A Very Dangerous Locality: The Landscape of the Suffolk Sandlings in the Second World War

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eschewing any dramatic flourishes, the kidnapping and enslavement in 1631 of the inhabitants of Baltimore by Algerian pirates is noted as a ‘setback’ for that coastal community – one wonders what the enslaved villagers thought! This carefulness is not a criticism as such, and Keohane is no doubt conscious of how the odd throwaway remark by Nikolaus Pevsner or one of the other authors in the series was sometimes used maliciously by developers to condemn and demolish important buildings. Keohane is wisely judicious in offering his own opinions. But he does not hold back when it comes to recent conservation disasters in the county such as the ‘cruel and derelict limbo’ endured by the spectacular nineteenth-century pile of Dunboy Castle, halfrestored and left to dereliction since the great financial crash of 2007, or the ‘inexcusable neglect’ of the neoclassical villa of Vernon Mount (built 1794) near Cork, ‘shamefully’ lost to arson in 2016. He also notes the numerous convents, closed in the 2000s, that are now quickly falling into ruin without any clear plan for their protection, and how their many fine altar fittings, statues and artwork have occasionally found a new life in nearby parish churches. Overall, Keohane demonstrates in this volume a mastery of all building styles and time periods as well as an eagerness to tell us of the sometimes eccentric personalities of the people involved. Cork, City and County is a formidably impressive work of reference that will inform and educate Irish and international readers for many decades to come.