Search Results for 'Noel P Wilkins'

Hands up those of us who did Latin in school?.....three? five? ..OK 12 of us. I know Latin is still sold to some young students as the key to understanding European culture and heritage. Old school masters argue that Latin is better for you than Sudoku, better, even, that The Irish Times Crosaire crossword. Yet when I came across my old Kennedy’s Revised Latin Primer, I was filled with an old familiar dread. There it all was, the boring conjunctions of verbs, and the declensions of nouns; all the miserable rules of grammar and syntax, possibly the driest book ever created, and not a joke between its covers.

We know very little about manmade piers and quays along the western seaboard before the beginning of the 19th century, when a lavish programme of safe harbours were built not only to encourage fishing, but as relief programmes in times of distress. It was also an attempt to replace the activities of piracy and smuggling with an industry based on the believed bounty from the sea.

THERE ARE an infinite number of reasons why people buy books, but at the risk of generalisation, two reasons stand out: people who buy books to read them and those who buy books to collect them. While the former will most certainly read their purchases, the latter will probably not read theirs.