Dublin – the Buildings of Ireland Christine Casey Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2005 pp 756 ills 120 col with sketch drawings & plans h/b €48.00/£29.95 ISBN 0-300-10923-7 Peter Pearson ‘A detailed, comprehensive and incisively written gazetteer.’ These are the words from the fly-leaf of Christine Casey’s new book on Dublin city’s buildings and architecture, a bible-thick, 750-page volume designed to be used as a guide; the latest in The Buildings of Ireland series, published by Yale, which aims to cover the whole country, when eventually completed. The books follow a format laid down by Nikolaus Pevsner and Alistair Rowan and are companions to a similar series on the buildings of England, Scotland and Wales. Dublin is the third Irish volume, following those on north-west Ulster and north Leinster. Publishers are fond of making lavish claims on the covers of their books, but in this case words like ‘uniquely comprehensive’ are no exaggeration. Each page is densely packed with relevant information, where the author’s tight but elegant writing style serves this type of book very well. The book is indeed comprehensive and everything now standing in Dublin is included from the expected great public buildings to the modest artisan dwellings (demolished buildings, unless they are of great significance like say Nelson’s Pillar, are not dealt with). The stunning, the mediocre, the dreary and even the ugly are there, and the author usually lets us know what she feels about them. Though most of the text is concerned with historical fact, dates and descriptions, there is quite a lot of aesthetic analysis and personal judgement made about the merits or otherwise of buildings and their design, alterations or even restoration. This discussion adds interest to the book, especially because many of the buildings have been written about before, in some shape or form. For instance, we are left in no doubt that the author is unimpressed by the Spire in O’Connell Street with its ‘clearly visible joints and nasty mirror-patterned base’! The 20th century is well represented in the book and Christine Casey is even-handed in her assessment of it achievements. The 19th century is also strongly represented and much new information about architects, builders and occupants is provided. Here too, the depth of detail is astounding; both in the historical research and the description of the buildings. There are also frequent references to similar contemporary structures in England or elsewhere which help to provide a broader context for the architecture. Mountjoy Prison for instance, is analysed with reference to other Victorian ‘radial plan’ prisons. While we are reminded, with some irony perhaps that ‘the interior is inaccessable’, we could also have been told that the future of this impressive building is in some doubt, as there are plans to move the prison elsewhere; but that would be to stray into territory which such a book avoids. Indeed there is so much descriptive detail of the finer buildings in Dublin that there would hardly be enough space for chapter and verse on how close so many of them came to being demolished and swept away altogether. Personally, I would like to have heard more about the unending campaigns in which voluntary groups persisted for the last forty years, to prevent the destruction of so much of Dublin city, as some younger readers might just think that all of this wonderful architectural heritage just survived all by itself. However, the politics of conservation is not the subject of this book, but as in the form of an inventory, it is a guide or gazetteer to what may be seen now, street by street, area by area. In this task it succeeds superlatively. The organisation of the book follows a logical sequence, with an introduction, leading on to the description of churches, then public buildings and finally the streets. The streets are arranged in alphabetical order. Once familiar with this system, the book is easy to use, with one or two exceptions: the bibliography, or ‘further reading’, is buried on page eighty at the end of a very detailed, incisive and comprehensive eighty-page introduction! Also, I had difficulty finding the text about the Halfpenny Bridge (not listed in the index), but eventually discovered that there is an excellent section devoted to the Liffey Bridges at the back of the book! But these are minor points. Dublin is far more than a very large pocket guide; it is the ultimate reference book on the city’s built heritage, as it stands in 2005. It is essentially an academic work of great scholarship, and sometimes one regrets that such well presented, concise work had to be squeezed into such a narrow volume. However, it is the quality of these small, fat volumes which is the hallmark of the Pevsner series. The occasional black and