Donal, please tell me about your latest book, The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park.
After writing about 12 streets, now comes the story of one incredible road. The story of Ireland is there on Chesterfield Avenue. The Flanagan family, since Victorian times, have been an important part of it. Learning that one family have maintained the gas lamps of the park through generations struck me as a great oral history in the making.
What is your favourite story about the Phoenix Park?
On Chesterfield Avenue, almost directly across the road from the break in the trees that allows a glimpse into the Áras, a small cross in the grass marks the location of the 1882 Phoenix Park assassinations. Nobody is entirely sure who first put it there, but it roughly marks the locations where Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke were slain by the Invincibles.
You are best known for your podcast Three Castles Burning which explores and celebrates Dublin’s history. What first inspired your interest?
My father was a firefighter (now retired) and is a historian of the DFB (Dublin Fire Brigade). A fire helmet that survived the [1916] Rising really makes you think about more than the big names of a story. Someone wore it out of a station, not knowing if they’d return. The city is full of human stories like that.
Last year you published Three Castles Burning: A History of Dublin in Twelve Streets. If you had to pick one, which would it be? And which was the unlucky 13th?
If I had a euro for every time someone asked “why isn’t Capel Street in it?”, I’d buy a first edition Ulysses. My favourite street in there is Henrietta Street.
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What is your favourite part of Dublin? And your favourite pub?
Given it’s their 200th birthday, we shall honour The Palace. I have a particularly cherished memory of chatting to Seamus Heaney in there once about the great poet Michael Hartnett.
My favourite part of Dublin is undoubtedly the Liberties, or what’s left of it.
In 2014, you published The Pillar: The Life and After Life of the Nelson Pillar. What’s the most unusual part of that story?
Very randomly, I later befriended Liam Sutcliffe (who blew it up) in Grogan’s. At his funeral procession, his coffin passed the grave of Thomas Kirk, the sculptor who did the statue of Nelson on top of the pillar. We should have kept the pillar and put Horatio in a museum.
What’s your favourite Dublin monument? And which of Dublin’s buildings/structures do you regret the loss of most?
I love John Coll’s statue of Brendan Behan along the canal. He can see the other side of the Mountjoy wall, for a change.
Dublin still feels the loss of the Theatre Royal.
Your PhD is on republican commemoration and memory in 1930s Ireland. Tell me more.
I spent too long in universities – but the last thing I studied was actually Museum Studies in Ulster University. I swapped a city that thinks two chimneys are an industrial landmark for Linenopolis.
Which foreign city would you like to write about?
I adore the Hauptstadt and try to get to Berlin often. There’s lots of Berlin in the lamplighters book, as it is the world capital of gas lamps. Berlin is not a city, but a series of wonderful towns with their own characteristics.
Which projects are you working on?
The podcast is endless!
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
The grave of Bertolt Brecht.
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
Quote less, say more. The reader wants you in your book.
Who do you admire the most?
In the world of literature, Dermot Bolger. What he did with Raven Arts Press, from very little, was and is inspiring.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
No more aparthotels, please.
Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?
I loved James Morrissey’s recent history of Garech Browne and Claddagh Records. He was a true bohemian.
Which public event affected you most?
As a child (I was born in 1989), I still remember the great feeling of hope around the early days of peace on our little island. That certainly impacted on us all positively.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
I don’t think I’ll ever forget my first journey to the top of the Berliner Fernsehturm. It might be a tourist trap now, but it was the literal high point of DDR architecture. The views!
Your most treasured possession?
A first edition of JP Donleavy’s The Gingerman.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
Flora Mitchell’s Vanishing Dublin.
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Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan – for the fireworks. Lady Jane Wilde, better known as Speranza.
The best and worst things about where you live?
Blackpitts is near to Fallon’s on the Coombe, but the skyline is mostly aparthotels, student accommodation blocks and other, hopefully temporary, things.
What is your favourite quotation?
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” – Thomas Paine.
Who is your favourite fictional character?
Fluther Good. He’s beloved in this town.
A book to make me laugh?
Ulysses. Really.
A book that might move me to tears?
If This Is a Man, the Auschwitz memoir of Primo Levi. It can never be forgotten.
The Lamplighters of Phoenix Park: A unique history of one of Ireland’s most famous places by Donal Fallon, with Frank and James Flanagan, is published by Hachette Books Ireland
