His view of the Celtic Tiger years, about which there is now almost a mood of national nostalgia, is unequivocally baleful.

He believes that greed -- a condition that can admittedly afflict most of us -- became all-consuming, and that many of our most beautiful county landscapes were wrecked by reckless development.

His view of many of our politicians, especially the man he calls the lugubrious one -- "he makes me sad" -- is equally malign, though he approves of work done by Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern in the restoration of buildings and the setting up of the Heritage Trust.

And one of his favourites among the present crop of political leaders is Brian Lenihan, who he feels has a real grasp of what is wrong and what needs to be done.

But the politician he admires most is North Kerry Fine Gael TD and former Kerry footballer Jimmy Deenihan, who has thrown much of his abundant energy into creative and cultural activity in the county.

The Knight is one of the few public people who are prepared to back the idea of a national government to get us through the slump.

But his true heart lies not in politics or in economics.

To understand where the Knight -- Desmond FitzGerald -- is coming from, one must bear in mind that he has given his life to the struggle to preserve our architectural and artistic legacy, and to protect what is beautiful in this country from destruction in the name of profit and of what some call progress.

He has just published his life's work, a history of the Knights of Glin, with the help of a number of talented contributors and scholars ("It is brilliantly edited by Tom Donovan," he says).

It is an immense and immaculate book, and is in itself a thing of beauty and a work of art, as befits a man with FitzGerald's aesthetic sensibilities.

Aengus Fanning: "This history of the Knights of Glin must have been a lifetime's work for you."

Knight of Glin: "As a small boy I was always intrigued being brought up in Glin Castle. I had various people who influenced me, we had a marvellous estate carpenter there called Paddy Healy, whose family still work for us, and it's quite a record because his family were involved with the woodwork of the house when it was built in the 1790s.

"My ancestor built a very interesting house which, from the outside, is not perhaps as beautiful as it might be, and has a lot of bedrooms which were added on in the early 19th century. But inside it has a beautiful staircase, lovely library bookcases, very well-crafted, and it's rather nice to think that the ancestor of the Healys actually turned the banisters of the staircase in the 1790s. Paddy, who is long since dead, was always intrigued about the eccentric attitudes of my family and had many a tale about them, rather derogatory or mad or peculiar or whatever.

"In the early 19th century one was known as the Knight of the Women because of the many women he had and the many children he sired in the area -- this was not too uncommon in those days when the landlords had a certain way with them, naturally. He was a speaker of Irish, he was a scholar.

"I only discovered the other day when I was in the Royal Irish Academy and was going to say 'well, my family are not very well-known, no member of my family has been a member of the Royal Irish Academy', and the new Dictionary of Irish Biography had just come out and was sitting on the desk so I looked up, as one usually does. And there I did find this big old fornicator -- he was in there, he was a member of the Royal Irish Academy with other Celtic scholars like Eugene O'Curry and people like that.

"I went to university in Canada, I went to university in America and then I worked for the Victoria & Albert (Museum) in London. All that time in the back of my mind I just kept files of any little bit that had an interesting history, and Tom Donovan, who edited this book and did a brilliant job, he works in the tax office in Limerick. He had been collecting the history of the area Glin, Glin village and west Limerick.

"I wrote about the family from when the house was built, where the money came from; John Fitzgerald, at the end of the 18th century, he married an English wife, of course, and it was really her money that built the house. Then we go through the 19th century, the Land League, we're talking about my great grandfather, who had all the troubles, whereas my grandfather was a great sportsman who married the daughter of Lord Dunraven, who was the biggest sort of landlord and important political figure in the county in those days -- he was a yachtsman, bandsman. So all those stories of my father's life.

"My mother was English, they had a tempestuous marriage, she was very, very beautiful, there are some lovely pictures of her in the book. She saved the place because, when my father died, she then married a lovely, amiable, charming Canadian who was a rich man. He was in the oil and natural gas business and he restored the place so that is really why we are still there. Ray Milner he was called. They had a house on Vancouver Island, where I spent quite a long time as a young person.

"Then he died and I married my present wife and we went to live there with our children and started a bed and breakfast establishment. Eventually we turned it into a small hotel which did very well for a number of years and we employed a marvellous maitre'd, Bob Duff, who is still there, but sadly this last year we had to more or less close it down. We now just do weddings, dinners and we do lettings. So we've taken a very big toll, as so many people have in Ireland today.

"I've been a collector all my life of furniture and Irish decorative arts and put them into Glin, which didn't have so much in it because in 1803 there was a big sale. If you look at family history, it's fascinating to see economics passing down in families and trace these sort of problems, problems that we are going through at the moment and which we hope in a few more years we will get out of and restore this marvellous country of ours."

Aengus Fanning: "When he was in Dublin, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein looked at the Georgian landscape and said 'these are a people with nothing to say'."

Knight of Glin: "The people, the craftsmen, who built these houses, the Georgian houses and the Georgian squares in Dublin, were Irish. Of course, the owners were the Anglo Irish elite. Of course, there was an element of feeling against those buildings. It is political, because they were owned by landlords, belted earls, all that sort of thing. But this element has passed. To take a narrow view, that it is just a copy of something in England, is rather tragic.

