Manchán Magan

Manchán Magan (20 August 1970 – 2 October 2025) was an Irish author, traveller, broadcaster and documentary maker. His works covered a wide range of topics, particularly the Irish language, culture, and the natural world.

Early life Magan was born on 20 August 1970 in Donnybrook, Dublin, and brought up in an Irish-speaking family there. His father, Michael, was a radiologist at St James’s Hospital. His mother, Cróine, is the daughter of Sighle Humphreys.

Magan went to Mount Anville Montessori School before attending Gonzaga College in Ranelagh (he also spent one year in Coláiste na Rinne). He later studied Irish and history at University College Dublin. After graduating, he travelled over-land to Zaire (present day DR Congo), which inspired his first book, Manchán ar Seachrán. He was also a distant relative of Aogán Ó Rathaille, the last great poet of the Bardic school. He explored these connections in various documentaries for TG4 and RTÉ.

Career

He presented No Béarla, a documentary series about travelling around Ireland speaking only Irish and wrote regularly for The Irish Times.

His television series included Crainn na hÉireann, a 10-part series on the trees of Ireland, and An Fód Deireanach, a four-part series for TG4 about Irish bogs and peatland.

Magan made over 70 travel documentaries focusing on issues of world cultures and globalisation, 12 of them packaged under the Global Nomad series with his brother Ruán Magan.

Magan also presented Manchán's A-Z of Ireland, a 5-episode road trip around Ireland unearthing unusual and unique aspects of Ireland’s natural heritage, and two series of The Almanac of Ireland, which explored the quirks, conundrums and wonders of Ireland’s cultural heritage. Both series were produced by Colette Kinsella of Red Hare Media and broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 and on podcast platforms.

Magan hosted the podcast Home Stories, a series of chats with people living in Direct Provision Centres in Abbeyleix, Emo, Mountrath and Athlone. The chats were edited by Lauren Varien with music by Brían MacGloinn (of Ye Vagabonds) and Myles O'Reilly.

In 2024, he released a series of extracts of talks by the late John Moriarty, the County Kerry philosopher, in podcast form: The Bog Shaman: Manchán Magan on Moriarty.

Activism

He stood for the Green Party in the Longford–Westmeath constituency in the 2016 Irish general election; he received the 11th highest first preference votes (1104, 2%) of the 18 candidates and was eliminated on the eighth round.

In 2022, Magan released a cover of Kneecap's song "C.E.A.R.T.A" to help raise money for a volunteer gym in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, Palestine.

He served on the board of Hometree, a nature restoration charity based in the west of Ireland.

Personal life

He built and lived in a straw-bale house, which he removed and replaced with a mud and cement, grass-roofed house, in County Westmeath.

In 2012 he spent time as a writer in residence with the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris.

Illness and death In an interview on 13 September 2025, Magan revealed he had terminal prostate cancer, that had spread to multiple organs in his body.

Magan died in Dublin on 2 October 2025, at the age of 55. He married his partner of 11 years, Aisling Rogerson, six weeks before his death.

On the one month's memorial of his death, around 2,500 people gathered on the ancient Hill of Uisneach to honour his life by scattering his ashes.