In Camera- Francis Bacon Martin Harrison Thames & Hudson 2005 pp 256 ills 200 col/ills 75b/w h/b £35.00/ †58.40 ISBN 0 500 238200 Barbara Dawson Drawing on huge resources of source material, some of which has only recently come to light, as well as the database at the Hugh Lane, Martin Harrison convincingly explores the relationship between Francis Bacon and photography, between photographic source material and finished paintings. It is a relationship that evolved and endured for Bacon’s entire working life. It is the first authoritative book on the subject. The foremost authority on Francis Bacon until now, the late David Sylvester, in his publications including the famous Interviews with Francis Bacon alludes to preparatory material but the nature and extent of its influence is only now being analysed. When Francis Bacon’s studio and contents were wrapped up and transported to Dublin to the Hugh Lane few could have imagined the wealth of information the contents would yield on this great artist. Apart from brushes, paints and canvases, almost all of the 7,500 items catalogued contained printed images. Over a thousand photographs were found including works by Henri Cartier Bresson, Peter Beard and John Deakin. Bacon admitted he preferred to work from photographs rather than from the model and in the early sixties commissioned Deakin to take photographs of subjects including his close friends Henrietta Mores and Isabel Rawsthorne. In his constant quest to ‘trap the image’ Bacon drew on photographic image for inspiration. In the case of portraiture, the photograph also allowed his one remove from his subject, which freed him from any constraints when creating the distorted and often disturbing likeness. Harrison approaches his subject with an original and informed viewpoint. Bacon’s fascination with photography is thoroughly explored from the formal images taken by professional photographers to film stills to his love of the photo booth where he would take series of self- portraits as well as persuading friends to sit for the camera. Curiously he himself doesn’t appear to have used his own photographs and of the 1500 found in the studio, few are by Bacon. As Harrison points out the flat image helped Bacon prepare and rationalise his spaces. The interventions to the images as well as the folds and creases were also deliberate, again taking advantage of the two-dimensional surface to configure spatial compositions. In spite of the numerous books on Bacon (three biographies alone have appeared since his death in 1992 not to mention the exhibitions that have been mounted over the past five years) Harrison focuses his investigation on one area of Francis Bacon’s life that hithertofore has not been thoroughly explored and his expertise in the field of photography and film is evident, as is his empathy with the artist. The specific references and investigations into the found material and its relationship to his finished paintings are well informed. Some of the correlations may be tenuous but the more obvious ones, such as the relationship between the image of President Poincare in Baron von Schrenck Notzing’s extraordinary book The Phenomena of Materialisation and the image in the right hand panel of Triptych 1974-77 is almost verbatim. The book also presents us with a singular and informed view of the world in which Bacon lived and the British fascination with class is evident. The evolution of post war Britain is recounted though the innovative advances in photography and film, with new technology striding over traditional forms of visual practice. The resulting tensions between the commercial image and the tradition of figurative painting as it affected Bacon are presented with original insight. Self-taught and extremely protective where his art was concerned Bacon was always somewhat evasive about his methods. Harrison points to a reluctance to admit the extent of influence of the photographic image in his work ‘… a serious interest in the pariah, photography, was until the 1970s to invite deep suspicion’. It also highlights how conservative the British art establishment was, given what was going on both in England and in the US in the 1960s; Pop Art et al. This book, by removing some of the myths that surround the artist, some of which he himself did nothing to correct, brings Francis Bacon a step closer to us yet leaves his prodigious talent and achievement as mysterious as ever. Barbara Dawson is Director of the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane   William Orpen: Politics Sex & Death Robert Upstone with contributions by Professor R F Foster & David Fraser Jenkins Imperial War Museum/Philip Wilson 2005 ills 100 col /ills 25 b/w p/b £29.95; e44.00 ISBN: 1 904 897 215 Brian McAvera According to the cover notes on the back of the book, Orpen was ‘one of the great British artists of the first quarter of the twentieth century’. It is certainly true that by the early 1920s he was the most successful portrait painter of the period. According to Robert Upstone, between 1921 and his death a decade later, Orpen’s income varied between £27,000 and £45,000 per year, which were phenomenal amounts for the time. Whether income equals ability is another matter however. He was virtually forgotten within a few years of his death, and his resuscitation was largely brought about by a combination of dealer-led