About the Author

Writer and artist Brian Lalor headed a team of nine hundred contributors as
General Editor of The Encyclopaedia of Ireland (2003), which won the Association
of American University Presses award for best reference work in the humanities, and the American Library Association listing as best single volume work of reference.

He is the author of books on architecture, travel and autobiography, many of which he has illustrated. Some of his more recent publications include a study of medieval architecture, The Irish Round Tower (1999), a fully illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1997), and The Laugh of Lost Men, an Irish Journey (1997).

In 2004 he won the International Swift Society Award for Juvenalian satire. Ink-
Stained Hands (2011) is a pioneering study of Irish twentieth-century printmaking. As a fine-art printmaker, his work has been exhibited internationally, and he lectures on the history of printmaking. In a previous incarnation he worked as a specialist in classical archaeology, and made important contributions to the archaeology of Jerusalem. He lives in West Cork.