Next in our series Backlist Beauties, is Follow the Old Road by Jo Kerrigan, with photography by Richard Mills, published by The O’Brien Press
What we love about this book:
Follow the Old Road takes readers on a tour of a variety of pathways from great river roads to lost railways. By turning off the main highway and discovering old routes, some of which have been travelled for thousands of years, you will see Ireland in an entirely different way.
A little flavour of what’s inside:
From the green glens of Antrim to the wild Kerry islands, the old routes were used by all walks of life, from pilgrims to nobility, farming folk to merchants: for worship or war, commerce or contact. Now largely forgotten, usurped by the bypass and the motorway, these ancient pathways have become part of a hidden landscape.
In Follow the Old Road, Jo Kerrigan beckons us on a magical journey from the present to the past, as she takes us through the history and legends of these pathways, and the stories of those who travelled them. In so doing, she reveals a mysterious world still to be discovered in today’s Ireland.
A line that sings
“We live in an age where travel within our country is defined by the car we drive, the nearest motorway. All movement is land-based, road-based. It’s hard to imagine, but long ago, people travelled in very different ways. It’s time to look back and remember those ways, even, perhaps, to rediscover them. They’re still there, waiting to be found.”
Cover design by: Emma Byrne
Jo Kerrigan’s next book, Stories from the Sea, will be released in autumn 2021 by The O’Brien Press.
