Talking Squares

COOPER'S IRELAND: Drawings and Notes from an Eighteenth-Century Gentleman  by Peter Harbison, is a book I'm reading that my son gave me for Christmas. Austin Cooper was a civil servant who drew the ancient buildings and monuments of Ireland as he came across them on his travels. It's a delight of a book, featuring many castles, abbeys, churches, round towers, and monuments that I have cycled past or visited.

My mother's 60th birthday, my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, and four weddings of friends, are among the major events I have missed at home in Ireland and England since moving to the States.

Although some of the buildings Cooper recorded have already disappeared, many more survive, though often in ruins, today. Kilkea Castle (pictured) in southern Kildare survives, mainly due to alterations in the mid-nineteenth century. Today it is a hotel, and thanks to its proximity to Carlow I have been lucky enough to attend two wonderful weddings there - one of them since emigrating.

Cooper's Ireland   is published by O'Brien in association with the National Library of Ireland