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much in the opposite political camp from the Guin
ness family. Dublin would have had what you might call a Republican brewery and a Unionist one, with Sweetman’s in one corner and Guinness in the other. The Victorian design was obviously imported from London? Yeah, but Dublin was a city of great craftsmen. One curious thing in Dublin was that because the church was so strong - at this time the church is one of the great proprietors of the arts, especially with stained glass - most stained glass artists would often see their work would end up in pubs as well. Dublin pubs have their own kind of unique little features. For example in the Flowing Tide, those windows are by Tony Inglis. Tony was nominated for an Art Direction Oscar for The Man Who Would Be King in 1976 and those windows would stand their own in any church. They look like Harry Clarke windows, full of local details including the Custom House, Nelson’s Pillar and then you have Comedy and Tragedy, the masks reminding you that the Abbey Theatre is across the road. It’s a reminder that a pub always exists in the context of where it is, the landmark, the theatre or the church next door. We owe a lot to The Aherns who own The Palace on Fleet St for conserving the Victorian pub. The Palace and Ryans of Parkgate St had a conversation about the changing face of Dublin pubs in the second half of the 20th century and both committed to keeping the Victorian fabric of the pubs intact. They were, in effect, accidental conservationists, a handful of families like them, consciously kept what was there, even though it wasn’t in fashion anymore. So what was coming into fashion around that period? The more open-plan pubs became more popular around the country as society was changing. In the book, we have this great moment where Elizabeth Taylor arrives in Dublin with Richard Burton, who was filming The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. She goes to Cusacks on the North Strand, orders a pint, they say, sorry, we don’t serve women on the premises. She gets one, it was Elizabeth Taylor after all, but when she needs to use the toilet, there’s no women’s toilets. So she’s escorted to the men’s under the barman’s coat. So once that had all changed, once the pub was a more inclusive democratic space - John B Keane was one of the pioneers of this; as a publican, he said, I just can’t understand why people won’t serve a woman a pint, who wouldn’t want a woman on the premises, she’d lower the general temperature, reduce chaos in a pub - the nooks and the crannies went with it. The secret lives of pubs interest me. Everyone and their Ma loved JJ Smith’s. It’s a very important pub in the musical history of Dublin, of course, mentioned by Whipping Boy, which guarantees its place in history, and of course the influence it had on the local jazz and blues scene. In fact, the only thing in the book I’m really gutted isn’t in the book is a chapter about JJ Smith’s. JJ Smith’s was a pub where women met other women and women-only discos took place. It was an unspoken thing but just like Brogan’s on Dame 22 St having The Viking as a space for gay men, JJ Smith’s was a very important pub for lesbian women. We’ve lost some classics over the years, Conways and The Welcome Inn on Parnell St being mine. What pubs would you love to have back? The Irish House on Wood Quay was stunningly beautiful with its Celtic crosses and wolfhounds, and was probably the most beautiful public exterior Dublin’s ever had. It was lost for the construction of the still controversial civic offices. I wish that that front had been preserved. The figures were taken down and they survive to this day but the pub itself is gone. Brandy Kernan’s is another. It was on Little Britain St, by the markets on Capel Street, it appears in Ulysses as Leopold Bloom is accosted by the citizen. Dublin now would not allow a place so central to Ulysses to fall into that kind of rack and ruin, but it would have been an amazing place to walk into. Tell us about the cover of the book. It’s not your stereotypical pub image. The cover of the book is courtesy of Colin Keating, who is a great photographer of the ballad boom. He knew my parents from The Dublin Pub - A Social And Cultural History by Donal Fallon is out now on New Island Books. Ballyfermot and was delighted to contribute for free. So the world is small and the world of publand is even smaller and I’m really grateful to Colin for giving me those amazing images. People were generous with what they had. Paul Meehan and Gerald Smith gave me poems for the book. I thought that was important for us that the pub could exist as a cultural thing but more than anything, what I’m proud of, and it’s through the insistence of Aoife from New Island, is that we put a picture of a woman on the front of the book, that it wasn’t Myles Na Gopoleen falling out of pub or Behan and Kavanagh boxing the heads off each other in the street. We wanted a picture of a matriarchal figure like Miss Cooney from the Brazen Head and that’s what we plumped for. It’s a book which I think surprises people from the cover all the way through. If you were told you had a day to live and were allowed one last pint, where would you go? Where I had my first pint, Downeys in Ballyfermot, where I had my first pint with my parents. They thought that was my first pint, well, as far as they were aware that was my first pint. But that’s something you never forget, where you had your first pint.