white illustrations and plans of important buildings are well reproduced and very useful, as are the maps. The colour photographs by David Davison provide a rich mirror to the text, and are collected together in the middle of the book. The photographs in particular caught my eye, both illustrating interiors which I had not seen before; one is the elegant painted interior of the drawing room in No 73 Lower Baggot Street, and the other, a delightful gothic, plaster decorated wall in the chapel at Warrenmount Convent, Blackpitts. There is also much information which is new. For instance, it is generally assumed that No 42 Upper O’Connell Street is the only surviving 18th-century house on the street; and I was fascinated to learn that the Royal Bank building (No 63-64) contains an 18th-century staircase and other original features. The frequent notes and references to sculpture, decorative features, stained glass and ironwork are also very rewarding. Throughout the book the sustained level of historical research and observation is outstanding. In her acknowledgements, Christine Casey pays tribute to the many people who contributed or assisted in one way or another, but reveals that she, as a working mother, has spent ten years putting this book together. A small book it may seem, but it is a monumental work which celebrates our Capital city. Peter Pearson is an artist and an architectural historian.   Cesca’s Diary 1913-1916 – Where Art and Nationalism Meet Hilary Pyle Woodfield Press, Dublin, 2005 pp 450 ills 16 pp full colour, oil & pastels, 70 pp b/w plates p/b €45.00 ISBN 0-9534293-7-7 Brian Trench Cesca’s Diary contains a scene from 1914 in which the diarist describes a visit to the family home in Dublin by her cousin Wilbraham Trench and his ‘adorable children’. A friend of Cesca’s, Diarmuid Coffey, is invited to the house to help entertain the children. One of those children, Síghle, especially enjoys his earthquake game. Another of the children, then aged four, was Chalmers Trench, later to become my father. His sister, my aunt Sheela, as she spelled it, was later to marry Diarmuid Coffey. In the meantime, and tragically briefly, Diarmuid had been married to Cesca. These connections give this book a greater-than-usual interest for me. But the life and experience of Cesca (also Francesca, Frances, Proinséas) Trench, otherwise Sadhbh Trínseach, were unknown to me. The book is based largely on a series of notebooks of contemporaneously-recorded impressions and reflections, written in English, Irish and French. From Hilary Pyle’s selection, it appears that they tell far less about the mind of an artist than they do about the world of a nationalist activist of ascendancy background. The diaries record her frequent sketching, and her many assignments as illustrator and designer, but the relatively modest catalogue of works in this volume comprises mainly works that find their significance only in the political moment, and others whose whereabouts are unknown. Cesca’s known works include portrait drawings of Douglas Hyde, Eoin MacNeill and Treaty signatory, Robert Barton and of others associated with the national movement in the 1910s. Her diaries are peopled by these and many scores of others similarly involved in Conradh na Gaeilge, Cumann na mBan, Cumann Gaelach na hEaglaise, Irish Volunteers, and other such organisations into whose activities Cesca threw herself during her Dublin years, from 1913 to 1918. She clearly made a big impression. ‘Miss Trench’ seems to have had a charismatic presence, and she was aware that ‘others have pleasure for their eyes in me’. Hyde appears to have especially enjoyed her company, and was a frequent visitor to the Trench home, and she to Hyde’s. Hyde was one of the senior ‘Gaelic Protestants’, who formed the main nexus in which Cesca operated. The contradictions and tensions of that world are amply demonstrated in this diary. Contained within the same families were landlords and social reformers, British Army officers and Irish Volunteers, Conservative MPs, Irish Unionists and Nationalists. In between designing posters and murals and attending meetings in the nationalist cause, Cesca would visit cousins of unionist persuasion. But she gives no account of how their political differences were played out, if, indeed, they were. By contrast, she describes in detail many conversations and arguments with Diarmuid Coffey. He was the son of a National Museum keeper, an aspiring barrister, and deeply involved in the national movement. Their families knew each other, and Cesca often stayed with the Coffeys. She found Diarmuid stimulating company, but also too conciliatory towards the English, and too moderate in his stance. From fairly early in their friendship, however, marriage was a possibility. Pyle’s chosen excerpts from her diaries include