Critics are rarely loved: in fact, it is widely believed they are a power-crazed, agenda-driven, score-settling irrelevance. News reporters tend not to regard them as real journalists, while the artistic community despairs of them. At its finest, however, criticism is one of literature's enduring pleasures. But with the lamented demise of the essay form, criticism has become restricted, largely confined to newspapers and universities; in the former it is limited to review-space; in the latter it is written by academics to be read by academics. All of which testifies to the unique role filled by Brian Fallon over a long career during which he not only served until earlier this year as art critic of this newspaper, but also as features editor, literary editor and founder of the Weekend supplement - while also writing on a variety of literary, historical and cultural themes.

The wealth of his knowledge has finally been showcased in a reasoned, convincing cultural history, An Age of Innocence, which is published today. In it he has succeeded in bringing his literary range to history and his grasp of social history to a study of Irish literary life.

Setting out to challenge the perception that the 30-year period from 1930-1960 was a drab, twilight-zone of intellectual ferment, he argues that it was a time of vigorous creativity, and that the Ireland of today is not vastly superior to that of the past.

In fact, as may be seen from his book, the Ireland of the past could claim a far more sophisticated intelligentsia than what passes for one now.

"The rise of populism seems to me to be one of the dominant realities of Irish life in this century," he says. Neither a survey nor a dogmatic rant, his book is a singular performance. Not all literary academics could claim such a historical understanding and few historians would be as familiar with the literary texts.

In examining the background leading to his mid-century study, Fallon provides a thorough overview in which he places Yeats centre-stage as the most important, central figure of 20th-century Ireland. He also makes a powerful case for the respective contributions of George Moore and AE, George Russell - the latter he describes as "Ireland's nearest equivalent to William Morris". Nor does Fallon accept that Irish literary censorship was as crucial as is often held. "It has been much mythologised and I believe myself that its long-term influence on the development of Irish writing has been a good deal exaggerated."

This is a reaction against revisionism. His book is also telling the story of de Valera's Ireland. "Yes, that's true. Although I was never a de Valera man, I'm a creature of the 1950s . . . I have never held with political parties or politicians." He mentions as an afterthought a brief alliance with the National Progressive Democrats, "hmm, I even canvassed for it". Among their many shortcomings, critics are frequently accused of being either irresponsibly vicious as a way of asserting themselves, or of being too soft: Fallon has been neither. Fairness has always been one of his strengths as critic, as has a daunting range of reference born of a lifetime of obsessive reading and a balanced tone which may be idiosyncratic but is always well supported by fact.

As the son of poet Padraic Fallon (19041974), from whom he inherited his critical sensitivity, he was always aware of Irish literary life: "My father knew poets and writers, his generation was drawn to French poetry. AE had encouraged him. It was to him that he brought his poems for criticism." He says his father had a patriarchal presence and was very aware of his vocation as a poet: "He was a warm man, very west of Ireland. My mother was from Dublin, the daughter of a well-known builder." Dorothea Maher was always called "Don" by her husband. "She was a very strong character. But my father was the dominant personality. I think had she lived at a later time my mother would have been a successful career woman. But she was happy staying at home, looking after her sons. I think she liked having sons, I never felt she regretted not having daughters."

Born in 1933 in Cootehill, Co Cavan, where his father was working as a customs officer, Brian Fallon is the second of six sons - "now I'm the eldest of four". The family moved back to Sutton, Co Dublin, when he was three. By the time he was six, they had relocated again, this time to Wexford town. Home was a farm of about 20 acres, less than two miles outside the town. He went to St Peter's College, as would all his brothers.

School was not a success. "I started very well and was a star pupil for a while, did well at Latin and Greek. But then," he sighs, "ended up getting bored." He left school at 17 and spent about two years working on the farm "and reading" with a vengeance. His older brother, Garry, had already gone off to UCD to study veterinary.