circumstances: the promotion of his work by Pyms Gallery in exhibitions such as the 1981 ‘Early Work’, the retrospective at Dublin’s National Gallery in 1978; and the biography by Bruce Arnold which was published in 1981 in conjunction with the Pyms' exhibition. Inflated selling prices are useful tools for the dealer and auction market – and have always been so. The question, as ever, is not financial. The real question is: how good an artist is Orpen? And the blunt response is that he had talent to burn, but didn’t have the means to make himself into a great artist. Robert Upstone, in a lengthy, very well-written essay which is full of interesting facts and observations, wants to see Orpen as a neglected figure of serious substance. However, in a long section on Orpen and War, although he gives us numerous details about Orpen’s negative attitudes to war, there is not a single argued case as to the worth of any specific war work. Both the First and Second World Wars produced major works from novelists, poets, film-makers and artists, but there is no case made here that Orpen was one of them. In relation to a section on Women, Nudes and Bodies – potentially the most interesting area to explore in terms of Open’s work, we are told that the artist must have been ‘driven by a strong erotic compulsion that appears linked in some way to his need to create pictures’, a comment that could be made about a rather large number of artists, but this is not explored. Much is made of the sensuality of his work in images such as The English Nude (1900) but of considerably more interest are works like A Woman (1906) and Early Morning (1922). These strike, in relation to the climate of the times in England, a very direct sexual note. Paintings like these indicate that Orpen was, occasionally, capable of casting off the corset of society manners and morals, and observing – and feeling – with a sharp observant eye. At the close of his essay Upstone cites John Rothenstein, specifically his chapter on Orpen in Modern English Painters, remarking that ‘its title made no recognition of the celtic or colonial origin of many of the artists covered’, but omitting to say that this very point was discussed in the introduction, or that Rothenstein had dwelt at some length on the early environments of those particular painters. The crux of Upstone’s argument was that Rothenstein was ‘vindictive and unremitting in his criticism’, and that this negative response influenced critics’ attitudes to Orpen for many years to come. Far from being ‘vindictive’, the chapter on Orpen is a highly sympathetic account of a man whom Rothenstein believed to be a highly talented painter who lacked the intellectual apparatus to become a great painter: ‘I have seldom known any man, and never a man of superior talents, with so little intellectual curiosity and so feeble an intellectual grasp, or with so contemptuous an attitude towards the life of the min.’ Upstone may not like that assessment, but even Orpen’s biographer acknowledged the artist’s intellectual limitations (See Arnold, p.406). Orpen had the hard work but he lacked the capacity to analyse which is why the so-called allegories are, for the most part, clogged collections of undigested symbols, or to put it more plainly, bad paintings. It is why the portraits rarely go beyond the spit and polish of surface and why the war works are a hodge-podge of occasional acute observation made by a man on an emotional rollercoaster; a man who lacks the capacity to stand back and sort out what he feels. In the second shorter essay, David Fraser Jenkins takes as his subject ‘Orpen, Ibsen and the plays within a play’. It’s an odd choice because as Jenkins himself says ‘Orpen was no more a mirror than was any other painter but more like the convener of an after-dinner charade in which his characters were amateur actors under his direction’. This is a sharp perception as most of Orpen’s genre pieces are just that: a playacting at scenes in the typical Victorian manner. What is odd therefore, is the attempt to link Orpen to Ibsen. For a start Ibsen was a proselytiser for social issues, and in particular for the emancipation of women. Orpen, like many of his class, simply used women (model, mistress and provider of food) and to suggest that he might have anywhere near Ibsen’s pioneering social instincts is just plain daft. At one point Jenkins refers to a comparison between Orpen and ‘modern (ie c.1900) theatre in the nature of…realism’, to which one would respond that there is ‘realism’ and ‘realism’, and the sustained ‘realism’ of, say, Ibsen, Shaw or even Galsworthy, does not bear comparison with the intermittent stabs of Orpen. The third essay is Roy Foster’s Orpen and the New Ireland which, as a scene-setter, would have benefited from being placed first. Although there is a marked overlap between Upstone’s essay and this one, Forster’s essay is an evocative one, drawing attention to the painter’s love of Synge and acutely noting the ‘devil-may-care sensuality’ of the Playboy of the Western World which appealed to Orpen. One suspects that Synge did on the stage what Orpen would have liked to do in paint. Overall, this is a readable, entertaining book with good plates, but it is not organised for reference use as there is no index; and although there is a list of exhibited works, the works are not cross-referenced to either the illustrations or the text. Brain McAvera is a playwright and an art critic.   