The Crying of the Wind

The Crying of the Wind and The Living Stones make up British Surrealist Ithell Colquhoun's unique memoirs and travelogues, reprinted for the first time since 1957, now with an introduction by acclaimed comedian Stewart Lee. In The Crying of the Wind Colquhoun's travels in Ireland provide a fascinating and romantic key to the country's Celtic past.

The British surrealist painter and writer Ithell Colquhoun recalls episodes from her travels in Ireland as a young woman turning her back on the modern world and setting out across the unruly Irish countryside. Here, among the holy wells, monasteries and tumuli, she finds a canvas on which her sensibility and animist beliefs can freely express themselves. Her style is beguiling, her voice sincere, and through her unique perceptions we discover a land that is fiercely alive and compelling. It is a place where the wind cries, the stones tell old tales and the mountains watch over the roads and those who travel on them. By intuiting the eerie magic of Ireland, Colquhoun casts her own spell. She offers up a land of myth and legend, stripped of its modern signs, at the same time offering herself to the reader in this portrait of the artist as a young woman.