MY grandmother was a wonderful woman for all but one thing — her menace with a rag and a bottle of French polish.

An auction at Fota House in aid of conservation work on Cork’s iconic St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, saw a Maternité etching by Pablo Picasso make €2,300 and a Picasso engraving make €500.

AN auction in aid of conservation work on Cork’s iconic, St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, includes a limited edition print by Pablo Picasso, an Arcadian painting by William Irving, rare items of Cork and Limerick silver and a bottle of Chateau Petrus donated and signed by Michael Flatley.

AN unusually impressive selection of antique and garden furniture, fine art, decorative art and silver will come under the hammer at Fota House, Cork next Tuesday (May 28) at 10.30am.

THE royal wedding guests will celebrate the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton in one of the most opulent buildings in the world — Buckingham Palace.

TWO books by well-known Irish naturalists have come to hand. One celebrates a river and the landscape through which it flows; the other focuses on a peninsula in Co Donegal.

I WAS UP at the Coronation Plantation in Co Wicklow recently. For anyone who doesn’t know the area, it’s in the valley of the upper Liffey to the west of the Sally Gap and it doesn’t look in the least bit like a plantation.