I like to imagine Arthur Kennedy and Crofton Vandeleur each about to embark on his journey to Cork for the assizes at which the charge of slander was to be heard. Each looks in a mirror – shaving, perhaps, or combing a beard; adjusting the tilt of a hat or the folds of a neckerchief – and reflects on the similarities in the other's background to their own. Each was the son of a Protestant land owner, each grew up on the shores of an estuary – one on the North East coast of Ireland, the ...