Visiting the entire length of Ireland's west coast, from the lush, quasi-tropical mountains of the south-west through the barren limestone of West Clare to the stunning scale of sea- and mountain-scape in Donegal, The Atlantic Coast of Ireland records the geography in beautiful detail and tells the stories it echoes with. The extraordinary landscapes are spectacular but they also embody the processes of change that created them and continue to mould them. Their beauty is anything but timeless. When looked at with sympathetic eyes, these environments embody the particularities of geology, deep history, ecology, politics, climate, agriculture, religion, popular culture and much more. The diversities of Ireland's culture and geography have combined to produce an acute particularity of place and history, found nowhere so intensely as here.
Jonathan Hession has been a photographer since leaving school. In addition to regular commercial photography, he has specialised as a unit photographer on feature films and has photographed many of the world's top actors.
John Grenham is the author of Tracing your Irish Ancestors (Gill & Macmillan, 3rd ed.2006), the standard guide for Irish genealogy, Clans and Families of Ireland (1995), and An Illustrated History of Ireland (1997), among other works. He has written the Irish Roots column in The Irish Times since February 2009, develops heritage databases, and runs the Irish Ancestors website in conjunction with The Irish Times.