Books and Pamphlets

Desmond Fennell with his life’s work in Sandymount in 2013 (Photo: Toner Quinn)

Desmond Fennell writing in Conamara in the 2000s (Photo: Bob Quinn)

Between 1958 and 2017, Desmond Fennell published 19 books and 13 pamphlets. His subjects ranged from the Irish language and Irish identity to media and intellectual discourse to the challenge of postwestern civilisation. Below is a list of publications by Desmond as well as some information about each.

Some of his books are still in print and available from the publisher, such as About Being Normal: My Life in Abnormal Circumstances (Somerville Press, 2017), Cutting to the Point: Essays and Objections 1994–2003 (Liffey Press, 2003), and his three books from Athol Press: Ireland After the End of Western Civilisation (2009), About Behaving Normally in Abnormal Circumstances (2007), and The Revision of European History (2003).

Many other publications are available from second-hand bookshops such as Kenny’s and Charlie Byrne’s in Galway. His author page on AbeBooks is here, and his Amazon author page is here.

The Radical Thinking of Desmond Fennell, a curated collection of his most influential writings, edited by Toner Quinn and Jerry White, will be available in June 2025 and is now available to pre-order.

Books
• Mainly in Wonder (1959)
• The Changing Face of Catholic Ireland (1968)
• The State of the Nation: Ireland since the 60s (1983)
• Beyond Nationalism: The Struggle against Provincialism in the Modern World (1985)
• Nice People and Rednecks: Ireland in the 1980s (1986)
• A Connacht Journey (1987)
• The Revision of Irish Nationalism (1989)
• Bloomsway: A Day in the Life of Dublin (1990)
• Heresy: The Battle of Ideas in Modern Ireland (1993)
• Dreams of Oranges: An Eyewitness Account of the Fall of Communist East Germany (1996)
• Uncertain Dawn: Hiroshima and the Beginning of Postwestern Civilisation (1996)
• The Postwestern Condition: Between Chaos and Civilisation (1999)
• The Turning Point: My Sweden Year and After (2001)
• The Revision of European History (2003)
• Cutting to the Point: Essays and Objections 1994–2003 (2003)
• About Behaving Normally in Abnormal Circumstances (2007)
• Ireland After the End of Western Civilisation (2009)
• Third Stroke Did It: The Staggered End of European Civilisation (2012)
• About Being Normal: My Life in Abnormal Circumstances (2017)

Pamphlets
• The Northern Catholic (1958)
• Art for the Irish (1961)
• The British Problem (1963)
• Iarchonnacht Began (1969)
• A New Nationalism for the New Ireland (1972)
• Take the Faroes for Example (1972)
• Build the Third Republic (1972)
• Sketches of the New Ireland (1973)
• Towards a Greater Ulster (1973)
• Irish Catholics and Freedom Since 1916 (1984)
• Cuireadh chun na Tríú Réabhlóide (1984)
• Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: Why Seamus Heaney Is No. 1 (1991)
• Savvy and the Preaching of the Gospel (2003)


The Radical Thinking of Desmond Fennell, edited by Toner Quinn and Jerry White – a curated collections of his most important writings. Available in June 2025. Preorder here.
An autobiographic collection of Fennell’s writing in three parts including ‘From Observation to Idealism, 1929–1980’, ‘The Evolution of a Dissident, 1980–1995’ and ‘Conclusions, 1996–2016’. Published by Somerville Press in 2007.
A 2012 collection of essays that includes ‘On Thinking in Ireland’, ‘Third Stroke Did It: The Staggered End of European Civilisation’, and ‘The Real History of Europe’.

A collection of writings published by Athol Press in 2009, including ‘Where is the European Union Heading?’, ‘Totalitarianism Domesticated’ and ‘The Second American Revolution and the Sense Famine in the West’.
A collection of writings (essays and dairy) published in 2007, including ‘About Behaving Normally in Abnormal Circumstances: A Retrospect on My Writing So Far’, ‘The Enemy Now is Senselessness’, and ‘Artists Left Stranded by the Drying Up of Myth’.
A collection of writings published in 2003 by the Liffey Press and including ‘Federal Proposals for a Northern Solution’, ‘A Provincial Passion: Cleansing Irish Literature of Irishness’, ‘The Recent Birth and Chequered Career of “Rural ireland”‘, ‘September Eleventh’, and ‘The Irish Problem with Thought’.

A critique of the standard history of Europe in two sections, ‘The History of Europe: Towards a True, Clear Story’ and ‘The Post-European Condition’ (Athol Books, 2003).
A pamphlet response to Vincent Twomey’s book ‘The End of Irish Catholicism?’, published by Veritas in 2003.

A memoir of Fennell’s time in Sweden in the 1960s, published in 2001. Also includes a ‘Part 2’ titled ‘The Rest of My Life So Far’ in which Fennell recounts his battle against the tide in Ireland.

