Sir, – Dermot Bolger, in his excellent review of David Dickson's recently published history of Dublin, remarks that "the extraordinary fact is not that so much of Dublin's heritage was destroyed but that so much survived" ("Cornucopia of Dublin: Dublin – The Making of a Capital City", Arts & Books, June 21st). Credit for saving so much belongs to those who, from the 1960s onwards, battled to preserve our heritage from the depredations of developers and their friends in government, often against the thrust of public opinion. Dickson writes well about these battles in the concluding pages of his epic book.
One of the most prominent campaigners on behalf of Dublin’s heritage was the late Prof Kevin B Nowlan who, looking back afterwards on that philistine period, observed that “Dublin was being destroyed in the cause of a debased nationalism that saw its Georgian houses as the relics of British rule in Ireland”. As Dickson points out, Nowlan and his associates were once castigated by a particularly obscurantist government minister, Kevin Boland, as a “consortium of belted earls and their ladies and left-wing intellectuals”. For Nowlan, however, conservation was “the embodiment of patriotic effort” – his own words, written in 1986. – Yours, etc,
FELIX M LARKIN,
Vale View Lawn,
Cabinteely, Dublin 18.