I’m pleased to say you can now pre-order my next book, ‘Fairies: A History’ (out in February 2026) from Polity. Thank you to Jeremy Harte, Simon Young, Jo Hickey-Hall and Owen Davies for such generous endorsements! 🧚‍♀️🌿📚 politybooks.com/bookdetail?boo…

Mapmaking was once a dangerous pursuit. Take Richard Bartlett (some of his maps pictured) who accompanied English armies into Ulster to chart newly colonised lands, but in 1609 he was beheaded in Donegal because, “the inhabitants would not have their country discovered.”

“I'm really glad I didn't get married. I'm an oddball. I remember in high school, this guy came up to me and said, ‘One day you're going to make a good wife.’ And I thought, ‘I don't want to be a wife. No.’” RIP Diane Keaton, Oscar winner for “Annie Hall”.

Farewell Annie x

He was also booted, hard, down a stairs by W.B. Yeats in a particularly vatic moment ... Ye can take the man out of Sligo (via Sandymount, Harold's Cross, and Rathfarnham), but ye can't take ...

Bran the dog here enjoying Bective Abbey very much Maybe a bit too much…

He will never be forgotten

The sheer neck on this 16thC lad - Callaghan O’Callaghan divorced his wife of eleven years claiming not to have known that she had been married to his dead BROTHER and so broke the church rule on affi nity. His father had arranged both marriages though. Come ON,