passages in which she is seen to overcome her reservations, and put aside the contending claims on her affection of Claud Chevasse. Diarmuid’s role in the running of guns on the Asgard into Howth in 1914 clearly helped his case with Cesca. The diary includes vivid description of the picnic-like atmosphere in Howth as the guns were awaited, in the apparently benign presence of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. One of the ways in which Cesca expressed her friendship was to draw portraits of people, as she did several times of Diarmuid. When they did eventually marry, in 1918, Diarmuid’s close friend, Robert Barton, was best man. He had enlisted with the British army in 1914, resigned in protest at the suppression of the Easter Rising, and was elected a Sinn Féin MP in 1918. Incongruously, he wore his military uniform to the wedding of these two strong nationalists. Cesca’s brother, Reggie – she calls him Raghnaill – also served in the British army. He was in Dublin in Easter 1916 to suppress the rebellion, while his sister went to talk to the rebels in the GPO. Her diary records his visit to them just days after the rising but she is silent on his role, and it is full of love for her brother and for the other members of her immediate family. In March 1918, she was writing him a long letter, with news of her wedding plans, when news came that he had been killed in France. Just over six months later, the ‘Spanish flu’ hit Dublin, as it had hit other parts of Europe, and claimed Cesca as a victim. Hilary Pyle’s painstaking work has recovered the many fascinating traces of her short, intense adult life. Brian Trench is Head of the School of Communications, Dublin City University.   The Diaries of Lord Limerick’s Grand Tour 1716 to 1723 The Earl of Roden (ed) Reprinted from the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Journal, xxv No 3, 2003 Printed by Dundalgan Press, Dundalk, for Doonreaghan Press, Cashel, 2005 pp 65 ills 1 col & 7 b/w p/b €12.50/£8.50 ISBN 0-9539033-1-1 Tollymore – the Story of an Irish Demesne The Earl of Roden Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 2005 pp 108 ills 45 col & 63 b/w h/b & p/b €29.95 h/b ISBN 0900457643 €22.50 p/b ISBN 0900457651 Philip McEvansoneya The term ‘Grand Tour’ usually conjures up images of English-speaking milordi combining culture and pleasure on an extended and leisurely journey through the heart of Europe to Italy. The Tour was usually undertaken by young men to educate them in foreign manners and morals and to study in Rome three great phases of European art: Classical Antiquity, the High Renaissance and the Baroque. James Hamilton (c.1691-1758), created Viscount Limerick in 1719, was no exception to this – he was certainly in Padua in 1716 – but any diaries he may have made on that trip are not known to survive. However, accounts of two other tours do survive: the first details a trip down the Loire valley in May-June 1716; the second relates to a longer tour through the Low Countries, France, Spain, Portugal, back to Spain and then France, with an escort of four horses for his personal security, undertaken between July 1722 and April 1723. France and Italy received many visitors following the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, whereas Spain and Portugal were much less common destinations. Limerick was somewhat adventurous in crossing the Pyrenees to the Iberian peninsula where the roads were poor and the brigands notorious, making travel difficult, slow and dangerous. Lord Roden suggests, with some understatement, that the peninsula appealed to the more determined and experienced traveller. Limerick’s diaries are absorbing precisely because they are miscellaneous and anecdotal. He recorded a wide range of things as they caught his interest. In Spain, for example, he was interested in the high and the low, alternating between the study of Roman antiquities and attendance at a bull-fight, the latter being a completely new experience for him. There are recurrent emphases on historical events, military observations and prices and incomes. Limerick gives lists of people he encountered en route, including the writer Voltaire, and he briefly notes the Irish colleges at Alcalá and Belem. Although Limerick mentions a number of works of architecture and comments on some such as the cathedrals of Seville and Toledo, he did not see or note much in the way of painting or sculpture, which is disappointing. His imagination seems to have been more taken by the nuns of Oclivellas - ‘most of them have lovers’ – and other such picaresque details. Lord Roden’s introduction sets out some interesting general context for the tours. In the absence of evidence he does not speculate as to why Limerick undertook his unusual trip to Spain and Portugal except to suggest, in the words of