Errislannan: Scenes from a Painter's Life

Errislannan, or Flannan's peninsula, juts out into the North Atlantic on Europe's western extremity south of Clifden, Connemara, Co. Galway. The home of Alannah Heather, it gave shape to her life, and to this book. The Heathers were minor Protestant gentry and estate-owners who occupied Errislannan Manor for five generations from the 1790s to the 1960s. The author tells their story, using family diaries and letters salvaged from a coach-house loft before the auction, and enlarges upon it in this…