To Aran, I tells how a young man from north Wales found the means to give shape a youthful dream of going to live on Inis Mór, an adventure recorded in his acclaimed first memoir An Aran Keening.This beautiful, high-spirited story blends moments of high farce, poetry and serious social observation, as the young McNeillie – a self-described 'quare fellow' – pursues his dream with a kind of fatalistic abandonment. Down but not quite out, he works his way towards Ara...

In November 1968, at the age of twenty-two, Andrew McNeillie left his job and his girlfriend in Wales and travelled to Inishmore. He was not a tourist: he stayed eleven months in Aran, living alone in a tiny house. An Aran Keening is a richly lyrical memoir of that time, a celebration of the island and its people, a lament for a way of life that was infused with a deep sadness then and that no longer exists. Based closely on a contemporary journal and on letters home – which are quoted at ...

Archipelago is one of the most important and influential literary magazines of the lasttwenty years. Running to twelve editions, it was edited by Andrew McNeillie, with theassistance later of James McDonald Lockhart, and began as an attempt to reimagine therelationships between the islands of Ireland and Britain. Archipelago has brought togetherestablished and emerging artists in creative conversations that have transformed the studyof islands, coasts and...