The Crying of the Wind: Ireland

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. 

Ithell Colquhoun (1906 – 1988) was a British artist, poet, author and occultist. A member of the British Surrealist Group for a time, she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, exhibited with the London Group and created works and techniques exploring ‘psychomorphologies’ – attempts to capture psychic space in painting. She was eventually expelled from the Surrealist Group after refusing to renounce occultism, a subject she became a recognised authority on. 

• Artist Ithell Colquhoun
• Dimensions 12.8 x 19.8 x 1.7 cm
• Author Ithell Colquhoun
• ISBN 9781805331568
• Paperback Yes
• Publisher Pushkin Press
• No of pages 192