Blog Articles

Four generations ago Dublin had a vibrant and numerous working class Protestant community. For some of their middle class co-religionists they were too vibrant.

Philip Larkin visited Dublin for a library conference in 1967. He wasn't hugely impressed.

A German visitor to Dublin in 1783 was impressed by the city's beautiful location, its bays and mountains, and the thriving trade of its port.

A variety of pedlars worked the streets of suburban Dublin more than a hundred years ago, fascinating, and sometimes terrifying, the local children.

A citizen of Rathmines remembers the idyllic days of his childhood in the prosperous suburb around the turn of the twentieth century.

Rich and poor alike in Ireland tended to support constitutional politics, but this did not mean they did not sometimes have sympathy for those arrested for violent acts.

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.