Peter Somerville-Large recalls the largesse of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty as highlights from his bequest to the National Gallery of Ireland go on view at the Chester Beatty Library this autumn.
For many decades the National Gallery of Ireland was given no more than a thousand pounds annually for the purchase of paintings. The richness of its collection therefore owes much to a few great benefactors such as Geraldine Leeson (Milltown), Hugh Lane, Alfred and Clementine Beit, Maire MacSweeney and, of course, the copper magnate and millionaire, Chester Beatty.
John McLaughlin assesses heneghan peng’s dramatically sited but elegantly unobtrusive visitor centre for the Giant’s Causeway in Antrim
Peter Pearson makes a plea for re-roofing Kilmacurragh, the Queen Anne house set in an arcadian parkland in County Wicklow
Peter Murray finds similarities between the fictional character Kim and 19th-century photographer John Burke, whose path in Afghanistan, has been retraced by Simon Norfolk