Tim2097020x20415.jpg

Features

An editor’s take: 20 years in awe of Tim Robinson’s writing

A Little Gaelic Kingdom

Connemara

The triumphant conclusion to Tim Robinson's extraordinary Connemara trilogy, which Robert Macfarlane has called 'one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. 
 
 Robinson writes about the people, places and history of south Connemara - one of Ireland's last Gaelic-speaking enclaves - with the encyclopaedic knowledge of a cartographer and the grace of a born writer. From the man who has been praised in the highest terms by Joseph O'Connor ('One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists''), John Burnside ('one of the finest of contemporary prose stylists'), Fintan O'Toole ('Simply one of the best non-fiction prose writers currently at work') and Giles Foden ('an indubitable classic'), among many others, this is one of the publishing events of 2011 and the conclusion of one of the great literary projects of our time. 
 
 
'One of the greatest writers of lands ... No one has disentangled the tales the stones of Ireland have to tell so deftly and retold them so beautifully' Fintan O'Toole 
 
'He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights.' John Banville, Guardian 
 
'The Proust &amp; Ruskin of modern place-writing, deep-mapper of Irish landscapes, visionary thinker, and human of exceptional intellectual generosity &amp; kindness. He was an immense inspiration to &amp; encourager of me &amp; my work' Robert Macfarlane 
 
'A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing, and an incomparable and enthralling meditation on times past ... This perfectly pitched work opens readers up to the world around them' Sunday Times 
 
 'Will endure into the far future ... 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 Toibin, Sunday Business Post Books of the Year 
 
 'Anyone willing to get lost in this book will be left with indelible mental images of places they may never have visited but will now never forget' Dermot Bolger, Irish Mail on Sunday

A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing, and an incomparable and enthralling meditation on times past ... This perfectly pitched work opens readers up to the world around them

Robinson is a marvel ... the supreme practitioner of geo-graphy, the writing of places

He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights.

He is the nearest thing we have to a living legend, this side of Famous Seamus - one of the few people from our world whose name will still be known a century on

Tim Robinson is the Proust of the western seaboard, a Ruskin of the isles

Will endure into the far future ... 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

Anyone willing to get lost in this book will be left with many indelible mental images of places they may never have visited but will now never forget

Breathtaking ... the West of Ireland has found its ultimate laureate

A native of Yorkshire, Tim Robinson studied maths at Cambridge and then worked for many years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London, among other places. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands and commenced a multi-decade project of mapping and writing about Aran and Connemara. He is the author of the two-volume Stones of Aran and the Connemara trilogy, each published to great acclaim. He died in 2020.

Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom is the triumphant conclusion to Tim Robinson's extraordinary Connemara trilogy, which Robert Macfarlane has called 'one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. 
 
 Robinson writes about the people, places and history of south Connemara - one of Ireland's last Gaelic-speaking enclaves - with the encyclopaedic knowledge of a cartographer and the grace of a born writer. From the man who has been praised in the highest terms by Joseph O'Connor ('One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists''), John Burnside ('one of the finest of contemporary prose stylists'), Fintan O'Toole ('Simply one of the best non-fiction prose writers currently at work') and Giles Foden ('an indubitable classic'), among many others, this is one of the publishing events of 2011 and the conclusion of one of the great literary projects of our time.

The Last Pool of Darkness

The second volume in Tim Robinson's phenomenal Connemara Trilogy - which Robert Macfarlane has called 'One of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. 
 
 The first volume of Tim Robinson's Connemara trilogy, Listening to the Wind, covered Robinson's home territory of Roundstone and environs. The Last Pool of Darkness moves into wilder territory: the fjords, cliffs, hills and islands of north-west Connemara, a place that Wittgenstein, who lived on his own in a cottage there for a time, called 'the last pool of darkness in Europe'. Again combining his polymathic knowledge of Connemara's natural history, human history, folklore and topography with his own unsurpassable artistry as a writer, Tim Robinson has produced another classic. 
 
A native of Yorkshire, Tim Robinson moved to the Aran Islands in 1972. His books include the celebrated two-volume Stones of Aran. Since 1984 he has lived in Roundstone, Connemara. 
 
 
'The Proust &amp; Ruskin of modern place-writing, deep-mapper of Irish landscapes, visionary thinker, and human of exceptional intellectual generosity &amp; kindness. He was an immense inspiration to &amp; encourager of me &amp; my work' Robert Macfarlane 
 
'A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing and a miraculous, vivid and engrossing meditation on landscape and history and the sacred mood of places' Colm Tóibín, Irish Times 
 
'One of the greatest writers of lands ... No one has disentangled the tales the stones of Ireland have to tell so deftly and retold them so beautifully' Fintan O'Toole

An astonishing and almost infinitely provocative work ... it is a rare pleasure to be among those engaged in the salvage of so rich a treasure

One of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English

A masterpiece of travel and topographical writing and a miraculous, vivid and engrossing meditation on landscape and history and the sacred mood of places

Reading Tim Robinson on Connemara is almost as good as being there - better in some ways

The first volume of Tim Robinson's Connemara trilogy, Listening to the Wind, covered Robinson's home territory of Roundstone and environs. The Last Pool of Darkness moves into wilder territory: the fjords, cliffs, hills and islands of north-west Connemara, a place that Wittgenstein, who lived on his own in a cottage there for a time, called 'the last pool of darkness in Europe'. Again combining his polymathic knowledge of Connemara's natural history, human history, folklore and topography with his own unsurpassable artistry as a writer, Tim Robinson has produced another classic.

