WHAT is it about Dublin that has made it so unloved by the rest of the country? As a capital, the city is held in nothing like the esteem which French people everywhere have for Paris. Peter Somerville-Large does not specifically address this conundrum, but his book helps to explain why "culchies" over the centuries resented Dublin and what it stood for.
There was always something alien about Dublin, from the time when the newly-established Viking town was repeatedly sacked by the native Irish, to the early years of the present century when "Castle Catholics" queued up for invitations to Viceregal garden parties as the city shamelessly bedecked itself in Union Jacks for royal visits.
The social history of this tainted capital is recounted by Somerville Large in a brilliantly illuminated panorama, packed with little-known facts (for example, that Henry II brought 569 pounds of almonds with him on his Irish visit in 1171) and peopled by chancers and cut-purses, visionaries and villains and, most of all, the resilience of ordinary citizens.
Thousands succumbed to plague because their clay and wattle houses. "might have been built to specifications approved by a rodent council". In 1317, when Edward Bruce laid siege to the city, an order prescribed that any woman crying out within the walls in the time of war should be fined three shillings and four pence and lose all her clothes.
Women had a tough time, particularly the Molly Malones. "In 1659, the problem of `hucksters', unofficial street traders desperately trying, to make a living, was tackled forcefully. Instructions were issued to beadles and constables to imprison all beggars, idle women and maidens selling apples and oranges", the author writes. Plus ca change!
Food is a perennial preoccupation. Somerville-Large records that the medieval Augustinian Holy Trinity Priory, then attached to Christ Church, dined out on "lark pie with a tasty crust known as the coffin supplied by the cooks in Cook Street, oysters from the beds at Clontarf, geese, chickens, capons, rabbits, pears and imported figs and dates".
Much later, in 1688, two Protestant vergers of Christ Church were imprisoned because "they did not ring the bells merrily enough for the birth of the Prince of Wales", heir to the Catholic James Il. At the time, with "tippling houses" installed in its vaults, an English Jacobite officer described Dublin as "a seminary of vice, a living emblem of Sodom".
Somerville-Large's prodigious research has unearthed numerous gems which throw light on the political vicissitudes of the city. In 1692, for example, members attending the opening of a new (Williamite) parliament were congratulated on being "the choicest collection of Protestant fruit than ever grew within the walls of the Commons".
In the mid-18th century, Dublin's earliest newspapers - like their successors today - were obsessed with crime. "Last night, a gentleman was attacked by two fellows in St Mary's Lane, one of whom knocked him down and gave several blows, while another robbed him of half a guinea and some silver". So there's nothing new about mugging.
Somerville-Large details how the city was fundamentally changed, and its centre of gravity - dragged eastwards, by the work of the Wide Streets Commissioners from 1757 onwards. But he gives surprisingly short shrift to the singular achievement of the Great Duke of Ormonde in laying out the Liffey quays, curtly dismissing it in a single sentence.
His vignettes are better. Who would have imagined that Lord Camden, the Viceroy in 1798, was watching Robin Hood at the Theatre Royal when he heard the news of Lord Edward FitzGerald's arrest? Or that Wolfe Tone was not acquainted with a single Catholic when he sat down in 1791 to write his pamphlet urging their emancipation?
The book is described as a "thoroughly revised and updated" aversion of the first edition, published in 1979. However, the revisions have not been so thorough as to rectify such errors as Irish Oifigiul, or the relocation (in picture captions) of the old Custom House at Burgh Quay and the Garda headquarters to Marlborough Street.
The fine colour photographs by Mark Fiennes of randomly selected subjects are a new addition, as is most of the last chapter. This bemoans the ruthless redevelopment of the city from the 1960s onwards, drawing heavily - though somewhat incoherently - from my own book, The Destruction of Dublin, with perhaps too few attributions.
He quotes me as saying that Dublin "is probably the shabbiest, most derelict city in Europe, chaotic and disorderly like the capital of some Third World country". That was certainly the way I saw it in 1985; it" is not my view today. Despite the traffic congestion, crime and drug abuse, the city has improved immeasurably over the past decade or so.
Somerville-Large challenges James Joyce's fatuous claim that Dublin could be rebuilt from the pages of Ulysses. As he rightly points out, Joyce "had no interest in Georgian architecture", except as a "grubby backcloth" for his work. Joyce never once described the grandeur of any of the interiors with which he was familiar, such as Belvedere.
Dublin - The Fair City is an important book which will contribute to anyone's understanding of the tortuous evolution of this "cheerful. little capital" over a thousand years. Whether it will make Irish people grow to love the city more, and, claim it as their own, is a moot point. {CORRECTION} 96113000142