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HMM? CARTOON Saloon, an animation house based in Kilkenny, has put together a feature based around the creation of The Book of Kells. The prospect is not altogether an enticing one. One imagines a soberly narrated, drably animated information film, suitable for tourists queuing up at The Kells Experience: “Here we see the monks boiling up beetroot to prepare the cochineal dye.” And so forth.

Happily, The Secret of Kellsis not like that at all. Director Tomm Moore and his talented team – hunch-shouldered in darkness, one imagines, like those ninth-century monks – have assiduously avoided lazy options to deliver an entity of considerable beauty and originality.