Tim Hannigan
@timhannigan.bsky.social
Writer from Cornwall: #TheGraniteKingdom, #TheTravelWritingTribe, #ThePathlessLand (forthcoming), Indonesian history; academic stuff on travel writing. Teaches Writing & Literature at ATU Sligo.
Quoit, in the last of the daylight, November.
November 18, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Quoit, in the last of the daylight, November.
A perfect pairing of consistently excellent publisher (@littletollerbooks.bsky.social) with reliably brilliant and humane writer (@horatioclare.bsky.social), We Came by Sea is highly recommended. Best thing you could read on the so-called "migrant crisis" of the last few years...
November 15, 2025 at 11:06 PM
A perfect pairing of consistently excellent publisher (@littletollerbooks.bsky.social) with reliably brilliant and humane writer (@horatioclare.bsky.social), We Came by Sea is highly recommended. Best thing you could read on the so-called "migrant crisis" of the last few years...
Academic books don't often have covers worth revealing, but this one is pretty good. Samia Ounoughi & I have been working on this for about 100 years, but we've just sent the final proofs, so here's the cover & contents. Writing on the Move, due out from Berghahn early 2026. #travelwriting studies
November 12, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Academic books don't often have covers worth revealing, but this one is pretty good. Samia Ounoughi & I have been working on this for about 100 years, but we've just sent the final proofs, so here's the cover & contents. Writing on the Move, due out from Berghahn early 2026. #travelwriting studies
Heading west. Nice bit of rain overnight...
November 8, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Heading west. Nice bit of rain overnight...
The Granite Kingdom at the edge of winter.
November 2, 2025 at 7:15 PM
The Granite Kingdom at the edge of winter.
Great evening at Heligan last night chatting about Cornwall, history and more with @matthewmshaw.bsky.social and a lovely audience. Also got to see the spectacular Lowarnes fox sculpture by Sue and Pete Hill, a gargantuan presence leaping through the woods, worth the trip to Heligan just to see it!
October 30, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Great evening at Heligan last night chatting about Cornwall, history and more with @matthewmshaw.bsky.social and a lovely audience. Also got to see the spectacular Lowarnes fox sculpture by Sue and Pete Hill, a gargantuan presence leaping through the woods, worth the trip to Heligan just to see it!
Stone circling on a dank October afternoon.
October 26, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Stone circling on a dank October afternoon.
Ambition for next year's Liffey Descent: work on my facial expressions. (Me in the blue boat, Straffan Weir.)
October 25, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Ambition for next year's Liffey Descent: work on my facial expressions. (Me in the blue boat, Straffan Weir.)
All set for the #liffeydescent. Not much water in the river this year - the weirs are going to be a bit scrapey I reckon...
October 18, 2025 at 9:07 AM
All set for the #liffeydescent. Not much water in the river this year - the weirs are going to be a bit scrapey I reckon...
It is 1.15am and I have just finished the indexing for this cursed edited collection that has been haunting me for a hundred years ahead of tomorrow's deadline. I hope someday someone actually does go looking in there for "geopoetics" on page 151, I really do...
October 10, 2025 at 12:20 AM
It is 1.15am and I have just finished the indexing for this cursed edited collection that has been haunting me for a hundred years ahead of tomorrow's deadline. I hope someday someone actually does go looking in there for "geopoetics" on page 151, I really do...
Sad to hear of the death of Manchán Magan, a one-off who was somehow able to bring his authentic enthusiasms to a wide public. A shame there'll be no more of it, but I was glad this morning to be able to send a student starting a project on history, place and poetry in the direction of his books...
October 3, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Sad to hear of the death of Manchán Magan, a one-off who was somehow able to bring his authentic enthusiasms to a wide public. A shame there'll be no more of it, but I was glad this morning to be able to send a student starting a project on history, place and poetry in the direction of his books...
Thirty years on and still getting heavy rotation in this house... (I still marvel at the complex cultural transfer process that brought this sound from California via Australian surf videos all the way to the far west of Cornwall in the mid 90s.)
September 12, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Thirty years on and still getting heavy rotation in this house... (I still marvel at the complex cultural transfer process that brought this sound from California via Australian surf videos all the way to the far west of Cornwall in the mid 90s.)
Obligatory box of books photo. Not sure what I'm going to do with all these, but there's some really good stuff in here - if you're into that sort of thing...
