A Little Gaelic Kingdom

＂A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing, and an incomparable and enthralling meditation on times past.＂--John Banville

＂He knows this world as no one else does, and writes about it with awe and love, but also with measured grace, an artist’s eye and a scientist’s sensibility.＂--Colm Tóibín

In its landscape, history, language, and folklore, the Connemara region on Ireland’s wild and windswept West Coast is a dramatic and breathtaking place. From its fabled villages, seaside cliffs, bogs, lakes, coral beaches, stark mountains, and ever-meandering country roads lined with stone walls, this rugged kingdom surprises and inspires, and nobody knows this more than artist, cartographer, and celebrated writer Tim Robinson.

In A Little Gaelic Kingdom, Robinson brings this enchanting Irish peninsula rapturously to life. Setting off, he embarks on a walking journey, traversing and exploring the natural world, while revealing the history, mystery, language, and people that have indelibly shaped this much-mythologized countryside. From the glacial valley of Maam to the fishing villages and rocky shorelines of the region’s archipelago, Robinson carries encyclopedic knowledge, great curiosity, and a deep love of place and its inhabitants with him on this engaging and evocative journey.

Beautifully crafted and intimately rendered, A Little Gaelic Kingdom is a timeless and revelatory work of travel and nature writing.

Tim Robinson (1935-2020) studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked for many years as a teacher and visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna, and London. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands and in 1986 his first book, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, was published to great acclaim. The second volume, Stones of Aran: Labyrinth, appeared in 1995. His Connemara trilogy began in 2006 with Listening to the Wind, which won the Irish Book Award for Nonfiction, and continued with The Last Pool of Darkness and finally A Little Gaelic Kingdom.