I will always be grateful to the late Michael O’Brien of The O'Brien Press, Dublin, for making Kerry: The Beautiful Kingdom possible. Michael had been wanting to produce a photographic book on the Kingdom of Kerry for some time and had been looking at my website with that in mind. He invited me along to meet him and the team at O’Brien Press in their office in Terenure, Dublin, in the summer of 2015. There, we agreed that I would not only provide the photographs required but also write the accompanying narrative.

I spent the following year on the road, travelling the length and breadth of the Kingdom to fill in some of the missing locations from my Kerry portfolio of photographs. I searched out and explored the sites and places that I had heard of but never visited. Michael asked me to include photographs of people – something rather absent from my existing portfolio at the time. After all, Kerry is much more than just splendid scenery. It is the people who make a place and add character to it. I also included the curious & quirky aspects to broaden the book’s appeal. 

Along with my wife and daughters, who proofread numerous drafts of the book’s contents, editors Helen, Emma, and Liz from ‘The Little Red Pen’ worked with me to reduce a folder of nearly 400 images to the 240 we see within the book—a special thank you to Liz, who was extremely professional and very patient with me.

Kerry The Beautiful Kingdom was published in hardback in 2017, with a paperback version following in 2022.