Georgian Belfast 1750-1850: Maps, Buildings and Trades CEB Brett, Raymond Gillespie and WA Maguire (eds.) Royal Irish Academy, Irish Historic Towns Atlas, in association with The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society 2004 pp 88 fully-illustrated h/b €65.00 ISBN 1-904890-02-4 John Montague Sir Charles Brett, the pioneering Belfast architectural historian and conservationist, has built up what must be a unique intimacy with the materials as well as the subject of his research. The Georgian and Victorian architecture of his city was already much faded in his youth, and has been severely diminished as a result of the tragic destruction of the city in later years. A small portion of the materials for his research has been reproduced here for the first time. This is a collection of printed maps of the urban estate of the earls of Donegall, proprietors of the town, surveyed by Hodges and Smith of Grafton Street in Dublin, and first published by the Incumbered (as Brett insists) Estates Court in 1850. Brett later traced information about the leases of the Donegall family onto a volume of these maps, and it is these annotated plans that are reproduced here in full colour. This large-format book (41 x 31cm) is a companion publication to the excellent Irish Historic Towns Atlas’s (IHTA) previous fascicle of maps Belfast, part I, to 1840 (Royal Irish Academy, 2003). W A Maguire begins by introducing us to the prodigal Chichester family (earls of Donegall) and the effect their rising and waning fortunes had on the development of the town. While their neglect during the first fifty years of the 18th century led to the shrinking of the formerly prosperous town, similar neglect in the first half of the 19th century, ironically resulted in the heavy industrialisation of the nascent city. Somewhere in between the more attentive influence of the 5th Earl brought about the development of a Georgian town, now largely disappeared. Some of the personal circumstance by which the maps and other lease information came into the possession of the author, as well as an excellent illumination of the historical context and meaning of the maps, is provided by Brett himself. From an architectural point of view, many of the new leases contained explicit covenants on the nature and type of houses yet to be built. Nearly all of them included a description of the profession or trade of the lessee. A helpful directory of professions, and where each is located on the map and in the leases, has been included at the end of the volume. Brett’s pencil notes recording this information can be read on the maps reproduced, although the printed quality does not always match the clarity of the IHTA’s previous publication of a single folio from the same volume, making some of the pencil notes a little hard to read. The maps are accompanied throughout by a series of commentaries by Raymond Gillespie, one of the editors of the earlier Belfast fascicle. Alongside his essay is a generous number of comparative maps and illustrations of some of the former buildings and streets. These are located opposite the relevant lease maps, and are orientated for maximum legibility. The development of the early 17th-century town on the former medieval settlement to the south of what was to become High Street on the River Farset, through the first essays in Georgian planning – Donegall Street shifting the city northwards, and Donegall Square centred on the White Linen Hall, redirecting the city south – are explained by Gillespie. This can be followed in detail on the annotated maps and in the carefully chosen companion illustrations. Combined with the excellent supporting essays they form an enviable source of stimulation to future students of the city. John Montague is an architectural historian. He is currently doing a PhD in Trinity College, Dublin on John Rocque’s Exact Survey of Dublin (1756).   Irish Historic Towns Atlas Series No. 14 Trim Mark Hennessy, Anngret Simms, H B Clarke, Raymond Gillespie (eds.) Royal Irish Academy 2004 pp 16 ills 8pp col maps/ 4pp b/w maps and plates (folder cover) €30.00 ISBN 1-904890-01-6 Michael O’Neill Historical geography is an exciting academic discipline that over the last number of decades has done so much to enhance understanding of our past and indeed our present. Its resolutely interdisciplinary approach, garnering insights from documentary history, landscape studies, cartography, archaeology, architectural history and other cognate disciplines has produced breathtaking results. It is neither a closeted nor cloistered discipline as the popularity of such titles as Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape by Aalen, Whelan and Stout (1997 and reprinted several times since), and subsequent volumes such as Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne will testify. In a sense we all have to be historical geographers now. A rather longer running series is the Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA), under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy, which was set up in 1981. The first town atlas on Kildare was published in 1986. The town atlas on Trim under review is number 14 and to judge by the number in preparation or contemplated (more than 30), the series has some time to run. Each fascicle