"I found I liked farm work. I've always considered myself a countryman: I love the Irish countryside, it's where I'm comfortable, but I knew I wouldn't have a career in farming. I didn't have the skills. I wasn't a great ploughman or anything." By then, he was aware he had also become "a respectable, middle-class person".

Padraic Fallon had been born and raised in Athenry, Co Galway, and though he was the son of a cattle and sheep dealer, the family also ran a hotel and a butchering business, and the poet was educated at boarding schools and left for Dublin at 18 where he joined the civil service.

No particular job beckoned the young Brian Fallon. He did some work on the local paper in Wexford where, he says, "I learnt nothing. But my father knew R.M. Smyllie. He told him his second was still at home with no idea of what to do." Smyllie was then nearing the end of his 20-year reign as one of the more legendary editors of The Irish Times. He was a generous, expansive character with an eye for talent. Aged 19, Fallon was offered a position as a news sub-editor. It was an adventure - not only had he come to Dublin, he had, as a Catholic from rural Ireland, entered one of Dublin's most Protestant institutions. "No one made me feel any different because I was Catholic but you couldn't help noticing the differences."

Having settled down to work in one Dublin Protestant institution, Fallon then decided to investigate another and enrolled as a classics student at Trinity College. "I subbed at night and went to college during the day. But I didn't really settle. I didn't fail any exams but I left after two years. My Greek wasn't up to it." Does he regret leaving? "No. Although I often thought I should have finished my degree. But no, I'm not a natural student. I like finding out things but I'll read my own way. I can only go where my interests lead me." His is a maverick intelligence and he is as close to being truly self-educated as it is possible for anyone to be who has finished secondary school and at least experienced university. Fallon sits looking down over his Wicklow valley view from the sitting-room of the house he built more than 30 years ago with his wife, journalist Marion FitzGerald. "We bought the site for £750. It was a fair enough price at the time." The early evening light drifts over the view, which is beautiful although a nearby conifer plantation has reduced the line of the mountains. It is a single storey, American-style house, comfortable, unpretentious. It is no surprise that there is usually at least a couple of his seven grown children in residence.

Wood burns in the stove and the scene is well furnished with books, paintings and sculpture including large pieces by his brother Conor. There are many tactile objects, including ceramics. "I love pottery, I'd like to fill the place with it." A sturdy, very physical individual, Fallon never wastes words, and speaks in efficient bursts cordoned off by long silences and flashes of often bizarre, earthy humour. His observations are seldom random - he is specific and draws on that vast store of literary and historical references: he is as interested in classical music and philosophy as he is in art. Sibelius, Milhaud, and Schubert are among his favourite composers, as are Lutoslawski, Dutilleux "and Shostakovich". He remembers: "I tried to interview him once, I had heard he was in the Shelbourne. I rang his room. His voice answered: `Mr Shostakovich is not here.' It was him. I didn't get an interview." He laughs. He did, however, interview Stravinsky. "He was a frightening little man, a very powerful presence and a great composer."

Few people quote as readily from European poetry as Fallon does. A fidget, he pulls at his hair and allows his thick fingers to roam across the top of his head. He has heavy hands scarred by outdoor work, particularly chopping wood. The surest clue to his personality is a portrait of him by Derek Hill which places him in a reader's pose while also catching his shyness.

Prone to muttering, he has an absentminded air which counters the exactness of his observations. He is also a worrier. However preoccupied he may seem, he never misses an opportunity to vacuum the floors or load the dishwasher. He travels by bus, always in the company of a couple of books. He never learned to drive. Journalism, he says, has changed greatly in his lifetime. "It is in a crisis. Television news has put newspapers under great pressure. I think the written word is under pressure. You ask me do I fear for literature? I fear for literacy."

He agrees it was enjoyable having the space, in the extended-essay form of his book, to develop and expand an argument, a luxury seldom afforded to journalism, but he adds: "Journalism also encourages a certain terseness which is a good thing."

