What is it about Cape Clear that fascinates so many people? Many books have been written on the Gaeltacht island off the south-west coast, but still they keep coming.
The latest is from Eamon Lankford. A teacher and historian from Cork, his passion for the island began in 1976 and it has not diminished. His many visits made him intimately aware of the topography and people of Cape Clear. He was moved to further research and to write.
The result is Cape Clear Island: Its People and Landscape. It is available from the Cape Clear Museum on the island and from the Cape Clear Society in Cork, fax: (021) 893638. Island-lovers will enjoy this book. I was talking recently to a person who has made it his mission to visit every single island, inhabited and uninhabited, around the Irish coast. He hasn't quite got there yet, but in the next few weeks he will have notched up another when he sets foot on Scattery, off Co Clare.
The Lankford book is a labour of love, and it shines through. It details everything from the earliest settlement on the island, to local lore, the famine times - when there was terrible hardship but no great loss of life because of an extraordinary coming together of the people - and goes on to discuss island speech, shipwrecks, fishing, storytelling and ecology.
Cape Clear is a popular destination in summer. In winter, when the gales howl, you will not find too many at the pier waiting to take the ferry. That's when I like to go.
Lankford's book will remind the occasional visitor what this island is now and what it was all about in the past.