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Ireland from the Air
Nowhere is the imprint of the pattern of history on the landscape more evident than from the air. Ireland's great castles, cities and fields are revealed in this collection of aerial photographs, offering a unique perspective on a beautiful country.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
17 people want to read
About the author
Peter Somerville-Large
39 books5 followersPeter Somerville-Large was born in Dublin in 1928 and was educated at St Columba’s College and Trinity College Dublin. His first job in Afghanistan was followed by a spell of travel in Asia during the early 1950s. Destinations for his travel books include Ireland, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, and Tibet. He has also written four thrillers, and a number of short stories, including two prize winners. He lived in Co. Carlow with his wife Gillian. He died on 7th October 2025.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 6, 2020
A (wonderful) view of Ireland,from the air.
I seem to have a knack for picking "coffee table" books with great text to go with fabulous photography. ^Now I am setting out to read those books, and this is certainly one of them.
When planning your trip to ^Ireland, make this book a part of your homework assignment.
I seem to have a knack for picking "coffee table" books with great text to go with fabulous photography. ^Now I am setting out to read those books, and this is certainly one of them.
When planning your trip to ^Ireland, make this book a part of your homework assignment.
December 20, 2016
I have the good fortune to have lived abroad for an extended period not once, but twice. Living in Japan is the one that had the most effect on my life, but when I was a university student, I spent the first semester of my senior year attending University College Cork, living for Ireland in four months. I didn't travel as much as I might have wanted to, being a poor college student, but I did go on some trips organized by the international students program, since we arrived over a month before the term officially began.
The trip I remember best is the three days we spent in Inis Meáin, the middle of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway. Wandering through the waist-high walls and seeing the sheep, tagged with a bit of spray paint to mark their owner, visiting Synge's Chair on the cliffs, and taking this picture with our feet danging over the edge, a hundred meters or more over the waves:
It's not quite aerial photography, but it seemed like it at the time.
My parents bought this book for me when I returned home and over the intervening decade I'm not sure I've even glanced at it. But now seemed like a nice time to finally take it off the shelf and look at it, and it brought back some fond memories.
My favorite part was, of course, the section on Munster. Each of the four traditional divisions of Ireland has its own section, with a relatively length introduction to some of the history and feel of the place. Munster talks mostly about the sea, and the harbors built by the Vikings when they decided that settling was preferable to scattered raids. The best photo was the aerial view of Cork's downtown on page 62, where I confess I got to feel superior to Somerville-Large--he says he can't identify the street, and when this book was first published in the late 90s research from a simple picture would have been harder, but I recognized it immediately. It's looking southwest over St Patrick Street, Cork's main shopping street. The following pages have pictures of St. Finn Barre's Cathedral, (in)famous for being taller than it is long, and the River Lee, but I didn't spend as much time there as I did on St Patrick Street.
My second-favorite picture is on page 102, of Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands. The text mentions that it's less tourist-haunted that the other islands, and the image certainly makes it seem that way. Roads with no one on them, bare wind-swept rock, and green fields with waist-high walls of stone criss-crossing them endlessly.
There's a lot of city shots, but I like the countryside better. Part of that is because city pictures often blend together--they all have that kind of "modern European city" look that makes them hard to distinguish from each other. Ireland's countryside is much more distinctive, both because it really does have a surprisingly large number of shades of green and because it has fewer trees than one might expect, so there are very few pictures of forests. It's mostly scattered trees in small groves, clear waters, and fields of green. It reminds me of when I arrived in Ireland and took the train to Cork, half-asleep and looking out the window, astonished at just how green the landscape was.
Skipping the city pictures, there's still plenty of land, water, and ruins that make Ireland from the Air a great read. It's not as good as Ireland from the ground, but few things are.
The trip I remember best is the three days we spent in Inis Meáin, the middle of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway. Wandering through the waist-high walls and seeing the sheep, tagged with a bit of spray paint to mark their owner, visiting Synge's Chair on the cliffs, and taking this picture with our feet danging over the edge, a hundred meters or more over the waves:
It's not quite aerial photography, but it seemed like it at the time.
My parents bought this book for me when I returned home and over the intervening decade I'm not sure I've even glanced at it. But now seemed like a nice time to finally take it off the shelf and look at it, and it brought back some fond memories.
My favorite part was, of course, the section on Munster. Each of the four traditional divisions of Ireland has its own section, with a relatively length introduction to some of the history and feel of the place. Munster talks mostly about the sea, and the harbors built by the Vikings when they decided that settling was preferable to scattered raids. The best photo was the aerial view of Cork's downtown on page 62, where I confess I got to feel superior to Somerville-Large--he says he can't identify the street, and when this book was first published in the late 90s research from a simple picture would have been harder, but I recognized it immediately. It's looking southwest over St Patrick Street, Cork's main shopping street. The following pages have pictures of St. Finn Barre's Cathedral, (in)famous for being taller than it is long, and the River Lee, but I didn't spend as much time there as I did on St Patrick Street.
My second-favorite picture is on page 102, of Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands. The text mentions that it's less tourist-haunted that the other islands, and the image certainly makes it seem that way. Roads with no one on them, bare wind-swept rock, and green fields with waist-high walls of stone criss-crossing them endlessly.
There's a lot of city shots, but I like the countryside better. Part of that is because city pictures often blend together--they all have that kind of "modern European city" look that makes them hard to distinguish from each other. Ireland's countryside is much more distinctive, both because it really does have a surprisingly large number of shades of green and because it has fewer trees than one might expect, so there are very few pictures of forests. It's mostly scattered trees in small groves, clear waters, and fields of green. It reminds me of when I arrived in Ireland and took the train to Cork, half-asleep and looking out the window, astonished at just how green the landscape was.
Skipping the city pictures, there's still plenty of land, water, and ruins that make Ireland from the Air a great read. It's not as good as Ireland from the ground, but few things are.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews