News

Delighted to have in stock the comprehensive and fascinating new book on the famous Dingle Railway. Michael Whitehouse  has done a fine job on this beautiful and informative book. It includes many photographs and maps. For years now, customers have been asking us for just such a title. So we wish him all the best with it !

The third in the series of beautiful and highly collectible hand-made concertina books is a lively rendering i nGaeilge agus Béarla of the folk tale An Bodach by local journalist, Seán Mac an tSíthigh, bunaithe ar an mbéaloideas áitiúil. Bob Ó Cathail’s striking illustrations capture perfectly the humour in this tale of an unlikely local hero who beats Ireland’s fastest runner in a race from the east coast to the west.

Helen Ní Shé  and Sean Mac an tShítigh launched the new book last Friday as part of the Feile na Bealtaine festival. Great fun was had by all, the shop was packed to the rafters. This is a limited edition, so get it while you can !

The Dingle Bookshop is looking very much as it did, when Mike and Camilla were in charge. They are now having a deserved rest while the new owners settle in.

The new owners of the bookshop are Nuala Cassidy and her husband, Martin Bealin, formerly of the multi award-winning Global Village restaurant. Nuala stepped back from the restaurant business a few years ago to devote time to their young family and last August Martin shut up shop at the Global Village, also to have more family time but mindful as well that it was getting harder to make a living out of fine dining.

Liberation from the demands of the restaurant business freed them to look at new possibilities and when Camila Dinkel and Mike Venner put the Dingle Bookshop up for sale after 15 years behind the counter it was an opportunity not to be missed.

Exiled From Ireland by Marie T. Mullan is a fascinating new book on the extraordinary Geneva Window, a masterpiece by Harry Clarke, Ireland's most famous stained glass artist. Here in Dingle, we are all privileged to have his beautiful work to gaze upon in the Díseart Chapel. The Geneva Window's story is extraordinary.

The Geneva Window, renowned for its superb artistry and craftsmanship, celebrates the novels, poems and plays of the Irish Literary Revival.

Commissioned by the Irish government as a gift to the International Labour office in Geneva, the window was initially accepted  on its completion in 1930, but rejected a few days later as ‘unrepresentative’ of the Irish people and even labelled ‘indecent’. This had serious emotional consequences for Harry, who died a few months later.

A  Dark Day on the Blaskets by Mícheál Ó Dubhshláine, was re-published last week by Tigh Áine. It is  a fascinating portrait of a young woman and her times. As well as a page-turner, it is an engrossing description of a place at a turning point in its cultural history, a place celebrated in the remarkable classics of the ‘Blasket Library’.

 

In the summer of 1909 Eibhlin Nic Niocaill  arrives on the Dingle Peninsula in the extreme south-west of Ireland. One of the finest scholars in the new national movement, she had come from Dublin to study the West Kerry dialect of Irish. Here she explored the countryside and travelled to the Great Blasket, spending an intense, mystical month on the island, meeting the inhabitants, whose lifestyle had changed little in 200 years. But on 13 August she and 17-year-old Donal O Criomhthain both drowned.