A Traveller’s Companion to Dublin

Diverse views of Dublin, its glories, tragedy and comedy A Traveller’s Companion to Dublin splendidly brings to life Dublin’s turbulent history, its intensely literary and theatrical character of long literary lineage from Jonathan Swift, through Yeats, Joyce, and Brendan Behan, its revolutionary ideals and heroes, such as Gratton, Parnell, and O’Connell, and its ordinary life, at once elegant and excitingly violent in this collection of letters, diaries, and memoirs of travellers to the city and by the Dubliners themselves. The extracts, from medieval times onward, including Red Hugh O’Donnell’s escape from Dublin Castle, James Joyce’s plans for a novel while staying at the Martello Tower, and the seizure of the GPO by Irish Volunteers during the Easter Rising, are just some of the eyewitness accounts of history in the making. Here too is gossip and storytelling at its humorous best in sketches of many famous Dubliners. There are also outsiders’ views of the city, its buildings, and its people, equally rich in their humor and variety: from the complaints of a disgruntled Elizabethan soldier about the price of Dublin ale to the first impressions of Benjamin Franklin, Thackeray, and Queen Victoria. This entertaining and informative Traveller’s Companion also includes maps, engravings, and notes on history, art and architecture, and everyday city life.

Thomas and Valerie Pakenham spent their early married life in Dublin, when he was working on The Year of Liberty, a history of the Great Irish Rebellion of 1798. They now live partly in Ireland and partly in London.