A collection of essays about Fennell’s life and work published in 2001 and including contributions from Bob Quinn, John Waters, Mary Cullen, J.J Lee and Nollaig Ó Gadhra.
A radical new view of the contemporary west, published in 1999. The Postwestern Condition is in two sections: ‘The Challenge of Poswestern Civilisation’ and ‘Elaborations’, with chapters titled ‘The Sense Problem’, ‘The Exit from Civilisation’ and more.
Published in 1996, Uncertain Dawn: Hiroshima and the Beginning of Post-Western Civilisation is part travel journal and part reflection. It explores what Fennell describes as New American civilisation in our post-modern, post-western age.

Fennell’s account of the fall of Communist East Germany, written during his travels to Berlin in March 1990.
A collection of essays published in 1993 by Blackstaff Press including ‘The Last Days of the Gaeltacht’, ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing’, ‘Getting to Know Dublin 4’ and ‘Intellect and National Welfare’.
Fennell’s 1991 pamphlet in which he challenges the widespread academic and critics’ view of Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

An account of a journey through Dublin on Bloomsday –16 June – in 1988. Published in 1990 by the Poolbeg Press.
A book in which Fennell explores, rethinks and revises Irish nationalism. Published by Open Air in 1989.
A description of the culture and social life of Connacht in 1986. Published by Gill and Macmillan in 1987.

Fennell’s classic collection of newspaper columns from the Sunday Press written in the early 1980s under the title ‘Fennell on Sunday’. Articles include ‘The morality of hunger strikes’, ‘An open letter to Mrs Thatcher’. ‘The imaginative, thoughtless Celt’, ‘Wanted: A Project for Ireland’ and many more.
Fennell’s 1985 book in which he asks, ‘How can people find community and value in the world today?’. Beyond Nationalism, which contains two chapters of intellectual autobiography and deals with issues as diverse as spiritual suffering in Sweden, the Second Vatican Council, the Gaeltacht movement in the 1970s, and the Northern Ireland problem, offers a radical reinterpretation of modern Irish and European life.
A 1984 reissuing of a 1965 essay originally published in the Irish-language magazine Comhar. Described as an ‘Aiste Dhaonnachtach’ (‘Humanist Essay’), Cuireadh chun na Triú Réabhlóide (‘Invititation to the Third Revolution’) is an exploration of the humanist aims of the 1916 Easter Rising and their enduring relevance.

Two essays first published in Doctrine and Life in 1966: ‘Irish Catholics and Freedom Since 1916’ and ‘The Terrible Beauty That Never Was’, with a new Foreword.
A collection of essays published by Ward River Press in 1983, including ‘Wrestling with Our Self-Image’, ‘From Modernisation to Decolonisation and Back’, ‘Bringing Ireland Into Line’, ‘Facts for Peace in the North’, and ‘A Language of Our Own’.
A 1973 collection of writing on Northern Ireland including ‘A Plea for Realism’, ‘Agreement with Major Bunting’ and ‘How Condominium Would Bring Peace’.

A pamphlet of new thinking on government and regional self-government, including several maps covering Connacht, Northern Ireland and Dublin. Published by the Association for the Advancement of Self-Government.
A collection of Sunday Press articles published between 1969 and 1971 and including ‘The Humanism of Easter 1916’, ‘Why I Care About Local Government’, ‘Must Dublin be the Political Capital?’ and ‘Government in Connacht’.
A 1972 pamphlet in which Fennell explores the topic of regional self-government and the case of the Faroe Islands.

The text of a lecture delivered to a Comhairle Uladh seminar in Monaghan on 6 August 1972 and in which Fennell makes the case for regional self-government.
A collection of key writings from the beginning of the Gaeltacht civil rights movement, including ‘Revival or Not? – The Courage to Decide’, ‘Iosrael in Iarchonnachta’ and ‘Connacht’s View of Itself’. Published in 1969.
A collection of writings from the Christian monthly journal Herder Correspondence, which Fennell edited from 1966 to January 1968. The book explores Irish Catholic history in the twentieth century and the impact of the Second Vatican Council and includes essays such as ‘How Irish is Irish Catholicism?’, ‘Irish Catholics and English Catholics’, ‘The Mind of Catholic Ireland’ and more. Published by Geoffrey Chapman in London in 1968.

A 1963 pamphlet containing writings on post-imperial Britain, including articles originally published in the Spectator and the New Statesman.
A 1961 pamphlet containing two essays on art in Ireland, ‘Onwards Modern Art?’ and ‘Design Against Art, or, The Temple Art of Ego Materialism’.
Fennell’s first book, published by Hutchinson & Co (London) in 1959. Mainly in Wonder contains his reflections on travelling in Europe, Asia and America in the late 1950s.

An extended pamphlet version of a series of articles published in the Irish Times between 5 and 10 May 1958 in which Fennell explored the lives of Catholics in Northern Ireland.