Seagulls wheeling over the cliffs, white horses on the dark blue sea whipped up by the wind, and above, three hundred feet up the sheer rock face, an endless grassy expanse interrupted only by dry stone walls. Ireland is a country of time in slow motion, where tubby, long-maned ponies still draw wooden carts of peat, as they have done for the last ten centuries. This is the Ireland of islands and archipelagos anchored to time-honoured traditions, of small towns and pretty fishing villages, moors and a Celtic history, poverty and dignified suffering. But it is also the island of archaeological sites, hermits shrouded in mystery, and of Dublin, the capital of the cities built on a human scale, which has expanded on a cosmopolitan path in the recent years without losing its character.

Scenic photographs, portraits of men and women from every corner of the island, and scenes from everyday life in the peace of the countryside and the hurly-burly of the city: a thousand faces of Ireland have been immortalised in this book, in an itinerary that readers can follow in person, letting their imagination and emotions run free as they are swept up in the beauty of this land on the extreme edge of Europe