Galway has taken a battering in recent years. In the great transfer window of life and death, we have been lifted by the gifts of our superclub of artists, dreamers and doers, and yet we have also lost so many of the people who shaped the city’s spirit.
This past week, we have been asked to say goodbye once more—this time to one of Galway’s quiet but mighty pillars, a man who was far more than the sum of his titles. With the passing of Des (Dessy ) Kenny, we have lost not just a bookseller, but a custodian of culture, a keeper of stories, and a man who believed profoundly in the connection between a person and the book that might change their life.
Born in Salthill to Maureen and Des Kenny, and steeped from childhood in the magic of a bookshop that would become an Irish institution, Dessy spent his life in service of words and the people who needed them. Kenny’s Bookshop—opened by his parents in 1940—was not just a shop. It was a stage, a sanctuary, a crossroads of ideas.
To enter it in the days when Maureen was at the front desk was to step into a grand play. Somewhere among the towering shelves and cavernous rooms, you would find Des: glasses perched, mug of black coffee nearby, desk piled high with papers and books like a scholar’s fortress. At the back, in the gallery, you’d meet Tom. All around in various nooks and crannies, other members of this remarkable family played their part in a cultural performance that ran, uninterrupted, for decades. And we, the people of Galway, were lucky enough to wander through that living set.
But Des was never merely a bookseller. He was a matchmaker of minds. Long before algorithms claimed to know our tastes, Des had already mastered the art of reading a person as carefully as any novel. He knew what people liked—sometimes before they did. Through the legendary Kenny’s Book Club, he sent monthly parcels of books to readers across the world, many of them in the US, carefully wrapped (often in pages of the Galway Advertiser, which ensured our local stories found their way to distant corners of the globe ). These parcels were curated with instinct, empathy, and an almost uncanny sense of who the recipient was. He never received returns. He never needed to.
He was the human forerunner of Amazon—if Amazon cared, truly cared, about its readers.
Des’s understanding of the power of words extended far beyond the confines of the bookshop. He brought colour to those who could not see, through the Galway Echo, a monthly cassette tape he created for the blind in conjunction with UCG. On it, he interviewed authors, musicians, and artists. Christy Moore sang. Writers spoke. He read news, offered practical advice, introduced voices and visions to those who had lost their sight. Later in nursing homes, he brought entire unreachable worlds to people whose own worlds had grown smaller. Hundreds of blind and elderly listeners found comfort in these tapes and talks—comfort delivered in his warm, steady voice.
In his final years, at St Mary’s Nursing Home, he returned this gift full circle. He visited the residents weekly, reading poetry and short stories, listening to their requests, sharing the same passion that had lit up Kenny’s for generations. And in that very place—surrounded by exceptional care, by people who loved him, by the Galway he always served—he passed peacefully on December 2.
Des was also an accomplished writer. His long-running column Biblio in this newspaper, the Galway Advertiser was a weekly masterclass in clarity, humour, and humanity. On Kennys website, Dessie’s Diary offered book reviews that meant the world to young authors whose early chapters he helped turn. Many writers owe their courage to him. Donal Ryan, after receiving a discouraging sales call about his debut, was lifted instantly when Des rang him: “Come up and sign all the copies you have,” he said. “Your book is wonderful. And you’ll be longlisted for the Booker Prize.” Des was right. He often was.
He researched and published Kenny’s Choice: 101 Irish Books You Must Read, a tribute to his parents and to the literary life they began. He understood that a book is never just a book. It is a conversation between writer and reader, and he saw his task as easing the introduction.
Fluent in French (from his time in the Sorbonne ), immersed in French jazz, a regular walker of the Salthill Prom, a marathon runner, a man who could often be found perched on a high stool in his local pub with a book—Des lived the life he believed in. Quiet, steady, curious, warm, often gruff in the way only the kindest people can be gruff—he cultivated not only books but relationships. He was a behind-the-scenes man who strengthened the scene itself. I remember his encouragement when I arrived in his door in the early 1990s with a box of one of my early books, Kittyland about student life in Galway. He ensured he gave it prime space on the shelves and he sent many copies around the globe.
With Anne, the love of his life since 1976, he raised four children—Deirdre, Dessy, Aisling, and Eimear—passing on the gift of storytelling to them and to his eight grandchildren, Árón, Marc Óg, Darragh, Deasúin, Ella, Emily, Frankie, and Andie. He is mourned deeply by his brothers Tom, Gerry, and Conor, his sister Monica, and by an extended family, a community, and a city that feels smaller without him.
The tributes that have poured in are remarkable but unsurprising. They speak of his kindness, his generosity, his wisdom, his instinct, his laugh, his slagging, the way he made everyone—writers, customers, neighbours, visitors—feel part of Galway’s great cultural heartbeat. “He made the world a better place,” one message read. It is hard to imagine a fuller epitaph.
Galway has indeed lost one of its quiet pillars. But the truth is this: every time someone opens a book chosen by Des, or walks into Kenny’s Bookshop and feels that unmistakable hum of curiosity, or passes a parcel wrapped in old newspaper pages, or listens to poetry with closed eyes and an open heart—he is still here.
He may well be doing book reviews in heaven, muttering about “bloody technology,” black coffee in hand, telling stories, recommending novels, and matching souls to pages.
Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.
Solas na bhFlaitheas dá anam uasal.
