Like all the best childhood memoirs, Homan Potterton's combines personal reminiscence with socio-historical background, highlighting its wider relevance. He has a lively, elegant style, a ready wit and he tells a good story. His description of his four-year-old self sets the tone: "I was irascible and over-sensitive to the point of being disagreeable, puny and pernickety, peevish and complaining. Otherwise, I was a lovely little boy."
Homan Potterton was born in 1946, the youngest of eight children. His father inherited Rathcormick unexpectedly, from a childless cousin: "Rathcormick is not one of the great houses in County Meath, not by a long shot." Potterton writes about art and architecture with the passion of a scholar who was to go on to become the director of the National Gallery of Ireland (1980-1988).
The land had been farmed by Pottertons for more than 300 years, and was left to Homan's father "for his life in trust for his eldest legal male issue". The fact that the Pottertons were tenants in perpetuity is one of the characteristics used by the author to distinguish middle-class Irish Protestants from the more raffish Anglo-Irish. Brendan Behan's definition of an Anglo-Irish man or woman as a "Protestant on a horse" is praised for recognising that there are some Protestants without horses - poor Protestants, and middle-class ones like the Pottertons. Potterton's father was old fashioned, even by the standards of the time. He was cautious, diffident, and painfully innocent of the ways of the world, yet he managed to run a successful auctioneering business and land agency as well as the farm. He was firmly against smoking, drinking and gambling: "serious and severe, strict and stiff", qualities which also ruled his dealings with his sons. He was more likely to express disapproval than affection. The clever, more liberal mother kept the peace by mediating between the disciplinarian and his children.
To grow up a Protestant in the 1950s was to live in a state of siege, according to Potterton, this being the best defence against the erosion of their numbers by the Ne Temere decree, which ensured that the children of mixed marriages were brought up as Catholics. The less Catholics they met socially, the less likely they were to marry one.
It was a gloriously old-fashioned childhood, in which owning a mongrel called Rusty was a highlight. "Is that yoke your dog?" other children asked on the beach at Kilkee, where the family spent every August. Trim National School was followed by Preston at Navan, intended to correct a tendency to tantrums, and Kilkenny College, where Potterton's childhood ended all too suddenly on the death of his father. The 26 chapters are beautifully crafted, with story-book titles - A Proper Father, An Impractical Investment - and a brisk narrative pace.
The text is illustrated by line drawings by Jeremy Williams. The result is very like the style of children's hardback books popular in the 1950s: it is perhaps relevant that the young Potterton was a member of the Enid Blyton Fan Club. He was also brought up on the King James Bible, which fostered a love of words that is evident in the sophistication and polish of his classic memoir.
Alannah Hopkin is a writer and critic