I have two main reasons for writing this book, and both have their origins in family matters. A few years ago I spent a fortnight with my wife and two young daughters on holiday on the Dingle Peninsula, in southwest Ireland. This area of immense scenic beauty and cultural significance is also an area of ‘classic’ geology. As an undergraduate student I had followed in the footsteps of geologists such as George Victor Du Noyer, a noted antiquarian and watercolourist, and Joseph Beete Juke, his boss in the Geological Survey of Ireland, in mapping some Silurian and Devonian sediments that formed the backbone of the peninsula. I doubt I produced a fuller and more accurate map than did these early pioneers. I recalled with feeling, during the first three damp, rain-sodden days of our holiday, the remark of Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, one-time Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who declared, having endured two weeks of such weather, that ‘there was nothing of interest in Irish geology’.