Philip Bull writes that the history of Monksgrange ‘is well worth the telling’; despite not being the story of a particularly large estate, or famous family. Completing the portrait of Monksgrange and the Richards, Orpen and now Hill families (the property passed through the female line twice) was no small undertaking. The author, firstly, over a period of eight years, archived the family's vast papers, including over 15,000 letters. The resulting book is much more than an architectural or genealogical study, it is an exemplary example of the rich threads which can be found within such houses and will be of interest to researchers of many strands of Irish and family history.

The book is not structured entirely chronologically, but instead is centred on Edward Richards-Orpen, landlord at Monksgrange from 1860–1900, with later chapters dealing with his descendants, and chapter three stretching back to the building of the house and the family's flight during the 1798 rebellion. Changing parent-child relationships and expectations are explored in detail over five generations, particularly at flash points where two adult generations overlapped in the house; something which might be worthy of broader exploration among gentry and big farming classes.

Edward was a second son, and it is a strength of the book that his time before his inheritance working as an engineer and later homesteading on the Kansas frontier during the American Civil War is dealt with fully. This sheds light on the experience of the often overlooked younger son within the Irish ascendancy, who so often left Ireland to find fortune or adventure. His experience demonstrates a certain fluidity of class and comfort; his self-built wooden house was more primitive than the homes of the more prosperous tenants on his brother John's estate in Wexford (pp 44–5). When John died unmarried, childless and relatively young of tuberculosis, Edward, as later his daughter and grandson would, came home to modernise and manage the house and estate.

The family was not generally absentee, but the book reveals how international a gentry family might be. Almost every generation spent some time living in England; Edward's daughter Adela lived in America, was educated in Paris, Lausanne and Sienna, and spent fifteen years in England. Many were interested in international movements; most extremely Edward's great granddaughter spent time at Hitler Youth camps (pp 232–6) before she died suddenly aged 23. Bull is generous enough to suppose that she might have changed her views if she had lived a little longer (p. 232).

Monksgrange is invaluable in exploring the possibilities for women, and men, from this background; such as managing estates, travelling solo through the Middle East, giving speaking tours in favour of unionism, embarking on artistic literary and musical careers, becoming the first registered female jockey, and indeed completing physically demanding horse and cattle management on the American prairie – while a child of nine. Dorothea Richards, like many unknown gentry women, managed the estate for nearly forty years through her husband's untimely death, her sons’ childhood, her eldest son's incompetence, and her second son's six-year-long reluctance to take on the estate. The author also did not underestimate the role played by Adelia Gates, the American woman who acted as surrogate mother to the widowed Edward's young daughter.

This book demonstrates that the papers of the gentry class can provide detailed insights into their views on marriage. With over 100 personal diaries to analyse, each complemented with letters and legal documents, it was possible to access details of their emotions. This family made a number of decisions which did not fit altogether with the material interests of their estate. Edward's grandfather refused to marry a cousin who would have brought with her considerable land because, in Edward's words, she was ‘ugly and demented’ (p. 68). A great-grandfather gave away land to his mistress (p. 61). His half-brother caused scandal as he left his, as their mother described her, ‘wicked and drunken wife’ (p. 111) to elope. Edward's mother's second marriage was problematic as she married her sister's widowed husband; the pair had to travel to Scotland to marry to avoid any illegality. Much later, Edward's great-grandson, John, carried out a long-term affair with a married woman, Esther Bishop, who was head of the Irish Country Women's Association, eventually marrying her when she was widowed, but too late for them to produce an heir (p. 246). Emotions were not always to be trumped by duty.

The family never slavishly followed expectations. Edward firmly believed ‘that indissoluble marriage is a bad institution’ (p. 82) and also railed against organised religion, and the flaws he saw in his own sex (drunkenness, violence and misogyny), class (snobbishness, cowardliness) and race (slave ownership). He promoted his own version of women's rights, particularly as regards dress reform, eventually designing and making clothes for his second wife. He did not attempt to shield his daughter from knowledge of the worst aspects of humanity, warning her ‘999 men in 1000 believe intercourse between the sexes wrong without marriage & they despise the woman that permits it … The whole life of the woman is poisoned & destroyed’ (p. 22).

Bull is to be commended for attempting to map all of the women connected to this family; even those who might have had their lives destroyed in this way (pp 7, 105–6). At the age of twenty-four, Edward married a fifteen-year-old American girl, Sarah Tisdale, who was ‘without fortune, without family’, and pregnant with his son (p. 22). In 1874, when his much-younger servant, Kitty Sinnott, was pregnant with his child he did not offer to marry her as he had Sarah (who had sadly died with two of her children of diphtheria and scarlet fever) – perhaps moral codes were no match for social expectations when in Ireland. This pregnancy and their child, who was born in Florence and adopted in Ireland, were kept secret. It is remarkable to read self-critical letters from Kitty (pp 103–5).

This family navigated multiple upheavals; from the 1798 rebellion through to the Land War, home rule, the First World War, raids during the Civil War, acclimatising to and eventually embracing a new state with a member of the Seanad for Fine Gael residing at Monksgrange. Each upheaval is explored, but the personalities and relationships within the house rightly remain at the heart of this work. The reader is left with a portrait of this sometimes flawed family's friendships, marriages, and other relationships spanning generational, gender, class and geographical boundaries. It is a story well worth the reading.