We are Mayo - Tom Brett & Sean Rice

'We are Mayo’ is a coffee-table style book built around a simple formula incorporating sections dealing with our geographic location in the world, our history, our infrastructure, our sporting and other legends both young and old – all brought together by the great accident of our birth or choice of residence in our unique and beautiful county on the west coast of Ireland.

One of the outstanding success stories in bringing this entire project to completion has been the contributions from a long list of professional and non-professional photographers, all extremely generous with sharing their beautiful images of our county. Your collective generosity and skill have enhanced the quality of the book in a manner that the written word could never hope to achieve.

The authors hope that for years to come your unique photographic contributions will be acknowledged, admired and treasured by all who come to read ‘We are Mayo’. We want you individually to cherish your role in this production and rightfully feel proud in sharing your photographic talents with readers around the world.

Ireland’s First Lady, Sabina Higgins, has provided a fitting foreword to the book reflecting on her own childhood and adolescence in the Ballindine area of south Mayo. Being from a similar generation, the authors can relate to everything she has written – it is a lovely encapsulation of the days of our Mayo youth.

Reaching out to the Mayo diaspora

‘We are Mayo’ seeks to reach out to all Mayo people – those living not only in Ireland and Britain but also to the very large, worldwide Mayo diaspora who for various reasons now live their lives in places far away from County Mayo and the country of their birth and youth.

The title ‘We are Mayo’ was chosen quite deliberately because it reflects that common bond that exists between all Mayo people, what helps unite us in good days and bad days, something that hopefully will never leave us.

We wanted to develop a high quality photographic and written record of the many facets of our beautiful county that would demand a special place in the bookcases of not just family homes but also in local libraries, hotels, guest-houses, pubs, cafes.

Book covers

We hope you like the images chosen for the covers of ‘We are Mayo.’  The front cover image is the traditional green and red Mayo jersey worn by Eamonn Brett on making his Mayo debut at right half back in the 1974 All Ireland minor final loss to Cork. The back-cover image by Brian Wilson shows a night-time photo of the iconic Dun Briste silhouetted by the Aurora Borealis in faint Mayo colours!