the minister to Lisbon, James O’Hara (Lord Tyrawley), that it was because those countries ‘excite one’s curiosity more than any other countries by being least known’. Tollymore demesne, near Newcastle, Co Down, the ancestral home of the Magennis family, which Lord Limerick began to upgrade in the 1720s, is now one of the most popular attractions in Ireland, receiving more than 200,000 visitors annually. Although the house was demolished in 1952 a number of important and intriguing estate buildings survive, enhancing the highly picturesque landscape setting adjacent to the Mountains of Mourne. Amongst them are bridges, gateways and follies including the so-called Clanbrassill Barn, designed in the style of Thomas Wright of Durham in imitation of a small-scale, country Gothic church complete with short octagonal tower and spire. As well as a location for witty buildings, the demesne has been an important centre of arboriculture. Limerick and his son, the second Earl of Clanbrassill, were great improvers, importing new species from Holland and America and thus founding the arboretum which continues to be important today. This had both landscaping and commercial motives: the oaks planted by the second Lord Clanbrassill were felled 150 years later to build the grand staircase of the Titanic. Lord Roden, whose family inherited the demesne in 1798 and whose grandfather was its last private owner, gives an engaging, chronological account of the development of Tollymore, culminating in the 1950s when it opened to the public as a forest park. It is detailed, being closely documented from estate and family papers, yet highly readable and benefits from numerous, evocative illustrations. Philip McEvansoneya is Head of History of Art at Trinity College Dublin.   Connemara & Beyond Walter Pfeiffer Walter Pfeiffer Studios, Dublin, 2005 pp 120 fully illustrated h/b €39.00 ISBN 0954809610 Wicklow – A Personal View Walter Pfeiffer Walter Pfeiffer Studios, Dublin, 2005 pp 144 fully illustrated h/b €39.00 ISBN 0954809602 Limited editions (400 copies) also available from walterpfeiffer@eircom.net €70.00 Mark Granier Having recently been to Inis Mór and the Burren, working on a photographic project of my own, I received Walter Pfeiffer’s Connemara and Beyond with a good deal of interest. It is impressive to behold, a big, landscape-format production for a generous coffee table. Pfeiffer states that his Connemara is ‘a place I have photographed over and over again and yet found ever-new and freshly revealed’. However, with such photogenic (and over-photographed) territory, it is very difficult to find a fresh perspective. There are some nice close-ups, of streams, boats and lichened stones, a horse’s brown-freckled face, an oyster’s shell like a heap of old broken slates. There is also a remarkable, very painterly view of Ben Burry draped in a grey-white cloud: a foreground that appears to have been carpeted in orange felt, and in the dark lap of the mountain a pale, distant thread of a waterfall stitching everything together. Pfeiffer’s introduction includes perceptive quotes from Tim Robinson, about the impossibility of pinpointing Connemara’s boundaries, and John Moriarty, about the shifting sense of scale. There are also black and white photographs of the Aran Islands, presumably from Pfeiffer’s first solo exhibition in the 1970s. I’d have been interested to see more of these. Working only with shades of grey, there is less danger of one’s vision being absorbed by the kind of panoramic gorgeousness that can rarely be done justice to by anything other than painting. Perhaps as an acknowledgment that Connemara is part of the Gaeltacht, the titles of the photographs are bilingual and I counted three untranslated poems by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. There are also four poems by Moya Cannon, the most effective of which, for me, are the shorter, archeo-lyrical delvings: I lie down in a stone bowl/in the sun-warmed streambed, /my head beside the flow, /and let the blethering of mountain water/erode me. Pfeiffer ends his introduction by expressing the hope ‘that the power of their poems, scattered amongst my photographs, will whisper secrets to you as seductively as the hills and bogs of this place have whispered to me’. Certainly, some of the photographs might induce the odd swoon. For those who enjoy such images (especially those who have never been to Connemara), the book will make a handsome Christmas present. Wicklow – A Personal View was published in 2004. The size and format are the same as Pfeiffer’s book on Connemara, and the dominant mood, as with Connemara & Beyond, is romantic. In this instance there is just one poem, the elegiac Luggala, by John Montague, nicely complimented by a brooding, misty photograph of the steep, formidable ‘Fancy’. Garech a Brún’s