LOCAL HISTORY:A HUGELY READABLE, erudite, handsome history of Enniscorthy has just been published by the Wexford County Council Public Library Service, edited and with an introduction by the writer who never sleeps, Colm Tóibín.

“Architecture is an arrangement of light. If they knocked it all down, I could build it back from memory as it was in 1965 or 1966, the opulence in the arches and columns, the cut stone and stained glass, the sheer height and vastness,” he writes of the cathedral. “There was nothing else like it in our world.”

Writers, poets, artists, sports legends, heroes, villains, revolutionaries, rogues and ordinary townfolk march through its 450 pages, in essays by an impressive roll-call of local and academic historians, as they examine the town from prehistory to modern times. This is a gift of a book – for Wexford people, certainly, and for historians, of course. But also for anyone curious, drawn, respectful and even haunted by a sense of place.

Enniscorthy – A History,edited and introduced by Colm Tóibín, with Celestine Rafferty, is published by Wexford County Council Public Library Service, €30