consists of a text, a number of maps and aerial and historical photography. When first approached the whole apparatus can seem dauntingly academic and terse, particularly the presentation of the topographical information. Having mined a number of volumes for information, this reviewer is constantly amazed at the quality and quantity of information conveyed by this concise and rigorously structured approach. The IHTA section on the Royal Irish Academy website has a useful discussion of how the fascicles are structured. Dr Mark Hennessy, one of Ireland’s leading historical geographers who cut his academic teeth, so to speak, on a study of medieval Co Tipperary, has produced a fine volume in this series on Trim, Co Meath. Hennessy writes extremely well and the reader is swept along with the historical narrative. One intriguing aspect of this study is the parallel that he draws with medieval Dublin. Both towns had a separate ecclesiastical and secular settlement before the Anglo-Normans, and Bishop Simon de Rochford chose an Augustinian priory to serve as his cathedral chapter after 1202, perhaps following the parallel of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. Another link is that the architecture of the nave of Newtown Trim Cathedral is an architectural satellite of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. The importance of the lordship of Meath with its caput at Trim was well understood by the English Crown and both Trim Castle and the lordship of Trim/Meath were regularly taken into royal hands for extended periods. A head stop in the chancel of St Patrick’s Church, wearing a ducal coronet, recalls Richard, Duke of York, who made Trim his vice-regal headquarters between 1440 and 1460. Trim was finally absorbed into the crown estates in the 15th century when Edward Plantagenet came to the throne in 1461. In the late 16th century Trim was suggested as the location for a university, with its defunct but still in repair Augustinian abbey suggested as a site. The site chosen was an Augustinian establishment, but in the more defensible Dublin. In the 18th century the ownership of Trim stayed resolutely in Protestant hands while the majority of the population remained Catholic. There was no one landlord patron, such as the Headfords in neighbouring Kells, or the Burys in Tullamore, Co Offaly. The diocesan free school, partly on the site of St Mary’s Abbey was an important early 18th-century development. The 19th century was dominated by the architecture associated with Trim’s function as the county town, including the County Gaol and Court House. However Trim remained off the main mail-coach and later canal networks and did not develop industries to supplement its market function. In 1906 the county council offices were moved to Navan. Thus the stunning medieval setting with 18th and 19th-century architecture did not come under serious threat until the later 20th century and the absorption of Trim into Dublin’s hinterland. Dr Hennessy’s important study is timely for our understanding of the historical, cultural and architectural heritage of Trim that is now under increasing threat. Dr Michael O’Neill is an architectural historian.   Norman Garstin: Irishman & Newlyn Artist Richard Pryke Spire Books 2005 pp 200 ills col 50/ ills b/w 30 h/b £ 34.95 / e50.30 ISBN 0 9543615 9 8 Maebh O’Regan In October 1984 Julian Campbell curated an exhibition in the National Gallery of Ireland entitled The Irish Impressionists. The catalogue was based on Campbell’s PhD thesis and it explored the work of a generation of Irish artists who studied on the continent between 1870 and the 1920s. This exhibition heralded a turning point in Irish art history as the following decades saw a reassessment of the output of a number of significant artists dating from this period. The most recent publication relating to this group of ‘Irish Impressionists’ is a large, well-researched Richard Pryke examining the life and work of Norman Garstin. The opening chapter looks at the artist’s career prior to taking up the painting profession. Born in Caherconlish, Co Limerick, in 1847, Garstin’s childhood was overshadowed by tragedy as his mother suffered a stroke shortly after his birth, and his father committed suicide when the artist was fourteen years old. Garstin sampled many different careers before painting: he studied engineering in Cork, architecture in London, and pursued diamond mining in South Africa where he also became a civil servant and a journalist. The late 1870s found him living the life of a country gentleman in Co Tipperary where a hunting accident resulted in the loss of sight in his right eye. This experience prompted him to travel to Antwerp to study art. Dr Pryke explores in layman’s terms the artist’s training in Antwerp and Paris and establishes the growing influence of Realism on his work. Garstin was an uneven painter, and the author went to great lengths to chart a chronology and examine the economic and social forces behind his development. The painter married Dochie Jones in July 1886 and the couple settled in Newlyn. While early works such as The Painter’s Wife (1887), The Rain it Raineth Every Day (1889), and Overdue (1889) were artistically successful, this did not always result in commercial success. The author cites the absence of Victorian sentimentality and the emotional isolation of his figures as