Listening to the Wind

Chosen by Robert Macfarlane and Iain Sinclair as a Guardian Book of the Year

The first volume in Tim Robinson's phenomenal Connemara Trilogy - which Robert Macfarlane has called 'One of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. 
 
 In its landscape, history and folklore, Connemara is a singular region: ill-defined geographically, and yet unmistakably a place apart from the rest of Ireland. Tim Robinson, who established himself as Ireland's most brilliant living non-fiction writer with the two-volume Stones of Aran, moved from Aran to Connemara nearly twenty years ago. This book is the result of his extraordinary engagement with the mountains, bogs and shorelines of the region, and with its folklore and its often terrible history: a work as beautiful and surprising as the place it attempts to describe. 
 
Chosen as a book of the year by Iain Sinclair, Robert Macfarlane and Colm Tóibín 
 
'One of the greatest writers of lands ... No one has disentangled the tales the stones of Ireland have to tell so deftly and retold them so beautifully' Fintan O'Toole 
 
'Dazzling ... an indubitable classic' Giles Foden, Condé Nast Traveller 
 
'He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights' John Banville 
 
'One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists' Joseph O'Connor, Guardian

Many landscape writers have striven to give their prose the characteristics of the terrain they are describing. Few have succeeded as fully as Robinson.

In its landscape, history and folklore, Connemara is a singular region: ill-defined geographically, and yet unmistakably a place apart from the rest of Ireland. Tim Robinson, who established himself as Ireland's most brilliant living non-fiction writer with the two-volume Stones of Aran, moved from Aran to Connemara nearly twenty years ago. This book is the result of his extraordinary engagement with the mountains, bogs and shorelines of the region, and with its folklore and its often terrible history: a work as beautiful and surprising as the place it attempts to describe.

Tim Robinson

Many landscape writers have striven to give their prose the characteristics of the terrain they are describing. Few have succeeded as fully as Robinson

One of the greatest of all landscape writers ... When the material world is brought forth for us so beautifully, with such rapt attention and illuminating insight, we are reminded of how lucky we are to be part of it

Robinson is a stylist of exceptional cadence, tact and ingenuity

He is that rarest of phenomena, a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs and delights

Experiments on Reality offers another side to Robinson. The abstract and algebraic thinking of his early years as both a mathematician and artist bubble back to the surface and meld with the mossy scents of Connacht and the reflections of age

One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists

In this slim volume of essays, typically lyrical and measured, Robinson burgles the bank of his youth in Wharfedale and later years, including National Service in Malaysia and his time as an artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London, to map out the topography of his own thoughts and travels.

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

Simply one of the best non-fiction prose writers currently at work

The Proust &amp; Ruskin of modern place-writing, deep-mapper of Irish landscapes, visionary thinker, &amp; human of exceptional intellectual generosity &amp; kindness. He was an immense inspiration to &amp; encourager of me &amp; my work.

The Last Essays

Long recognized as perhaps the greatest non-fiction writer at work in Ireland, for his vast, polymathic accounts of nature and culture in the Aran Islands and Connemara, Tim Robinson is also an essayist of genius whose fascinations range across the globe. In Experiments on Reality, he shines the light of his intelligence on his own life, and on some of the most fascinating questions in science and culture. 
 
Robinson brings us to his boyhood in Yorkshire, National Service in Malaya in the 1950s, and his years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London. He revisits some of the scenes of his researches for the maps he made of Aran and Connemara, places that continue to throw up remarkable stories and puzzles. And he performs astonishing literary thought-experiments, playing with the boundaries of the essay form, scientific inquiry, and storytelling. Experiments on Reality is a masterpiece from one of the great minds of our time.

Tim Robinson

Praise for Experiments on Reality

Many landscape writers have striven to give their prose the characteristics of the terrain they are describing. Few have succeeded as fully as Robinson

One of the greatest of all landscape writers ... When the material world is brought forth for us so beautifully, with such rapt attention and illuminating insight, we are reminded of how lucky we are to be part of i ...

Robinson is a stylist of exceptional cadence, tact and ingenuity

Many landscape writers have striven to give their prose the characteristics of the terrain they are describing. Few have succeeded as fully as Robinson

One of the greatest of all landscape writers ... When the material world is brought forth for us so beautifully, with such rapt attention and illuminating insight, we are reminded of how lucky we are to be part of i ...

Robinson is a stylist of exceptional cadence, tact and ingenuity

Many landscape writers have striven to give their prose the characteristics of the terrain they are describing. Few have succeeded as fully as Robinson

One of the greatest of all landscape writers ... When the material world is brought forth for us so beautifully, with such rapt attention and illuminating insight, we are reminded of how lucky we are to be part of i ...

Robinson is a stylist of exceptional cadence, tact and ingenuity

Books by Tim Robinson

Articles featuring Tim Robinson

An editor’s take: 20 years in awe of Tim Robinson’s writing

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter