Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage

Description

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage is, as Robert Macfarlane says in his introduction, 'one of the most sustained, intensive and imaginative studies of a place that has ever been carried out'. That place is one of the most mysterious and oldest inhabited landscapes in the world, the islands of Aran off the west coast of Ireland. Tim Robinson's epic exploration of the desolate, storm-lashed, limestone rocks, which have already haunted generations of Irish writers, takes the form of a clockwise journey around the coast. Every cliff, inlet and headland reveals layers of myth and historical memory, and Robinson makes beautifully crafted observations about the habits of birds, plants and the humans who lived there and endured, leaving records in stone - on the walls, cairns and ancient forts - in story and in oral tradition.

Tim Robinson was brought up in Yorkshire. He studied at Cambridge University and worked as a teacher and artist in Istanbul, Vienna, and London. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands, where he gained fame as a mapmaker. He learned Gaelic and began preserving Irish place-names, winning respect as an environmentalist and a Ford European Conversation Award. Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, published in 1985, won the Irish Book Award Literature Medal and a Rooney Prize Special Award for Literature in 1987. His other books include Stones of Aran: Labyrinth, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and My Time in Space.