entertaining introduction gives a condensed, personalised history of the region. The cast includes almost everyone from St Mantáin to Samuel Beckett, with cameos by Frederick May, Peter La Touche, Lord Powerscourt, The United Irishmen, Angelica Hueston, Seamus Heaney, Marianne Faithfull and Robert Kee (to name just a few). As a Brún says, ‘the beautiful landscape, as shown in this book, has changed little since [the 16th century]’. So there is an abundance of lushness and lakes: Glendalough, Luggala, Powerscourt, Lough Dan, Lough Tay, Glenmalure etc, whilst Wicklow, Bray and Blessington, for example, do not make an appearance. Despite great swaths of urbanisation in the county, people and their trappings (apart from a handful of suitably picturesque residences such as Russborough House and Castle Howard) have been almost entirely excluded. Pfeiffer’s personal view of Wicklow is rich in luminously beautiful landscapes. It’s perfect if you’re seeking locations to shoot another Excalibur or wish to take a pictorial gallop through ‘The Garden of Ireland’. Without so much as a gardener in evidence though, it seems a mite lonely. Mark Granier is a Dublin-based poet and photographer.   Sean Scully: Body of Light Brian Kennedy et al The National Gallery of Australia, 2004 pp 216 ills b/w throughout h/b with tipped on colour plate to front board £27.00/€40.00 ISBN 0642541736 Catherine Marshall Reviewers usually get more mileage out of material that they do not enjoy; it is easier to find incisive epithets for the negative than the positive and to woo an audience with a witty put-down, than to find precise accolades for the things that we like. In the case of the National Gallery of Australia’s 2004 publication Sean Scully: Body of Light there is no room for negativity. The book is simply a delight, from its foursquare red cover complete with an artwork for a ‘window’, through a beautifully balanced range of texts and a visual essay, to the colour plates of the catalogue, it never falters, while all the time proclaiming a physicality that is a hallmark of Scully’s painting. Scully has been painting now for forty years. For most of that time he has painted stripes and squares of colour, so what makes another book that looks back over that minimalist career so exciting? One after the other the essays, starting with Brian Kennedy’s overview of the artist’s life and career in abstraction to the final essay by Shaune Larkin in which one particular painting is discussed at some length, the writing is lucid, intelligent and refreshingly free of verbiage. From an Irish point of view, it is worth noting that the painting at the centre of Larkin’s essay is probably one of the best the artist has ever painted and it was purchased for the National Gallery of Australia in honour of its Irish Director, Brian Kennedy. The essays are short but weighty. Arthur Danto’s brief discussion of the place of painting now and Scully’s contribution to that place is informed, direct and thought-provoking, tracing the debate about painting as an art form from the Renaissance through the Marxist and Feminist cultural revolutions of the 1970s to the challenges of the new technologies and new social mores we live with now. His claim for Scully, that he has reclaimed painting from the doldrums by combining a universal, minimal language of form with a layering of paint that allows ambiguity, uncertainty and richness to seep up through the gaps – a kind of paradigm of the unconscious and the ego – along with an unerring sense of the work as object, though never sculpture, is a welcome contribution to the wider debates about painting and is well sustained and totally convincing. Donald Kuspit, not surprisingly, looks at the expressionist aspects of Scully’s work with his usual intelligence and passion, while the classical and the romantic dichotomies that all great art contains and develops are discussed in relation to Scully by Timo Vuoriskowski. Another of the special attractions of this book is the inclusion of a visual essay on the making of a single painting, a sequence of photographs by Lilane Tomasko, showing the various metamorphoses that a Scully painting undergoes before it does the job the artist wants it to do. This is really useful art-historical documentation, understated but powerful, taking us through the artist’s thought processes and revealing the depth charges that lie explosively beneath the breathing surface of the finished work. Add to this the carefully selected comments by the artist that accompany each colour plate in the catalogue and you know this is a book you want to keep near you forever. At last an art book that is beautiful to look at, informative and intelligent and does not need a coffee table to sustain it. Catherine Marshall is Senior Curator for the Irish Museum of Modern Art.   