This lavishly-illustrated and eloquently-written book by the acknowledged authority on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish landowning elite, Dr Anthony Malcomson, is a study of the gentry of Co. Down, defined in the old-fashioned way of ‘titled and untitled aristocracy’, viewed through the prism of the Maxwell, later Waring Maxwell, later still Perceval-Maxwell, family of Finnebrogue, Downpatrick. The theme which runs through the book is the Down gentry’s sense of pride in their county’s superiority over all other counties in Ireland, be it in its buildings (e.g. the Southwell Charity of the 1730s), its institutions (the Down Hunt and Down Royal), and in the residence-record, public spirit, harmonious relations and general ‘specialness’ of their own gentry class.