I am so at home in Dublin, more than any other city, that I feel it has always been familiar to me. It took me years to see through its soft charm to its bitter prickly kernel - which I quite like too.
Evelyn Waugh seriously considered moving to Ireland but decided against. He later felt himself lucky to have been spared the ‘mole-like malice’ of the natives.
Writer Victoria Amelina visited Dublin shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. On July 1st she died after a Russian rocket attack on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk.