"[T]his excellent volume...covers three counties, Kildare, Laois and Offaly, all on the western borderlands of the medieval English pale of settlement."—Simon Heffer, The Daily Telegraph “Like the best of Pevsner authors, Tierney understands the immutable bond between landscape from architecture. We learn of the ancient timber tracks across the bogs, the canal routes that linked Dublin with the Shannon, and the now rapidly vanishing concrete cooling towers of state-sponsored peat electricity generation – all part of an enmeshed entity of landscape and human endeavour that the author explores with great sensitively and vivid description” —Richard Butler, Rural History  “Central Leinster is the fifth volume in the Ireland series and covers an area where many of the Ireland’s most rewarding and distinctive buildings are found” — Ger Scully, The Tribune   “[An] essential addition to the library of anyone interested in the architecture of Ireland, should be compulsory reading for local planners and richly deserves a place in the glove compartment of motoring locals or visitors”—John Coleman, Ancient Monuments Society   “[A]lmost every page yields at least one curiosity, whether it be the monumental pre-Catholic Emancipation mausoleum to the Grace family in Aries, County Laois, or an 18th-century brick eyecatcher called Pigeon House in Nurney, County Kildare.”—Robert O’Byrne, Apollo Magazine “In common with the other volumes, Central Leinster is a superb presentation of the formal architecture of the region…Those whose interest is formal architecture will relish this book.”—Barry O’Reilly, Vernacular Architecture Shortlisted for the 2020 Colvin Prize by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain