LETTER:The Ireland that never was

WITH reference to Mark Bostridge's article, "Yours, Charlotte" (Sunday Review, 18 June), may I point out one inaccuracy? Your reporter calls Banagher, County Offaly "a straggling town" in "Southern Ireland".

There is not nor ever was a place called "Southern Ireland". Banagher is located in the Irish midlands. County Offaly is now part of the Irish Republic, but in 1895 it would still have been part of what was known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In fact, Arthur Bell Nicholls would have known his native county by its former name "King's County", after King Philip II of Spain.

Rev O D G Skelly

Tullamore, Co Offaly