September 4, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Obligatory box of books photo. Not sure what I'm going to do with all these, but there's some really good stuff in here - if you're into that sort of thing...
I once wrote a narrative account of a conference and explicitly moaned about the coffee even in that!
September 1, 2025 at 10:33 AM
I once wrote a narrative account of a conference and explicitly moaned about the coffee even in that!
Solving the Cornish housing crisis with planning noncompliant dwellings in parents' gardens since the 1980s.
(Upcycling too - slate & timber came off shed roof in a winter storm, bricks from a collapsed chimney, window from a refit of my dad's fishing boat, and underlay an old shower curtain.)
(Upcycling too - slate & timber came off shed roof in a winter storm, bricks from a collapsed chimney, window from a refit of my dad's fishing boat, and underlay an old shower curtain.)
September 1, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Solving the Cornish housing crisis with planning noncompliant dwellings in parents' gardens since the 1980s.
(Upcycling too - slate & timber came off shed roof in a winter storm, bricks from a collapsed chimney, window from a refit of my dad's fishing boat, and underlay an old shower curtain.)
(Upcycling too - slate & timber came off shed roof in a winter storm, bricks from a collapsed chimney, window from a refit of my dad's fishing boat, and underlay an old shower curtain.)
Homeplace in heartbreak season, the bridging days between August and September that can twist little love knots in your soul.
August 30, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Homeplace in heartbreak season, the bridging days between August and September that can twist little love knots in your soul.
reviewed @patrickgalbraith.bsky.social's excellent Uncommon Ground for the latest Resurgence & Ecologist. I had too much to say about this book to squeeze into 600 words, so ended up a bit incoherent. But suffice to say: highly recommended.
August 28, 2025 at 2:33 PM
reviewed @patrickgalbraith.bsky.social's excellent Uncommon Ground for the latest Resurgence & Ecologist. I had too much to say about this book to squeeze into 600 words, so ended up a bit incoherent. But suffice to say: highly recommended.
The Big Four of blokeish, Granta-affiliated, late-c20th literary travel writing. My principal readerly affections have drifted around between them over the years. Theroux was the gateway drug but never really a favourite. 1/3
August 27, 2025 at 8:34 PM
The Big Four of blokeish, Granta-affiliated, late-c20th literary travel writing. My principal readerly affections have drifted around between them over the years. Theroux was the gateway drug but never really a favourite. 1/3
Homeplace, August blues.
August 25, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Homeplace, August blues.
This - Buried at the Crossroads, by @cornishbirdblog.com - is highly recommended. If you've read her blog you'll know she has an uncanny knack for mining the highest grade of narrative ore from the Cornish archive. This little book does the same thing brilliantly in longer form.
August 23, 2025 at 7:19 AM
This - Buried at the Crossroads, by @cornishbirdblog.com - is highly recommended. If you've read her blog you'll know she has an uncanny knack for mining the highest grade of narrative ore from the Cornish archive. This little book does the same thing brilliantly in longer form.
Travel writers never go to the toilet... I left this out of the first draft, but C insisted I include it - so it's going in the book! Pushing the formal limits of the genre here...
August 13, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Travel writers never go to the toilet... I left this out of the first draft, but C insisted I include it - so it's going in the book! Pushing the formal limits of the genre here...
The Irish countryside appears completely devoid of footpaths. There's no legal mechanism for public countryside access here as you'd find elsewhere in Europe, certainly no right-of-way network. But there WERE paths. Just in this one tiny 2.5km2 patch of Galway countryside there are 5km of lost paths
July 29, 2025 at 8:07 AM
The Irish countryside appears completely devoid of footpaths. There's no legal mechanism for public countryside access here as you'd find elsewhere in Europe, certainly no right-of-way network. But there WERE paths. Just in this one tiny 2.5km2 patch of Galway countryside there are 5km of lost paths
Another example of how impoverished - and at the same time overpriced - Ireland's approach to countryside access is. 6km! And look at the what they expect the thing to look like! (Also, as ever, this puts the overblown rhetoric about the alleged "lack" of access in England and Wales in perspective.)
July 25, 2025 at 8:47 AM
Another example of how impoverished - and at the same time overpriced - Ireland's approach to countryside access is. 6km! And look at the what they expect the thing to look like! (Also, as ever, this puts the overblown rhetoric about the alleged "lack" of access in England and Wales in perspective.)