GALWAY: Hardiman & Beyond is a splendid new history of the Irish city, for release in celebration of James Hardiman’s classic 1820 account of its origins and its recognition today as a European City of Culture.

Edited by John Cunningham& Ciaran McDonough and with over 30 contributors, this book tells the story of cultural and artistic endeavour in Galway over the past 200 years. Starting with Hardiman’s exceptional cultural contribution, it includes original studies of the dynamic Galway arts scene of recent decades. The writers include Lionel Pilkington on theatre since the 1950s, Anna Falkenau on the traditional music scene in the 1960s and 1970s, Ann Hodge on representations of Galway in art, and Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh with the tantalisingly titled ‘Verdun or Heidelberg? Cultural visions for early Free State Galway’.