I have created a new site telling the story of the day Dr Mike Carney risked everything to return to the place of his birth, the remote Great Blasket Island, at the age of nearly 93. He was the last of his kind, the men and women who had grown up and worked on that windblown, isolated island of stories, where they spoke a form of Irish that had not been heard on the mainland for a century and still told each other the old tales by firelight every night for fun.
The day we took him back on a boat was extraordinary, and none of us were sure whether he would make it back alive. He was an inspirational man, who passed away at the weekend and is being laid to rest in Springfield, Massachusetts, tomorrow. Please find out more about the 93-year-old man who climbed out of a boat and onto an island by visiting www.thelastislandman.com.