 old Irish series of books and the third one has just been released a third installment and loved by readers here in Ireland but also abroad and in this case they've found more photographic gems and then breathe new life into them in glorious colour and all of Irish life is in the book because there's pictures of an eviction in Clare going back to 1888 to devastating floods in Straban and a snapshot of working life in various parts of the country and famous faces as well from politics and the arts appear alongside just ordinary workers in different parts and in different jobs around the country. It's co-authored by Sarah Ann Buckley and would you believe it? John Breslin who joins me now on the line. John if you could just bear with me for one little second so I stuff some background noise here and and then we'll we'll have a chat about the the book so hopefully you can hear me okay now John. Good talk to you, how are you? Yeah good good good now this is the the third book so it sort of it captured our attention I suppose during during the pandemic but and there wouldn't be a third book of the first two weren't well received. I think that's that's pretty fair to say John yeah the um the first book is you know extremely well I think a lot probably more than we expected I know when we um we printed the first the first copies of the book we had 5 000 copies lined up and it went on to do 50 000 within a number of weeks in 2020 so it was a hugely unexpected um success but we've just been so happy with the sales obviously are one thing but just the impact it's had and you know the the positive response from people the stories about how it's connected people across generations you know um during COVID and grandparents connecting with their kids just telling stories about what life was like when they were young and kind of reminiscing over you know the various photographs in the book it's those kind of stories about the impact really have been the you know the most rewarding sales are great but I think the stories of how people have just really gotten into it and how have connected to the stories and the lives not just of the famous people but also the ordering people reflected in the photographs in the book it really has been amazing okay so the feedback has been has been good it all it all started out when you started doing a bit of research into your own family yeah so as you probably tell from the name and I've mentioned uh before my my uh my family are my dad's family are from Donegal so my my dad is from Glentys and um I have uh my uncle and two aunts the living in in Glentys as well so I shout out to them to Vinnie, Kathleen and to Josie but um I was actually doing some research into my own family you know I suppose it's one of those things you kind of do a certain times in your life you you try to research your family tree and I was looking at all the various places around Donegal that my family came from my great-grandfather was um from Kili Beggs originally and um he moved to Glentys uh with work and family but as part of that I came up with various photographs that were associated with my family members and uh I did try and you know do some colorization of those in Photoshop but I didn't really you know know how to go about it but on the same time there was a new tool called The Old Fight that came out and I played around with that and uh had some good results colorizing photographs not just family photographs but ones around me here in Galway where I live and um just shared them out in social media and the response was huge uh like people were kind of wow I can't can't believe this and I set up a dedicated social media channel called Olaren Color in 2019 um and just because it became so popular people said you know you should really do a book of these images um and of course when lockdown happened in March 2020 it just the time was right I reached out to Sarah and Buckley who I'd never met in fact um I you know I really I just kind of said who could I you know collaborate with I looked at our university website went through the various names there and Sarah and Profile just had the right kind of areas and combination of her background and her interest in family history and and childhood and social history and sent her an email and uh we we actually didn't meet for about two years we wrote the first two books together and it was only in I think September October 21 that we actually met for the first time after the first two books were finished so it was a real story of COVID remote writing remote watering yeah and I'm sure you you both have sort of your your areas of expertise and it seems like yours is in computing and the the colorization process and I'm guessing that Sarah and might be in you know history side of things and knowing what what colors would be appropriate and what they're most likely would be and that sort of thing yeah like Sarah is a historian you know she's an associate professor in university she's got a lot of expertise in the social history and childhood women and various projects that she's involved in but she also has a good uh network of people that she can tap into to you know help with things around let's say dress or clothes or those kind of things that you've mentioned you know the sort of the colors and so on there are various resources that Sarah and would have pointed us to there's a great book called Dress in Ireland which describes different eras in Ireland and the types of clothes people wore and and we would also do a lot of research into common dyes and you know colors that would be used at point in time you will never exactly know what color somebody