Latest Blogs
A city frozen in time
The prevailing culture in Dublin is one of conservation: we don’t like the new or the modern, preferring the old and crumbling. So why then has there been such sentiment about the Poolbeg chimneys, symbols of an industrial era we seem to be happy to turn our backs on?
If the Brits had won …
If Tom Barry and Winston Churchill had succeeded in reigniting the Anglo-Irish War, who would have emerged victorious? And would Ireland now enjoy a system of universal health care?
Jeering the men of 1916
It is fairly well known that volunteers captured in 1916 were sometimes jeered at by crowds of working class Dubliners on their way to imprisonment. What exactly can we read into this and what does it tell us about the legitimacy of the rising?
Remembering George Byrne
Journalist, film critic, pundit and ferocious conversationalist George Byrne died last week. John Fleming remembers the early years.
The Dublin Library Society
A nineteenth century Dublin institution, first located in Eustace Street and then in D’Olier Street, afforded its members access to newspapers, pamphlets and serious literature, all for the price of one guinea a year.
Liffey Street Angelus
A poem by Keith Payne from his latest collection
Coláiste na Tríonóide and the new state
In the atmosphere of bitterness and political contention which followed the setting up of the new Irish state in the 1920s, Trinity College Dublin wished to be allowed to stand somewhat apart from the rest of society as a unionist bastion. It was not to prevail.
A Melancholy Shipwreck
In 1821, the ‘Earl of Moira’, bound from Liverpool to Dublin, sank near the Cheshire coast with great loss of life. Many of the passengers ‘were of most respectable families’ and on their way to accompany King George on an Irish visit. The people of Wallasey fell on their possessions with great glee.
A Gift of Cabbage, A Stolen Cauliflower
In November 1938, on the pretext of revenge for the assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, the Nazis launched the attack on Jewish life and property known as Kristallnacht. Some subsequent exiles ended up in Ireland.
Mystery and Marian
Blazes Boylan’s secretary, Miss Dunne, didn’t like too much ould nonsense in her love stories. Did Walter Hartright love Marian Halcombe or didn’t he? Probably not, but did Blazes Boylan love Marian Tweedy (Molly Bloom)?
Guinness Has Been Good – For You
When told that the Guinnesses had been good for Dubliners Brendan Behan responded that Dubliners had been good for the Guinnesses.. A good quip, but not entirely fair, as the historical record indicates.
Crustaceans on D’Olier Street
One of Dublin’s main North-South thoroughfares once boasted a fine dining venue which attracted poets and writers, when they had a few bob.