Bøker av Gerard Ronan

One of the most divisive figures in Irish history, the Rev. Matthew Pilkington once allegedly attempted to sell his children into slavery and pimp out his wife to his libertine friends in order to procure a divorce. For almost thirty-three years, he laboured as Anglican Vicar of Donabate, his time and attention frequently absorbed less in the spiritual needs of his ever-diminishing flock, than in the creation of his famous Dictionary of Painters - the first handbook of connoisseurship to be written in English. He also helped to establish the famous Cobbe Art Collection at Newbridge House. Latterly regarded by Jonathan Swift (his former mentor) as 'the falsest rogue' in the kingdom, Matthew Pilkington's story has historically been overshadowed by that of his wife, Laetitia, a woman who, for more than two centuries, has provoked more than her fair share of scandal, folklore and academic debate. Matthew, however, had a life after Laetitia and left a legacy of his own. This is his story.

Sophia Parnell-Evans (1780-1853) ran a large and successful farming enterprise at at time when few women had done so. She met two Queens, the ex-wife of Napoleon and knew the radical feminist Margaret Mount Cashel. A friend of both the Darwin and Condorcet families, she was daughter and sister to three of the most prominent Irish politicians of her day, and wife to another. A radical thinker in her own right, Sophia founded two primary schools in Donabate and helped in no small way to mitigate the effects of the Great Famine in her locality. The memorial round tower she built in memory of her devoted husband, the MP George Evans, revived a tradition of tower building that had lain dormant for seven centuries. As the great aunt of Charles Stewart Parnell, she even made it into the pages of Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" as the practical joker "greataunt Sophy".

Twelve-year-old Rufus has been disqualified from a National Short Story competition. The judges have accused him of copying the story of a boy who won the competition twelve years earlier. But Rufus's story was not a work of fiction. It was a true account of his encounters with a mysterious old man who spoke in riddles - a man who had taken to hanging about the Martello Tower in Donabate the previous summer. But how could that be? How could two boys have shared an identical experience twelve years apart? And why did they both choose to write about it? And why, when the two eventually meet, will the encounter change both of their lives forever?

Benedict Arthur was just seventeen when he wed Catherine Hacket. She was at least thirty-eight. The year was 1712 and the allegations of seduction and abduction that followed their secret marriage would lead to a famously bitter legal battle that would take almost two decades to resolve. Unable to divorce, it would not be until Catherine's death, in 1749, that Benedict could finally legitimise his mistress and children and move them into the magnificent Palladian villa that he had built on the shores of the Broadmeadow Estuary, close to the village of Donabate. This is the story of the origins of Seafield House, and how the Arthurs of Great Cabragh became the Arthurs of Seafield.