Space – Architecture for Art Gemma Tipton (ed) Circa, Dublin, 2005 pp 272 ills full colour p/b €25.00 ISBN 0955031907 Arthur Gibney Space – Architecture for Art is an eclectic series of structured essays on contemporary art spaces in Ireland and abroad which examines inferred relationships between the primacy of architectural space with exhibited art, and defines interventions which mutate or mediate these relationships. It is edited by Gemma Tipton, with a preface by Brian O’Doherty, entitled ‘White Box/Black Cube’, which immediately introduces a polemical base for the debate that follows in several other contributory essays. Gemma Tipton also plays an important introductory role in essays which cover the historical development of the gallery archetype, from K F Schinkel’s Altes Museum of the 1820s to Yoshio Taniguchi’s 2004 MOMA, and an exploratory analysis of the interaction between space and the contained object. These are enlivened by personal quotations from as diverse a group of artists, architects and critics as Claes Oldenburg, Barret Newman, Peter Eisenman, Philip Johnston, Donald Judd, Steven Holl and Frank Gehry. These quotations provide a lucid insight into the complex and controversial issues which confront the designer, the exhibiter and the curator of today’s museums. The discussion of course, is highly focused on several of the world’s latest and most famous art venues, such as the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Tate Turbine Hall, in London and the new MOMA in New York, but the infelicities of Lloyd Wright’s old 1950s Guggenheim in Manhattan are evidently still not forgotten, and the master may never be forgiven, by some of the painting fraternity. Richard Meier, probably the most prolific museum designer of the last decades of the 20th century, also comes in for some unexpected stick for deficiencies in his Barcelona MACBA and for a failure to meet the full expectations of the Getty Foundation trustees in Los Angeles. The debate between the polar ideals of spatial neutrality and the spatial dominance of architectural creativity is well articulated by many diverse voices. Yoshio Taniguchi, the advocate of the minimalist white box, in an explanation of his MOMA extension describes … ‘the primary objective in the design of a museum is to create the ideal environment for the interaction of people and art’. Steven Holl talks of MOMA ‘as a room of the muse, a place to think and consider deeply and at length’. Frank Gehry on the other hand, justifies his powerfully expressive architectural forms and his spatial complexity in Bilbao, as the persuasive influence of the contemporary arts community. In a fascinating dialogue with Michael Asher and a group of fellow artists in 1970, he claims he was persuaded to forget neutrality in favour of an architectural impact which focused attention on both the art and its architectural container. This book is particularly relevant in Ireland today, emerging as it does, in a period when a new generation of museums and art centres is being commissioned in many cities and provincial centres. International theory and debate on the ideal exhibition space is extended and complimented by a series of exploratory essays on local developments and interviews with architects and directors of Irish art centres. O’Donnell and Tuomey’s recently completed Lewis Glucksman Gallery on the campus of University College Cork is the subject of two separate contributions. Peter Murray describes the building, its setting and the design process of its procurement from the director’s/users’ viewpoint. In an interview with Fiona Kearney, John Tuomey talks about the architectural concept and the influences that initiated and shaped the design development. The large corpus of contributions to art centres in Northern Ireland reflects the considerable Arts Council/Lottery funding programme of the last decade. Damien Coyle’s essay, ‘Art Houses of the Pentapolis’ describes the results of infrastructural expansion in Armagh, Lisburn, Derry, Newry and Belfast. Marianne O’Kane reports on the urban regeneration of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter and the ambitious arts and cultural initiative of the Laganside precinct. James Kerr, in an interview with Gemma Tipton, describes the interactive tensions between curator and architect in the making of the Millennium Court Arts Centre in Portadown. The cultural and political importance of the conversion of the former 10,000 ft market building into the Millennium Centre is explored in another essay by Ciarán Mackel. One of the most relevant contributions to the scope of this book is the discussion on gallery circulation and visitor experience in an interview with Barbara Dawson of the Dublin City Gallery and the architect Desmond McMahon. Anyone who has spent an exhausting