Somerville Press is a book publisher based near Bantry , West Cork , Ireland. Our publishing programme incorporates both fiction and non-fiction, mainly of Irish interest. We also distribute various titles for other publishers.
An autobiography by Desmond Fennell
‘…one of the outstanding original thinkers of our time…’
Desmond Fennell has been a major force in the intellectual life of this country for at least the past five decades. In this fascinating and revealing autobiography he traces the progress of his life from his earliest memories as a child in Belfast to the first intellectual awakenings as student in UCD and Bonn and then to a career that brought him to live and work in Spain, Germany, Sweden the USA and Italy—as well as more than a decade in Conamara where he was active in a revolution that reshaped the Irish language movement. The author of many books on Irish and international affairs, he has earned a reputation as a courageous and at times controversial commentator, and his journalism in the early 1970s helped to bring about a rethinking of the Nationalist approach to Northern Ireland, thus providing a philosophical basis for the peace process of the 1990.
This book also reveals him to be an intellectual very much in the European tradition as a speaker of six languages with a wide range of cultural and philosophical interests and a deep knowledge of literature and art.
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING
“A remarkable autobiography, it is also a splendid showcase for some of his best and most influential writing over the decades of a strenuous career, lived largely for the intellect.” Irish Catholic.
‘...he is a genuine thinker, whose 19 books address the fabric and musculature of the modern Irish state’. Sunday Times.
‘Fascinating and revealing autobiography’. Sunday Independent
‘This is a major contribution to debate in Ireland’. The Phoenix.
‘Desmond Fennell is that very rare thing—an intellectual who loves his country and takes it as a test-case of the entire modern world.’—DECLAN KIBERD
‘Desmond Fennell is one of the outstanding original thinkers of our time; he possesses a fine mind unadulterated by the whimsy of any particular day or any beguiling movement or politician.’—EAMON DUNPHY
We are based in Dromore, Bantry, Co. Cork, Ireland. We can be contacted by telephone on 00353 (0) 28 32873 or 00353 (0) 87 233 1970, and by email at somervillepress@gmail.com
Our books are distributed in the UK by Central Books, 50 Freshwater Rd, London RM8 1RX, and in the US by Casemate, 1950 Lawrence Road, Haverton PA 19083.
Somerville Press also incorporates RUSSELL BOOK REPRESENTATION, a publishers' sales agency covering the whole of Ireland. The publishers we represent include Hurst Publishers (www.hurstpublishers.com), W.W. Norton & Company Ltd. (www.wwnorton co.uk) and Reaktion Books Ltd. (www.reaktionbooks.co.uk).