Great Lighthouses of Ireland
The recent tourist initiative by the Commissioner of Irish Lights, The Great Lighthouses of Ireland, is, in general, a Good Thing for lighthouse enthusiasts. It has heightened people's awareness of these guardians of the seas and hopefully will generate a great deal of money that can be used for various lighthouse-related projects, from preventing the disappearance of some of the older, no-longer-active lights to archiving the vast array of material on the subject. However, I am being constantly reminded of the incredible variety of maritime lights around this little country of ours and would not like to think that the thirteen lighthouses chosen in this initiative represent the very pinnacle of lighthouse engineering on this island, or that they are the most picturesque or historical or interesting. Basically the word 'Great' is slightly misleading in this context. Everybody has their favourite lighthouse and we could argue till the gannet comes home as to which of...