He has no regrets about journalism "aside from the fact I do think I stayed too long on as art critic. Thirty-five years is a long time.

"But I enjoyed working in the newsroom. I remember the night in 1957 when Sputnik went into space. I worked late. I remember the Munich air disaster. But I don't hold with the view that the news pages are the only important places in newspapers. Good criticism justifies itself."

OF his new book, he says: "I love the essay form. Some of the best prose has been achieved in essays - think of Hazlitt and V.S. Pritchett." There is no outlet in Ireland at the moment for the form, he believes. "There is an urgent need for a serious arts journal. The Arts Council should step in." He mentions Tony Cronin as an example of the type of Irish men of letters of which "there used to be so many".

In An Age of Innocence he selects Jack B. Yeats as the only Irish painter of international stature to emerge during the period under scrutiny and refers to him as "indisputably Ireland's greatest painter". His love of Yeats's paintings has never been undermined. Asked to name the finest Irish artists to emerge during his own time as art critic, he lists: "Tony O'Malley, Sean McSweeney, Basil Blackshaw, Brian Maguire and Charles Tyrrell". He is proud too of his brother's sculpture "and I've always liked the work of Nancy Wynne-Jones, she's my sister-in-law". Where did the interest in art come from? He shrugs. "I just always went into galleries and looked. When I was in my 20s I went off to St Ives: I've always had a good rapport with painters. I much prefer them to writers, they are far more interesting and usually more intelligent. They have a special way of looking at things."

Of his many favourite artists the great, Russian-born American abstract expressionist Rothko occupies a unique place. What makes Rothko so special? "If I could answer that . . ." he says. "He goes from first causes. He's a visionary. There's a religious dimension to his work."

Fallon believes we have returned to a romantic age, albeit a brash one. His preferred world is that of the 19th century - "I love the music, the art, the literature. I think it was the most exciting time to live, the novel reached its peak and has never been bettered."

Being one of the six Fallon brothers - Garry, Brian, Conor, financial journalist Padraic, newspaper executive Ivan and journalist Niall - was always important to him. Early in January 1996 Garry and Niall died suddenly within a week. "Suddenly there wasn't six of us anymore and I had become the eldest." The suddenness of his brothers' death echoed that of his father, who died in 1974 while visiting his fifth son, Ivan, in England. "He was only 69, I had always thought he would live into his 80s."

Fallon makes effective use of several of his father's observations in An Age of Innocence. Writing of an edition of AE's letters, Padraic Fallon observed "an unfinished poet, an occasional painter, a clairvoyant born and a natural contemplative, a religious without an altar, a believer without a God, a seer, a visionary, yet a man of affairs, an organiser of country creameries, an inspired journalist, a ferocious controversialist, and the most gentle of men, here was a genius of a dozen vocations who mastered none of them, who was an amateur in everything, and yet emerges in my imagination as the one and only great man I have ever known . . . He never realised that his were not the values of poetry, but those of the religious visionary to whom verse was the inspired shorthand of the Infinite." Fallon senior certainly passed on his measured critical style to his son.

As a poet, Padraic Fallon, a contemporary of Kavanagh and Austin Clarke, has been neglected: why? "He published very little in his lifetime and he did write many radio plays - at a time when radio was very important - and the plays were very well thought of . . . But I think in about 20 years time his position will be assured." In 1990 Brian Fallon edited his father's Collected Poems. Fallon's poetry, without rejecting the values of the Revival, draws on the Bardic tradition of the 19th-century Gaelic world personified by Raferty as well as acknowledging the influence of the French Symbolists. "He was an original poet without being a revolutionary. He was - he is - a fine poet. His best work came late, after 50, so people have not caught up with him yet. As for Brian Fallon's own ambitions now? "I want to write more books and, at 65, I'd better hurry up."

An Age of Innocence by Brian Fallon is published today by Gill and Macmillan, price £19.99 hardback.