Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings 1700–2000. By Claudia Kinmonth. 240mm. Pp xxv + 547, 454 ills. Cork University Press, Cork, 2020. isbn 9781782054054. £35 (pbk).

Abstract

tant past by presbyters, not bishops. Ironically, the royal descent that Innes traced in archival sources back to the Pictish kings of the fifth century of the Common Era was about as bogus as the one he exploded, but at least his methodology was on the right track. The new textual scholarship also established the legitimacy of Robert III, whose alleged bastardy had been used to undermine the Stuarts’ claim of uninterrupted hereditary succession. There is much detail in The First Scottish Enlightenment, but the narrative is not overburdened by it and the author’s prose style is engaging. The book as a whole brings an important intellectual movement out of the shadows of previous neglect. It also reminds us that the story of English antiquaries (and Antiquaries) was not without parallels in Scotland and on the European continent.