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.