Enfilade

From Simon & Schuster:

Robert O’Byrne, The Irish Aesthete: Ruins of Ireland (London: CICO Books, 2019), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1782496861, $25.

Fantastical, often whimsical, and frequently quirky, these atmospheric ruins are beautifully photographed and paired with fascinating text by Robert O’Byrne. Born out of Robert’s hugely popular blog, The Irish Aesthete, there are Medieval castles, Georgian mansions, Victorian lodges, and a myriad of other buildings, many never previously published. Robert focuses on a mixture of exteriors and interiors in varying stages of decay, on architectural details, and entire scenarios. Accompanying texts tell of the Regency siblings who squandered their entire fortune on gambling and carousing, of an Anglo-Norman heiress who pitched her husband out the window on their wedding night, and of the landlord who liked to walk around naked and whose wife made him carry a cowbell to warn housemaids of his approach. Arranged by the country’s four provinces, the diverse ruins featured offer a unique insight into Ireland and an exploration of her many styles of historic architecture.

Robert O’Byrne is a writer and lecturer specialising in the fine and decorative arts. He is the author of more than a dozen books, among them Luggala Days: The Story of a Guinness House, The Last Knight: A Tribute to Desmond FitzGerald, 29th Knight of Glin, Romantic Irish Homes, and Romantic English Homes. A retired Vice-President of the Irish Georgian Society and trustee of the Alfred Beit Foundation, he is currently a trustee of the Apollo Foundation and the Artists Collecting Society. Among other work he writes a monthly column for Apollo magazine, and is also a regular contributor to The Burlington Magazine and the Irish Arts Review. For the past five years, O’Byrne has written an award-winning blog, www.theirishaesthete.com.