The Geology of Ireland edited by Charles Holland, Dunedin Academic Press, £55, ISBN 1903765072
WE were terribly modern when I was a student in the early 1970s. Plate tectonics had just given geology an all-embracing theory. Young tyros in flares declared that fieldwork was dead. We were no longer geologists: we had transformed into earth scientists, full of physics and formulae, Fortran, remote sensors and machines that went ping. Regional geology became a term of abuse. It was old hat, grey flannels and not much better than geography.
All of which was a huge disappointment to me, because my fogeyish…
