There is a particular kind of longing that only the Irish abroad understand. It is the ache of watching a YouTube clip of rain on Galway Bay and feeling something shift in your chest. It is the way a song on the radio — played in a kitchen on the other side of the world — can bring you home in an instant.
For some Irish people living away from home, that longing becomes something they turn into words. They write about Ireland not as tourists passing through, but as people who carry the place inside them — people who know what it is to miss a country, and who want to share that Ireland with the world. These are the diaspora travel writers: Irish voices telling Ireland’s story from afar, and doing it magnificently.
Why Diaspora Writers Tell Ireland Differently
There is a reason visitors often say the most moving writing about Ireland comes not from locals, but from those who have left. Distance does something extraordinary to perspective. When you are not surrounded by Ireland every day, every return becomes charged with meaning. The things that locals take for granted — the particular slant of light in September, the rhythm of conversation in a country pub, the way the countryside changes as you cross from one county into the next — become the very things worth writing about.
Diaspora travel writers also carry something invaluable: the dual perspective. They understand Ireland from inside, as Irish people, and from outside, as people who have lived elsewhere. That combination produces writing that is both intimate and illuminating. Here are four Irish writers whose work about Ireland — and about the experience of being Irish in the world — is well worth your time.
Dervla Murphy — The Writer Who Made the Road Sacred
It is impossible to write about Irish travel writers without beginning with Dervla Murphy. Born in Lismore, County Waterford, in 1931, Murphy spent over five decades producing some of the most celebrated travel writing in the English language. Her debut book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle (1965), recounted the journey she had dreamed of as a child — cycling alone from Dunkirk all the way to India through Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. She was thirty when she finally made the trip, carrying a pistol and an iron determination.
Though Murphy lived most of her life in Lismore, she wrote in the great tradition of the Irish wanderer — someone for whom home is both a place to love and a place to leave, so that returning can be seen with fresh eyes. Her memoir Wheels Within Wheels describes the Waterford of her childhood with the same sharp, unvarnished honesty she brought to every remote valley she ever crossed on foot or horseback.
Murphy passed away in 2022, leaving behind 25 books and a generation of travel writers — many of them Irish — who cite her as the reason they first put pen to paper. She won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the Edward Stanford Award, and the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness Award, among many others. If you have never read her, start with Full Tilt. You will understand immediately why Ireland produces writers who can make a road feel like a calling.
Johnny Ward — One Step 4Ward from Kilkeel
Johnny Ward grew up in Kilkeel, County Down, in Northern Ireland. He now lives, more often than not, in Thailand — though “lives” is perhaps too stationary a word for a man who became the first person in the world to visit every country on earth and complete what he calls the Ultimate Explorer’s Grand Slam: all 197 countries, the Seven Summits, and the three poles.
His blog, One Step 4Ward (onestep4ward.com), began as a simple travel diary and became one of the most widely read travel platforms in the world. CNN profiled him as a millionaire who built his fortune through a passion for travel. But what makes Ward worth following for a Love Ireland audience is not the record books or the business story — it is the way he writes about home. When Ward returns to Northern Ireland, you feel the particular warmth of someone who has seen everything the world offers and still finds something irreplaceable in the light over the Mourne Mountains.
He has appeared on RTÉ discussing his home island with the same clarity and affection he brings to every corner of the globe. In a world of travel content that often chases novelty, Ward’s voice on Ireland is a reminder that extraordinary places are sometimes found on familiar roads.
Benny Lewis — Connecting the World Through Irish Curiosity
Benny Lewis from County Cavan is perhaps best known as the man who can learn a language in three months — or at least, who has spent twenty years trying and getting remarkably good at it. His bestselling book Fluent in 3 Months (HarperCollins) has been translated into a dozen languages and turned Fluent in 3 Months (fluentin3months.com) into one of the most visited language and travel sites in the world. National Geographic named him their Traveller of the Year in 2013.
What connects Lewis to the great tradition of Irish storytelling is his central conviction: that the best way to know a place is through its language, and that curiosity about people is a form of respect. This is a very Irish idea. The Irish have always been talkers, listeners, and collectors of other people’s stories. Lewis has simply taken that instinct and carried it into twenty-plus languages across six continents.
His writing about Ireland is refracted through the lens of a man who has seen how the world sees the Irish — with warmth, with fascination, with a particular fondness that he documents with great pride. He brings the same linguistic precision and cultural honesty to Irish identity that he brings to everywhere else he travels.
Niall Doherty — The Irishman Who Crossed the World Without Flying
In September 2011, Niall Doherty left his home in South Kilkenny with a modest goal: to travel around the world without setting foot on an aeroplane. Three and a half years, thirty-seven countries, and one crossing of the Pacific by cargo ship later, he arrived back in Ireland having done exactly that. He documented the entire journey online and compiled his experience into a book — all while running an online business from hostels, ferries, and borrowed desks.
Doherty’s blog has evolved over the years — it now operates as eBiz Facts (niall.bio), a resource for online entrepreneurs — but his travel writing from those years remains a remarkable document of what it means to leave Ireland with almost nothing and to see the world slowly, carefully, and by land and sea. He was recognised by Matador Network and HuffPost as one of the significant voices in slow travel.
What makes Doherty’s work quietly compelling is the honesty about identity that runs through it. Departing from South Kilkenny and ending back there, he wrote about Ireland not as an idealised homeland but as a real place — the kind you appreciate properly only once you have spent years away.
The Common Thread
What connects Dervla Murphy cycling through Afghanistan, Johnny Ward standing at the North Pole, Benny Lewis learning Mandarin in a Shanghai night class, and Niall Doherty crossing the Pacific on a cargo ship? All four left Ireland carrying something of home with them, and all four wrote about Ireland in a way that only distance makes possible.
There is a saying that you never really know a place until you have left it. For these four writers, leaving Ireland was the beginning of understanding it. Their work is not just about travel — it is about what it means to be Irish, and why the rest of the world has always been drawn to the people who carry that identity into every corner of the earth.
For more on the people and stories that have shaped Ireland’s place in the world, you might enjoy our piece on Grace O’Malley, the Irish queen who faced down Tudor England, or discover why Irish whiskey almost disappeared entirely — a story of loss, resilience, and return that feels very Irish indeed. And if you want to understand why so many Irish people left in the first place, our guide to Samhain and Ireland’s deep cultural roots offers a sense of the world the emigrants carried with them.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is considered the most celebrated Irish travel writer?
Dervla Murphy (1931–2022) from Lismore, County Waterford, is widely regarded as the most celebrated Irish travel writer. Over five decades she produced 25 books and won numerous international awards including the Edward Stanford Award and the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness Award. Her debut, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, remains a landmark of the genre.
What is the Irish diaspora and how large is it?
The Irish diaspora refers to the global community of people who emigrated from Ireland and their descendants. Estimates suggest over 70 million people worldwide claim Irish heritage, with large communities in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Argentina. Mass emigration began in earnest during the Great Famine of 1845–1852 and continued throughout the twentieth century.
Why do Irish people abroad write so much about home?
Distance gives Irish writers abroad a dual perspective — they understand Ireland intimately as Irish people, while also seeing it through the eyes of someone who has lived elsewhere. This combination often produces especially vivid and reflective writing about Irish culture, landscape, and identity. Many Irish writers have noted that leaving Ireland was what allowed them to truly understand it.
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