wore there's no way to tell it from a black and white photograph you can get an idea that it's light or dark but you can't say okay you know it's a light red or dark blue but you will of course know the types of shades or popular points in time you know resources like dress in Ireland which kind of describe at periods in time you know the sort of the things that were popular you can use those as indicators there's paintings there's if it's a famous person or if it's some kind of um scene where somebody's wearing uniform it's fairly obvious in terms of well we know that x had blue eyes and we know that these uniforms were these colors you're getting towards something that's probably more representative of what it was like but having that kind of information that network of people you can tap into whether it's experts on military history or you know just people who are doing teases on you know types of dress people wore they're enviable to be able to give some context and help you with with the colorizations there there's something about having a color photograph and it just brings these old photographs to life some of them that were familiar with some of the the well-known people in particular were familiar with and then there's some other scenes that we would be familiar with that you've colorized and there's uh and and it just it just brings them to life and it brings us in a way uh closer to them and also it makes it somehow more more menacing in in some instances and i'm looking here at one of an eviction scene and it's dated 1762 but the fact that the the soldiers the famous red coats are there and with their blue helmets and there's so many of them it just makes it all all the more sort of oppressive to look at and more real yeah like i i find so that's a particular photograph from county clarion you there's a there's a passage in the background and there's this you know in the front garden you can see all of these the soldiers and i would have done a bit of research into kind of obviously you know we kind of know about the red the red coats and then and so on and we you know we would assume that's what they were wearing but i had to kind of find out what was regimental was and just get an idea for uniforms so on but what i found with that photograph is the black and white and the color version your your eye just tends to gloss over certain things in the black and white version and maybe it's me or maybe i think it's a kind of more of a general thing but you don't actually realize the scale of how many people there were how many soldiers are wearing that scene because you see the kind of people in the foreground and there's some kind of you know there's a mass of people in the background but when i had to go through and colorize each of those red uh coats it made me realize wow there's actually you know it looks like there's a hundred people there you know there's and then you see obviously the you know the the kind of the locals and you can see the people in the house but it really did i think strike home to me at least a lot more that the the force that was brought into into these situations to the people you know it's in color as you say it's a lot more striking and you make a good point in that we were more become more aware of the the detail in the photographs and i think that for photographs that we're already familiar with and even if it's a well-known people we just we well i just from glancing through the book i tend to look look at it closer and and and see things in the photographs that that i hadn't seen before and that it's probably it has to it has to do with the fact that they're now in color yeah i find especially things in the backgrounds that you kind of again you maybe don't notice they when they're in color they seem to pop out a bit more and i remember in our first book which is out down here back as well with there was a picture of tom kreen and he was sewing some seal skins with a colleague of his but in the background there was all the all of these shelves with different products you know like fries chocolate cocoa and there were some kind of tin cheese there was a you know pack of cigars and again your eye kind of you know it misses those details when it's a black and white it just robs we're used to seeing things in color so we you know maybe our brain just doesn't see them in the same way but when you actually highlight them and you or you actually add the colors to those kind of things your eye is drawn to as you say features that you wouldn't notice before and i think it's also that kind of connection it creates a greater empathy for for various scenes whether it's the eviction scene or just a regular and a day you have a greater connection to people in photograph one is in color absolutely and i'm just looking at one here a snowy scene actually from outside a woodlands house it is in the county waterford and itself of a sleigh behind two horses and just outside the front door it's a wonderful scene as well but there's we mentioned there about a famous scenes and and famous people there's plenty of those but also plenty of just ordinary scenes and and ordinary people in different parts of the country and different guises and you know at at work and at play they're sporting photographs and photographs as well from a broad irish abroad especially in america and and plenty to browse through the third edition old ireland in color three and it is out now and uh john thank you very much for for having a chat with us today john thanks for talking to me thank you very much we're turning this black friday red in the virgin media playhouse of offers see virgin media dot e