Faith or Fatherhood? Bishop Dunboyne's Dilemma. By Con Costello. The Woodfield Press. £12.50
Opportunist or victim of circumstance? The jury is still out on this question, even though Con Costello, in this intriguing tale, provides all the necessary evidence in the case of John Butler, Catholic Bishop of Cork from 1763 to 1787. His story has already been told in an earlier book by the same author (In Quest of an Heir) but in this volume, obviously after much further research, Costello presents far more detail and some relevant illustrations. Butler, a flawed character, was third son of the 18th Lord Dunboyne and was ordained a priest in Rome in 1755. Eight years later, he was appointed Bishop of Cork. When the 21st Lord Dunboyne died in 1786, aged 13, Bishop Butler succeeded to the title as 22nd Lord Dunboyne.
There are several suggestions as to why he left the Catholic Church and became Protestant: his anxiety to ensure that the Butler line would survive, through his marriage and production of an heir; fears that the Dunboyne lordship (which dated from the 12th century) might slip into unsuitable hands or, famously, his seduction by a young Protestant cousin "with an eye to the title" whom he did marry in 1787 after an unsuccessful petition for permission to do so to the Pope. The latter was seen to "weep openly" when he read Butler's letter. After all that, however, Butler did not produce an heir and he died in 1800 seeking reconciliation with the Catholic Church. All this, and more, is related here, competently and stylishly, by Con Costello. It is a story of sadness, scandal and sensation comparable (as the foreword points out) with the case of Bishop Casey in more recent times.
Streets Broad and Narrow - Images of Vanishing Dublin. By Kevin C. Kearns. Gill and Macmillan. £16.99
A Breath of Fresh Air - The Story of Belfast's Parks. By Robert Scott. Blackstaff Press. £20 in UK
Tales of two cities here, told in photographs rather than words and contrasting in their contents. Kevin C. Kearns, the author of seven books about Dublin, including the much-praised Dublin Tenement Life: an Oral History allows his subjects, the "working-class" people of the city, to tell their own stories in the captions to his own selected monochrome photographs. This is a visual history of a disappearing part of Dublin life, admirably chronicled by an expert in the field. Robert Scott's beautifully produced volume, on the other hand, provides a fitting and colourful account of Belfast's parks rather than its people. As conservation and education officer with Belfast City Council since 1980, Scott knows what he's talking about (the city's 3,000 acres of parks and open spaces) and this is evident in his informative and detailed record. Even the vexed question of opening parks and playing-fields on Sundays is dealt with. The problem is by no means of recent origin - as early as the 1870s, the Royal Belfast Botanic Garden had to be closed on Sunday evenings during church services because of "grossly indecent goings-on among the bushes" reported in the press.
James and Mary Ellis - Background and Quaker Famine Relief in Letterfrack. By Joan Johnson. Historical Committee of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland. £6.99
Letterfrack carries connotations not usually associated with benevolent strangers, but the Bradford Quakers James and Mary Ellis have left a legacy to the area that is not easily erased. James Ellis was a successful businessman who, in 1849, bought nearly 1,000 acres of land at Letterfrack and gave much-needed work and wages in reclaiming and cultivating the land, building roads, walls and houses, and planting more than 11,000 trees and shrubs to form the nucleus of today's Ellis Wood and Nature Trail. As well as chronicling the good deeds of the Ellises, this book also records the multiple family links with other Quakers, notably the Allens, Bewleys, Clarks, Forsters, Goodbodys, Pims, Priestmans, Rowntrees, Seebohms and Tukes, names that will be familiar to many readers in Ireland. The book carries a detailed family tree, compiled by the author's husband, Roger, and there are many illustrations, all making this a valuable and readable record of the Ellises and their good deeds in the west of Ireland.
North Down Memories - Photographs 1860s-1960s. By Keith Haines. Blackstaff Press. £10.99 in UK
Lisburn - The Town and its People 1873- 973. By Brian Mackey. Blackstaff Press. £10.99 in UK
Another brace of photographic books, these with almost similar themes and covering roughly the same time-span and, less accurately, the same territory. Don't be deluded by the coverpicture of four Bangor bathing belles of the 1960s on the front of North Down Memories because this is a collection of 170 photographs which, the preface claims, is "a random selection of images which reflects the life and society, culture and history of North Down between c. 1865 and 1965". There are no more bathing belles, but plenty of photographs of a certain section of that society which reflects its predominantly Protestant and Imperial ethos. The Lisburn collection covers much the same ground - with photographs (undoubtedly historic) of buildings, churches, Orange arches and ceremonial occasions. But as in North Down Memories, there are very few signs of anything or anyone of a different culture. However, both volumes are pleasing mementos for those who live in the areas covered.
Richard Roche is an author, local historian and critic