possible reasons for the lack of sales. A coolness of temperature certainly does apply to Garstin’s masterpiece, The Rain it Raineth Every Day. This work is a visual delight, depicting figures sheltering under umbrellas on a windswept promenade. The painting rivals Degas’ work in its use of negative space, and the viewer is also captivated by Garstin’s lively sense of humour. An increasing family and the loss of a private income impacted upon the artist’s finances in the 1890s. Garstin turned to more exhibition-orientated subjects in order to boost family income. In 1899 Garstin established a summer school on the continent. The author emphasises how this brought out the best in the painter. He was a hard working tutor who established long-term friendships with his pupils, and his innate sense of fun guaranteed them an enjoyable and productive holiday. Students came from as far afield as New Zealand, and a significant number of the group, such as Mildred Anne Butler, Clare Marsh, and May Guinness were Irish. The summer schools had a positive affect on Garstin’s art-making practice as they provided him with an opportunity to paint on the continent. Small, portable works such as Madonna Lilies (1912) and Bright October, Delft (1904) demonstrate a freshness and immediacy reminiscent of the impressionist style and a move away from the daunting shadow found in his earlier paintings. These schools took place in small towns where the painter’s architectural education must have proved useful. His academic training is also evident in more distilled works such as Among the Pots (1911) a painting that shows the influence of his Antwerp training. The First World War brought division to the Garstin household. The artist was a ‘militant pacifist’ while his sons followed the family military tradition. In 1915 the painter joined the Independent Labour Party, an organisation that opposed Britain’s participation in the war. Both Garstin boys joined the army and his eldest son was killed at Archangel in 1918. This monograph on the work of Norman Garstin is well produced and provides an excellent insight into the artist’s life and career. The final chapter deals with the painter’s children, and forms an interesting closure to the biographical aspect of the work. However, the text would benefit from more detailed editorial attention, and certain images such as Temptation (1888), merited more analysis and discussion. Garstin was an interesting artist whose work is worthy of further attention and Dr Pryke is to be congratulated on this very informative volume. Maebh O’Regan lectures in the History of Art at the NCAD. The focus of her current research is 19th-century political art and Irish contemporary art practice.   The Manor in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland James Lyttleton & Tadgh O’Keeffe (eds.) Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2005 pp 219 ills b/w 54 h/b †50.00 ISBN 1-85182-746-3 Rachel Moss This book, published in association with the Group for the Study of Irish Historic Settlement, is a collection of new research on manors and manorial settlement in Ireland, covering the period from the late 12th to the 17th centuries. The authors, all recent graduates of Irish universities, have backgrounds in a number of different disciplines, reflected in the examination of different facets of the manorial system from archaeological, historical, geographical and geophysical perspectives. Studies on the nature of manorialism in Ireland have developed significantly since the pioneering work of Robert Glasscock, Brian Graham and Terry Barry in the 1970s and 1980s, revealing it to be far more complex than the traditional concept of motte, church and village as the focus for settlement in medieval Ireland. This complexity is due in part to the cultural differences between areas under Gaelic and Anglo-Norman control, but even within these cultural realms further regional distinctions are emerging. In acknowledgement of this diversity, the essays in this publication depart from what has been the more traditional approach of examining the country as a whole, to provide detailed case studies of six specific areas. In the first chapter Mark Keegan examines the archaeology of manorial settlement in West Limerick. Using a broad landscape-based approach, he examines patterns of settlement in the area, observing the relationship of mottes, moated sites and medieval churches to manorial centres. This methodology helps to emphasise the value of examining manors as a dynamic whole, rather than as clusters of individual archaeological site types. This is followed by Linda Shine’s essay, a study of the development of the manor at Earlstown, Co Kilkenny. Documentary research and architectural analysis of the medieval church and tower house are combined with topographical and geophysical surveys to shed new light on this hitherto little-known Co Kilkenny settlement. The barony of Slane provides the focus of Matthew Seaver’s chapter. Within the barony he concentrates on three settlements, the boroughs of Slane, Siddaun and Drumcondra. He examines the circumstances that led to their creation as boroughs and the development of their morphology, posing the question of what conscious or sub-conscious message these settlements would have conveyed to both Anglo-Norman and Irish Gaelic populations through the variations in their