography of the wartime Resistance hero and language expert Michel Thomas. He currently lives in France.