"But elements of that kind of thinking are still there. I heard of a provincial town where 18th century houses were going to be knocked down. Certain people tried to stop them because they had important decoration and a local councillor said 'they are English, let them go' and they were knocked.

"There was an attitude of serfdom. Except for a few brewers, nobody had any money. It was only Desmond Guinness and his wife Mariga who led the trail-blazing gesture of saving Castletown House, which is our greatest house, and that was partly due to the charisma of Desmond, but also of the Guinness name. They were the ones that had the dosh, the rest of the aristocracy were living beyond their means.

"There have been so many good things. Desmond founded the Georgian Society and I followed in his footsteps. We have some money from America but we can never get enough. Then there is the Landmark Trust. Recently there was a Follies Trust, smaller buildings and monuments in graveyards, these are part of our heritage, people come to this country to drink the black stuff, but also to visit these things . . . if we don't keep this architectural stock, this stock of buildings, we are going to lose a great deal in the totality of the world."

Aengus Fanning: "Was the Celtic Tiger a good thing?"

Knight of Glin: "The Celtic Tiger was marvellous in many respects and what is now there -- the Convention Centre, you think of new theatre, Calatrava's Samuel Beckett bridge and many other notable buildings which were started in the Celtic Tiger and wouldn't have happened before, Alto Vetro by Shay Cleary, the Glucksman Gallery in Cork, you think of the new extension worked on at the moment in Limerick art gallery, there is a great thing going on today.

"Of course, we have lost a terrible amount, the streets of empty houses, the unnecessary housing that took place outside of every provincial town which has drawn the people from the centre of the town onto these arid estates, sometimes without a shop or a school. It is sheer arrant greed in building this country, besmirching a great deal of the county as well.

"If you go to parts of Ireland such as Dingle, which is a particular area I love very much, there is some very insensitive housing down there. West Cork seems to have controlled its housing planning better. Kerry is not a fine example. And Galway, if you look at the rural villages, the housing should not have been built, so there is a lot to decry. But there have been some great multi-millionaires who have put together some fantastic buildings in this country."

Aengus Fanning: "Was it a story of excess?"

Knight of Glin: "Naturally people suffer from greed, we all suffer from greed -- some people want more and more money. The one thing I find so disappointing about many of those people who earned a lot is that they have not given anything back to the country. They built their own gilded cages, but they haven't given anything back.

"I always think of the words of Winston Churchill on the subject of giving: 'You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give.' Those are great words. Now it is not a great time to approach people from a heritage point of view, but some of the people in the building business are still extremely rich and I wish some more of them would take an interest in the architectural past and give us some help.

"Ireland in the past, until only recently, has been priest-ridden, an effect which has not been greatly for the good. It is disappointing to see these reports and [it] besmirches great people in the Church to have these really appalling stories of vice and sex."

Aengus Fanning: "What about the future?"

Knight of Glin: "I am very nervous about the future, naturally one has to think of oneself and one's family. We have done everything we can to keep this heritage which is memorialised in this book but looking ahead to the future is not very congenial. . .

"I had hoped in a way that we could have become part of an organisation that was started by Bertie Ahern, the Heritage Trust, which has emulated what has happened in Northern Ireland. It is doing a tremendous job at Fota House outside Cork and it had another important garden and property called Annes Grove in Co Cork, but sadly that was put under the kibosh by the Department of Finance.

"In an ideal world that is what I would have hoped for at Glin, that it could have been taken over by a body and the family could have been left. There are so few historic houses with families left. But I think that is imaginative now, so we will soldier on and do our best, but from my point of view, optimism is a word that is rather far fetched."

Aengus Fanning: "What are your views on present-day politicians, good and bad?"

Knight of Glin: "I look back on Charlie in many way, with all his peccadilloes and sins, he had an enormous vision for this country, for things like Government Buildings, Temple Bar, he did an enormous amount of lasting good.

"Bertie was a follower of his, but Bertie was very helpful in setting up the Heritage Trust, his father had worked in the gardens in All Hallows and he had a gra for that, and David Davies (chairman of Irish Heritage Trust), who was instrumental in getting this, through, was very impressed by him. Of course, things have changed but the Heritage Trust is still there and Kevin (Baird, chief executive) is very able and the Trust will work away until things get better.

"However, I would say most of the politicians are not terribly interested. But there is one who is near to my own path in west Limerick. Jimmy Deenihan, who is a famous ex-footballer, is a man of tremendous vision. He has restored a number of buildings and castles and got the Lartigue railway in Listowel. He is constantly promoting matters in that area and I would like to pay great tribute to him.

"Brian Lenihan shows a lot of gravitas and certainly seems to have learned his brief, it must be a hard road to follow. I have great confidence in the way he holds himself and I hope that he carries on and brings us out of this mess."

Aengus Fanning: "Should we have a National Government?"

Knight of Glin: "I, for some time now, have believed it is the only way to go ahead, because all this point-scoring is wasting people's energy, and if you had a national government we might have some hope. I think it would be an excellent idea, but I suppose it will never happen."