I have survived close on 30 years as a regional newspaper reporter without resorting to therapy, but I am ruling nothing in or out.

Occasionally, I get the impulse to push out my horizons, to try something different. In this context, the invitation from Mercier Press to write Hidden Kerry, The Keys to the Kingdom represented a freshly-stamped visa for me.

One of my first resolutions was to feature an equal number of women and men in the narrative: all characters to qualify for inclusion by virtue of having lived lives less ordinary.

At the outset, I have to confess to a serious handicap in my fitness for the task; I am one of the Killarney breed who drive our neighbours in Tralee, Dingle and Kenmare to distraction with notions that our lakeland valley is heaven itself. But the remarkable thing is that it practically is. See how the malaise can take hold and, take care.

One of the characters I fell for, Samuel Murray Hussey (1824-1913), an infamous landlord’s agent with a laconic sense of humour, stated “Do I not meet scores of people who tell me they would love to go to Kerry, but they have never been nearer than Killarney”.

With the likely charge of the opus being an alleged “Killarney book” at the back of my mind, I made it my business to roam far and wide into hinterlands where guesthouse signs and rental cars are as scarce as the proverbial hens’ teeth.

And, in the case of the main towns and well-known routes, I went beyond the surface appearances to narrate personal histories and to introduce remarkable local characters that you won’t find in brochures or guide books.

The context is roughly the 1500s through to the twentieth century; the eclectic pendulum of subject matter swinging with the verve of a Russian gymnast from the beheading of the Earl of Desmond in 1593 to a special birthday celebration for Big Bertha the cow in 1992.

Yes, I have played for laughs with many of my subjects, but the method to my humour was to stitch in more serious essays such as On the Edge, examining the origins of cillínigh, burial places for unbaptised children.

Though Kerry is known as the Kingdom, the county is far from a singular experience; there are kingdoms within kingdoms.

The easiest distinction to make is based on the southern and northern divide: south Kerry where generations survived on mountainy farms, pulled themselves up on the camera straps of dollared “Yanks”, composed poems or took the boat or plane, and north Kerry of historic Tralee, the great fertile plain, the milch cow, the writers, the balladeers and the Norman castles and estates.

Other little kingdoms include the mythical Sliabh Luachra floating to the east and famed for traditional music married to floor-pounding set dancing.

This book’s journey begins at Tarbert on the River Shannon, where many of the county’s early settlers made their entrance, and finishes close to the Cork border under the ancient twin peaks of the Paps Mountains.

Writing it was as good, if not better, than a semester at university for me. I refreshed my mind on half-forgotten dramas and discovered new places and characters. It gave me an appreciation of an era in Kerry history when Europe was possibly a far more palpable reality for our forebears through defensive alliances with the Catholic monarchies of France, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The north Kerry boyhood of Lord Kitchener of the iconic war recruitment posters; Jesse James’s ancestry in Asdee of the Moving Statues; the link between James Joyce’s family and Lixnaw; and the electioneering antics of “Tom Doodle” in Listowel all fascinated me.

Walking along Bromore cliffs outside Ballybunion on a still and frosty afternoon in November was one of the experiences which will remain with me. Another was listening to Ursula Leslie’s stories as the evening drew in around Tarbert House where scarcely a chair or a floor tile has been changed since the days when Benjamin Franklin, Charlotte Brontë and Daniel O’Connell crossed the threshold (obviously not all together).

To sit in the porch of Tony Walsh’s house on Valentia Island and to hear him relate stories such as a boat outing to the Great Blasket to dance sets in Peig Sayer’s kitchen was pure gold.

When I meet visitors who have taken a guided tour of the Dingle Peninsula, I ask them, “Did they tell you the one about the German commander whose U-boat surfaced in Ventry Harbour during the second World War to put a party of Greek sailors ashore?”

I knew about this humanitarian episode of old but the escape plan hatched for Marie Antoinette in Dingle was a find for me, even though it is so often recounted “back west” to be unremarkable; you see, a few mountain passes can make our little kingdoms insular.

Many Kerry people, myself included, had all but forgotten that Margaret Thatcher was descended from a Kenmare washerwoman until the story re-surfaced when she died.

Among the characters who stood out for me were Albinia Brodrick, who turned her back on society life in London to build a hospital near Castlecove on the Ring of Kerry; Cornie Tangney of Scartaglin who epitomised the spirit of individuality which once marked village life; Elizabeth Herbert, who threw up her aristrocratic life in Muckross House to run away with her lover; the spirited Misses Delap of Valentia Island, who could have featured in a Jane Austen novel; and Fr Francis O’Sullivan, a gun-running friar who was beheaded on Scariff Island by Cromwellian soldiers.

Some of the most moving stories I came across concern the suffering of Kerry people during the Famine.

One of Kerry’s greatest hidden treasures is its language: the Irish language as it is still spoken, mostly but not exclusively in the Gaeltacht areas, and the particular Kerry brand of Hiberno-English which draws heavily from the Irish. I have written principally about the latter. Bhain mé ard shult as seo (I got great enjoyment out of this). And the same can be said for my odyssey through my beloved, incomparable Kerry.

Hidden Kerry, The Keys to the Kingdom will be launched by Minister for the Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan TD at O’Connell House, 58 Merrion Square, Dublin, on Thursday, December 11th, at 5.30pm. RSVP essential to joyword@eircom.net