The Crying of the Wind: Ireland

(Paperback)

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Description

Into the world of 1950s Ireland - a lushly green, windswept landscape studded with holy wells and the decaying country houses of a vanished ruling class - arrives Ithell Colquhoun. An occultist and a surrealist painter, Colquhoun's travels around the island are guided by her artist's eye and her feeling for the world beyond our own, as well as her spikily humorous view of the people she meets. We encounter faeries and pagan rituals, ruined churches and Celtic splendour, rowdy bohemians and Anglo-Irish landowners fallen on hard times, as the author carouses through Dublin and tramps the hills of Connemara in this classic travelogue.

Richly visual and full of sly wit, this is an account of Ireland as only Colquhoun could see it, a land where myth and magic meet wind and rain, and the song of the secret kingdom is heard on city streets.

Reviews

'I swear this book burns invisibly with its own quiet and consoling heat.' -

'A rare and beautiful book...Has the authentic touch of the Gothic novelist' - TLS

'She has not only a painters eye but something of the natural sociability and engaging nosiness of the travelling artist...an original and perceptive companion' - The Sunday Times

'An intelligent and evocative piece of roving reportage on a high literary level. This scholar, poet and painter is a keen observer who has read widely and deeply...Original and stimulating' - Irish Times

'Colquhoun has a very beguiling pen...To Irish landscapes she brings a painters eye, writing particularly beautifully about skies, twilights, river valleys, sea-frayed coasts and the intensive atmosphere of remote places' - Tatler

Author Bio

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was born in British India and brought up in the United Kingdom. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and started exhibiting her paintings in the 1930s, gaining some renown as one of the few women associated with British Surrealism. She began visiting Cornwall during the Second World War, and eventually moved there, continuing to write, paint, and pursue the study of the occult until her death. As well as The Crying of the Wind: Ireland, she is the author of The Living Stones: Cornwall and the novel Goose of Hermogenes, both forthcoming from Pushkin Press.