THE Wicklow Military Road, no less a dramatic thoroughfare through fond rustic nature and abundant history than it ought to be, is the subject of a practical, elegiac, book by Michael Fewer.

This isn't the first time the author has touched upon Wicklow but here is an especial departure. And though his previous book, The Wicklow Way, is no less well-written, the author's latest standard of documentary literature is worthy of the highest praise.

Ashfield Press in conjunction with the Heritage Council are due respect for their lovely production of this 'history' from one who is not 'a professional historian'. The Wicklow Military Road . . .

History and Topography is an anecdotal travel aid, the perfect size to bring along on a walk, and its breadth appeals across literary ranges.

The author takes the reader along, "for 60 kilometres through a rich variety of terrain, including city suburbs [the road begins in Rathfarnham], woodland, moorland, an upland village and high mountain passes, to come to an end at Aghavannagh".

Fewer says in his introduction: "I have tried to weave together the threads of the road's history, landscape and built heritage" . . . and in each of these areas he is engagingly successful.

The barely 200-years-old road was originally built for the purposes of the British empire . . . never mind the murderously illegal pogroms of British soldiery and yeomanry . . . to eliminate the threat from what remained of the United Irishmen following the 1798 Rebellion.

Patriots . . . in particular the small south Wicklow farmer Michael Dwyer who "kept the county in perpetual alarms", according to one postmaster . . . continued to employ guerrilla tactics up to 1803.

The failure of French Humbert's expedition and the collapse of Robert Emmet's cause were necessary before the road succeeded in its aim of allowing no shelter for freedom fighter or criminal bandit.

Lord Cornwallis . . . a Unionist reasonable enough to see the value of Catholic Emancipation . . . ordered the highway built under the terms of a 1739 award "of compulsory purchase powers to landlordcontrolled Grand Juries for the purpose of providing public roads".

Wicklow presented itself as needful of such purse and by the time it was built the Wicklow Military Road had succeeded in its aim of eradicating the United Irishmen as an effective fighting force.

There's fascination to be had when Fewer shows the means and machinations by which his inspiration for this book, the Scottish-born surveyor Alexander Taylor, comes into the orbit of Charles Cornwallis and general of ordnance Charles Vallancey, exceptional men of the time.

But I'm tracing the surface rather than revealing the essential integrity of The Wicklow Military Road. Each page of Fewer's fine book makes the history and geography of the road so accessible, poetic, warm and tapped into the cortex of the beauty that characterises the uplands and valleys today.