As the Blue Book turns 45, Marie Toft joins the women at the helm of Ireland’s country houses for afternoon tea.

The humanist ceremony that marked the death of Irish farming giant Paddy O’Keeffe took place in a North Cork mart and, in the words of his friend, Dawn Meats chairman Dan Brown, “that he chose this unconventional setting for his service is true Paddy”.

For years the smell of pipe tobacco acted as a kind of GPS that told you you were in the vicinity of M&P O’Sullivan, the cosy tobacco shop on Academy St in Cork City.

THE living space at this Longueville, Mallow home is first class in more ways than one — it was originally the ‘First’ classroom in a two-room school, built about 1890.

RUMOURS of a planned sale at one of Munster’s finest country houses, Longueville House on 500 acres near Mallow, have been dismissed by the owners.