Sunday in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (or any equally confusing venue) will appreciate this commentary. There is much to be gleaned also in terms of visitor reaction in the Vox Pop Section of the book which presents a variety of different viewpoints on ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ in personal preferences. There are several other essays by well-known contributors which include Ruarí O’Cuiv, Brian Kennedy, Valerie Mulvin and Noel Sheridan. A comprehensive directory, ‘An Architectural Guide to Art Spaces in Ireland’ provides a fitting finale. What is missing, and inexplicably so in such comprehensive coverage, is any real reference or exploratory discussion of the National Gallery of Ireland and its Millennium Wing. Nevertheless this book must be recommended as an invaluable commentary on art and its public presentation in a post-modern society. Arthur Gibney is an architectural historian and architect.   Portavo – An Irish Townland and its People. Part Two: the Famine to the Present Peter Carr White Row Press, Belfast, 2005 pp 393 ills 280 col 140 h/b & p/b €50.00/£35.00 h/b ISBN 1870132262 €30.00/£20.00 p/b ISBN 1870132211 Ian Wilson Just 545 acres, Portavo is a townland lying between Bangor and Donaghadee in North Down. Of Ireland’s 62,000 townlands however, it has become the most intensively chronicled thanks to the positively Herculean endeavours of Peter Carr, whose second volume on Portavo and its inhabitants, notably the landed Ker dynasty, concludes the saga begun in the glowingly-received 2003 book. Away back in 1988, the author commenced research on the basis of a modest wish by the new owner of the Ker’s ‘Big House’ to know more. Peter Carr tells us he is not an academic historian. So will those readers keen on an exposition of land tenure and agricultural usage of estate management and electoral procedures through the decades be disappointed? Not a bit of it. The book is impeccably researched and annotated. The wider context of County Down, Irish and occasionally European affairs is judiciously introduced when appropriate. Weighty are some of the themes – the rise and fall of a landed family, the slump in small farming in recent decades – but very lightly is how the author wears his learning. The second volume opens with the Kers, owners of Portavo, in their heyday. They possess, in fact, far more than Portavo, five per cent of Co Down, including Ballynahinch and Downpatrick, plus 6000 acres in south-east Antrim. David Stewart Ker, lately and suitably married to Anna Blackwood of Clandeboye, runs the estates with vigour and aptitude. The author is a sure-footed guide to the complexities of the rumbustious 1852 elections, the high point of the Ker fortunes, when David won one of the two Co Down seats. For the young Adonis, however, circumstances and personality combined to initiate a decline that reduced him to virtual ruin and derangement in less than twenty years. The fall into bankruptcy becomes even more giddy in the era of David’s son Richard, an impossible spendthrift, devoid of any sense whatsoever, who would avoid paying tradesmen in cash by suggesting they chose a painting off the walls! Peter Carr combines a clear understanding of the strains on an Irish landlord’s finances with a gripping, at times comical, account of the helter-skelter descent of Richard’s situation. His sons at the unaffordable Eton, David arrived to take them away, but was unsure how many he had there. We meet, in turn, the Portavo miller Hugh Nelson, who might be more easily forgiven this slip; he had twenty-five children. The author introduces a cast of vividly-drawn characters from all classes that is a major, probably the major, strength of the book. We meet the outrageous femme fatale Caroline Persse, of the Co Galway Persse family, who, astoundingly, marries the aging David before commencing an affair with one of her new stepsons, Charley. And we hear of the wonder of the last of the Copeland islanders from off the Portavo shore, on exploring his new terraced house in Donaghadee: ‘Look, Lisa, there’s a wee well!’ It was a flush toilet. The only minor drawbacks are the lack of a Ker family tree – I found this infuriating – and that, among copious illustrations, the quality of some attributed to the Ker collection is low. Perhaps the canny tradesmen took all the good ones off Richard’s walls. Peter Carr soon becomes like an engaging companion in this unusual odyssey. As with all companions on a journey, the reader needs human tolerance of idiosyncrasies – the occasional quirkiness of his prose style – but no one will desert Peter Carr. This is a marvellous book, richly combining attention to historical detail with a novelist’s eye for character. Ian Wilson is curator of North Down Heritage Centre and a writer on local subjects.