For nearly forty years, through illness and recovery, a central part to Ó Ríordáin’s life was his diary.

This anthology attempts to give an insight into the tortured mind of the poet, from 1940 when he began to write in his diary, right up until the year he died in 1977. It’s a small taste of what his full diaries have to offer with 365 entries, one for each day of the year.

Ó Ríordáin was also very taken with drawing, caricatures and pictures, and included in this volume are many of his drawings.

Editor, Tadhg Ó Dúshláine, a Cork native, is a lecturer in NUI Maynooth.