It’s a spirited claim which may be hard to swallow for the Scots – but a top whiskey expert in Ireland insists that the drink was invented on the Emerald Isle. Timmy Donovan tells a convincing tale of how monks near Athlone worked on perfumes from the Middle East to perfect the art of distillation and create the powerful aqua vitae – water of life – almost 1,000 years ago. The monks, based near the banks of the River Shannon, later spread their wings and set up churches in Iona and other