'A rare and beautiful book' TLS

'Original and stimulating' Irish Times

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.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was born in British India and brought up in the United Kingdom. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and started exhibiting her paintings in the 1930s, gaining some renown as one of the few women associated with British Surrealism. She began visiting Cornwall during the Second World War, and eventually moved there, continuing to write, paint, and pursue the study of the occult until her death. As well as The Crying of the Wind: Ireland, she is the author of The Living Stones: Cornwall and the novel Goose of Hermogenes, also available from Pushkin Press.

"Marvellous… A beguiling, superbly written mix of travelogue, reportage, nature-writing, art criticism and – on its deepest level – an inquiry into religion, spirituality and the big questions of philosophy… At times she captures some essential truth at the core of things so perfectly – somehow expressing the inexpressible in words – that you get that shiver of recognition which really only great art can provide."
—Irish Independent

"Exquisitely strange... Colquhoun’s writing is lit from within by an incandescent glow... An enchanting read."
—Irish Times

"Colquhoun is an incisive observer of Irish social mores... An eccentric visitor not only willing to embrace the country but also to expend her creative energy on its history, idiosyncrasies and traditions." —Apollo

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was born in British India and brought up in the United Kingdom. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and started exhibiting her paintings in the 1930s, gaining some renown as one of the few women associated with British Surrealism. She began visiting Cornwall during the Second World War, and eventually moved there, continuing to write, paint, and pursue the study of the occult until her death. As well as The Crying of the Wind: Ireland, she is the author of The Living Stones: Cornwall and the novel Goose of Hermogenes, also available from Pushkin Press.