Welcome!Thank you for visiting my webpage. My name is Michael Collins, I am a priest and author, living in Dublin, Ireland, with a passion for history, arts, culture and travel writing. I hope these pages are useful if you would like to get in contact with me.
With good wishes, 
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My most recent book was published in November 2024, a short biography of Blessed Carlo Acutis, a young teenager who died at the age of 15 in 2006 and whom Pope Francis will canonise on 27 April 2025. It is a simple story about an uncomplicated young man who lived out his Catholic faith with extraordinary generosity and kindness.
Newman and Raphael’s World
NEWMAN A Short Biography, published in 2019 by Messenger Publications, was written to mark the canonisation of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th century theologian. RAPHAEL’S WORLD, published also by Messenger Press, was written in 2020 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of the High Renaissance painter, Raphael Sanzio da Urbino.
Travel and Books that Changed History
I was delighted when Dorling Kindersley accepted my proposals for two books which were published in 2017. These came from my twin passions of travelling and literature. Journey and Books That Changed History, were both published by Dorling Kindersley in the USA and UK.and have now been translated into several languages.
The idea of Journey occurred to me one day while packing a suitcase for a week-long trip to Córdoba, Seville and Granada. As I surveyed all the items I tried to pack into a small case, I wondered how our ancestors managed. As I travelled through southern Spain, I kept thinking how humans first lived in caves in north-east Africa and early travel was for only for hunting, fishing and trade. These expanded as humans herded flocks which needed to move from winter to summer pastures. Rivers, initially a source of water and food, became highways when humans invented the raft and subsequently the sail which allowed them push across oceans. The wheel also permitted them transverse vast distances, spanning valleys with bridges and long terrains with roads. Pilgrimages, invasions, incursions, sieges, exploration, all have played their part in human expansion across the globe. The Age of the Grand Tour was one of the most elegant periods of travel. More recently, the trauma of human trafficking and enforced migration has captured the headlines. My final frontier is the galaxy, which grows ever more complex the more we explore it. With a team of talented writers we have put together the fascinating story of humanity’s journey.
Books That Changed History (sample pages below) came about from my love of books. An ancestor onmy father’s side, Henry Jones, was a 17th century Bishop of Meath. When he became Vice- Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin in 1663, he donated two oak staircases for the Great Library and gave the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow to the university. I can trace my love of calligraphy and art to those books.
My initial idea with Dorling Kindersley was to explain though example how writing was invented on clay tablets in Sumeria and later transmitted through papyrus, parchment, paper and ultimately to the computer. We then expanded that by choosing some eighty books which use the various media, explaining to the reader the history behind these wonderful volumes
