The city authorities had a short way with mendicants, pests and malingerers back in the days before political correctness gone mad.

Sexual harassment is an unpleasant practice and often goes unpunished. But not always.

A dispute over power in our national sporting organisations brings together Joyce’s Citizen, a nationalist MP and son of an immigrant Italian sculptor, and the father of Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s wartime minister who hid his Irish origins.

A German visitor to Ireland in 1828 found that poverty and an absence of material prospects could not prevent the Irish from having a good time, in their characteristic way.

The city authorities in Dublin have waged a long war against casual traders, but not without provoking some spirited resistance.

An eighteenth century traveller to Ireland was so uncomplimentary about everyone that he managed to unite all strands of opinion against him.

This broad, pleasant street, laid out in the eighteenth century, contained the homes and haunts of many prominent figures associated with parliament; hence the large, fine houses.

The commercial heart of Dublin city centre, with its large shops and many shop assistants, was fertile ground in the nineteenth century for Fenian recruiters.

By this riverside, on our sunnybank, how buona the vista, by Santa Rosa! A field of May! the very vale of Spring.Thus Joyce

The excellent website of Dublin life and lore Come Here To Me! embarks on a discussion of that now vanished phenomenon “the Rathmines accent”, prompted by the (not, it must be said, enormously well vouched) idea that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was taught English by an Irishman – in fact a native of Leinster Road in Rathmines.

A great fire, banked high and red, flamed in the grate and under the ivytwined branches of the chandelier the Christmas table was spread.