The joy and beauty of life on the Liffey

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.

The Liffey, Portrait of a River, written by Dick Warner and illustrated by Rosemary Burns, is an affectionate and lively tribute to the famous Anna Livia. The Czech composer Smetana celebrated his beloved river, Die Moldau, in music and Dick and Rosemary do the same for theirs in prose and pictures. Like Smetana, they begin when the river is born as a tiny spring and follow its course to the sea. The Liffey starts out on Kippure mountain from where it heads west. Then it veers northwards and curves eastwards towards Dublin.

One of the first landmarks it encounters is the Coronation Plantation, which dates from William IV’s accession to the throne in 1831. Dick Warner, who presented the excellent Spirit of Trees series on Channel 4 some years ago, has some interesting comments to make on this mountain oasis. The plantation, he thinks, was an ill-advised venture. The species is the Scots pine, a tree which likes its own space and resents being too close to its neighbours, a fact of which those responsible for the Coronation Plantation appear to have been unaware.