built fabric, and the manner in which it was used. Sinead Armstrong-Anthony looks at the transformation of Monasteroris from an Anglo-Norman manor to Plantation estate. Her discussion of the standing remains and establishment of a Franciscan house here during the 13th century highlights the need for further research on monastic field systems, and the agricultural buildings associated with both friaries and castles. Brian Shanahan’s essay deals with the manor in east Co Wicklow. The development of the manorial system from the 12th to the 17th centuries is examined, emphasising the role of the manor as a colonial tool. The changing form of aristocratic residences and their impact on the surrounding landscape is documented to demonstrate the changing concerns of the ruling classes in the area. Finally, William Roulston provides an account of castles, towns, villages and rural settlement in the barony of Strabane, Co Tyrone in the context of plantation and land ownership in the seventeenth century. In his summing up, Tadhg O’Keeffe, an established scholar in the field of medieval settlement in Ireland, critiques research in Irish medieval settlement studies over the last few decades. This provides a framework against which the reader can determine how the conclusions drawn by the various authors contribute to the bigger picture, something that is unclear from the individual essays themselves. What the essays do contribute is confirmation of the complexity that defines the nature of Irish medieval settlement, highlighting the challenges in this field of scholarship that lie ahead. The bringing together of a collection of new studies with such a broad disciplinary and geographical focus as these would seem, however, to be a good place to start. Dr Rachel Moss is a lecturer and archivist at the Irish Art Research Centre, Trinity College, Dublin.   The Royal Dublin Society 1815-1845 Kevin Bright Four Courts Press, 2005 pp 282 ills 16 col ills 12b/w; charts & tables h/b †45.00 ISBN 1-85182-813-3 Brian Lalor Kevin Bright in this study of the RDS concentrates on a very brief period in the history of the institution (founded 1731, designated Royal from 1820) and fast approaching its 300th anniversary. Pinioned between the Act of Union in 1800 and the Great Famine of 1845, the years under examination were ones of succeeding crises, with the society being repeatedly challenged regarding the directions in which it should concentrate its efforts, concerning its internal structure, and its relationship with government. What Bright has managed to do is to conjure a considerable drama from the administrative records of the society and to show with compelling relevance, how the relationship of a client organisation to the hand of government is always an uneasy one. The resonances which the struggles of the RDS have for similar bodies today gives the book a continuing relevance to the interaction of contemporary cultural organisations and the mechanism of state funding. The purchase in 1815 of Leinster House as a base for its operations brought an increase in membership and provided an ideal venue from which the society could engage in its many activities; the fostering of the arts and sciences, the development of its museum collections, library and botanical gardens, and the provision of important series of free public lectures. The Dublin parliament had been generous in its funding of the society, but Westminster was considerably less so, and the annual grant decreased over the period, making it more difficult for the RDS to pursue its enlightened programme. A climax in the society’s difficulties was reached in 1835 following the rejection of Daniel Murray, Catholic archbishop of Dublin, nominated as a member, but rejected in an open vote. A parliamentary committee of enquiry was established but this was inconclusive in its findings. Despite a rise in Protestant Evangelical as well as militant Catholic sentiment following Emancipation in 1829, the otherwise non-partisan membership were more probably swayed by animosity to the policies of Daniel O’Connell (whom Murray supported) than by more sinister sectarian motives. A further controversy was over the right of the RDS to provide newspapers in its News Room. This seemingly innocent practice was perceived by Dublin Castle as a dangerous harbouring of journals of radical influence, leading in 1841 to the temporary withdrawal of its grant; ‘the admission of newspapers has a tendency to lower the character of the Society’! This is a fascinating examination of a formative period in both Irish and institutional history, showing the efforts of a body of philanthropically inclined individuals, dedicated to promoting the wellbeing of the community. It is accompanied by numerous high quality illustrations, and significantly, a series of detailed appendices on the makeup of the membership which provide revealing reading. Between the all-too-plentiful lawyers and clergy there is an interestingly democratic sprinkling of merchants - in glass, calico, tobacco, wool, soap and flour, as well as an insurance broker, coach builder, druggist and iron founder. In this important history of the RDS, the emergence of modern Ireland can be studied in microcosm. Brian Lalor was General Editor of The Encyclopaedia of Ireland (Gill & Macmillan, 2003), and is chairman and a director of the Graphic Studio Dublin.