Sir, - During all the recent tedious TV coverage of political developments in Northern Ireland, has anyone noticed how beautiful and spectacular is the Ulster Parliament building at Stormont?
Although constructed during the 1920s, this splendid edifice harks back to a brilliant period in the early 18th century when British architects attempted to put into practice the classical, rational precepts of the 16th-century Italian, Andrea Palladio.
I have no idea why such a style should have been chosen for Ulster in the 1920s. Surely a Gothic Revival design, similar to that applied to the British Houses of Parliament in 1835, would better have reflected the medieval religious obsessions which plague Ulster?
But there it is, this splendid Stormont building, looking magnificent, and silently proclaiming the principles of the Enlightenment in the most unlikely circumstances. It is an oddity - fortunate to have been built before the Modernist style captured the minds of architects, yet retaining an ability to remind us of a time when architecture could be both beautiful and authoritative. - Yours, etc.,
Colin Brennan, Nutley Square, Dublin 4.