	Driven back to the old manuscripts for technical guidance - and to the Livres d"Artiste of the early part of this century - the editors and contributors soon realised that the old canard, that there is no visual arts tradition in Ireland, is without foundation. The beginnings of Irish art and poetry find a triumphant expression in the early illuminated manuscripts, and the sense of recuperating an ancient tradition in a thoroughly modern idiom became one of the driving excitements of making the Book. 