THE DEPARTMENT OF AN TAOISEACH.
Dublin is a truly Irish, yet truly European capital. Its history goes
back a thousand years and its wide streets and elegant buildings stem
from the ideas of the Renaissance and the confidence of the 18th century.
Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith and William Butler Yeates knew the
city as did George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett; James Joyce and
Sean O’Casey understood her people. Their plays still pack the
city’s great theatres, their books its bookshops, their propositions
still discussed in its lively pubs. A scattering of miles away to the
west, the hooves of some of the world’s fastest horses pound the
turf on the plains of The Curragh. North, at Brugh na Boinne and Tara
a little further afield, first Stone Age, then Celtic civilisations
reached their Irish zenith. To the south, the Wicklow hills beckon.
Together they embrace a city that has a very special style and personality
of its own.
