The inscription on Seamus Heaney’s gravestone, which stands in the cemetery adjoining St Mary’s parish church in Bellaghy, the town where he spent much of his childhood, speaks as much of the man himself as it does of his poetry.  The words are clear, and beautiful, as is the craftsmanship that set them in the stone.

London is the largest capital city in Western Europe, very possibly the oldest, and almost certainly the most important.  There has always been a settlement on the mouth of the River Thames, and over the centuries it has grown, inching along the waterway and extending to the north and the south. It is always changing. The most recent major development…

It is not long since town planning seemed to concern itself almost entirely with methods of moving traffic from one place to another with the minimum of delay.  Nothing was to be allowed to stand in the way of the car. Today, the citizens of some of the greatest cities in Europe are demanding something far more imaginative than Inner…

For the Low Countries of Western Europe, sea defences have been an essential part of life for centuries.  Dikes have been constructed for nearly a thousand years, and the expertise in coastal development engineering to be found today in Belgium and Holland is second to none.  Life depends upon the sea defences; huge tracts of land lying below sea level, and the population density in these areas is high.

The Obel Tower, the tallest building not only in Belfast but also in Ireland, was one of the most spectacular victims of the property bubble of 2009.