An Odyssey: Reflections on an Adaptation

 'It was outstanding,' wrote one of my classicist friends in a WhatsApp group after seeing Christopher Nolan's film of The Odyssey a couple of weeks ago. 'The best kind of adaptation, which makes unexpected choices that allow you to see the ancient text in a new way. Nolan understands the Odyssey better and deeper than any of the Muskrat critics.'

I'm inclined to agree, though in terms of considering it as an adaptation as distinct from purely as a film in its own right, I should admit that while I studied the poem in college, and went on to teach it for five years at university and three years at secondary level, and have since dipped in to it plenty of times, it's probably been twenty years or so since I've read the whole thing in depth. Watching the film the first time -- I've seen it twice, one on IMAX and once in 70mm -- was, perhaps appropriately, both a new and a memory-evoking experience. My take on it has generally been that it's a faithful but dynamic adaptation, one that avoids the traps of slavish fidelity and pedantic antiquarianism while highlighting some themes and ideas within the story that are of special relevance today, such that it shows to powerful effect why we should still care today about stories told and poems recited in a rocky corner of Europe almost three thousand years ago.

Not that it's perfect: the dialogue at times is dreadfully clunky. It's not all clunky, by any means -- Emily Wilson's comment that she would have been 'ashamed to have written any part of this script' is bizarre, not to mention unfair given her supposed gratitude for the film's existence -- but there are definitely a few stinkers. Pretty much every time characters mention how their 'civilization' is under threat or their 'age of bronze' is ending I found myself wincing. Lines like these didn't ring true, in a way that references to the impending collapse of their world might have done. But beyond that? Honestly, I've no complaints.

Yes, there are a couple of choices I wouldn't have made -- it would never have occurred to me to lose the whole Phaeacians' sequence, with Nausicaa and Arete and Alcinous, and Odysseus showing off his surpassing excellence as an athlete and a storyteller, but think losing that meant the wanderings could be retold organically and cinematically, rather than as a giant info-dump, and could be presented in an immediate way, rather than as the hero's long-processed story about things that had happened years earlier. I missed too the visit to Nestor's palace at Pylos, though perhaps on screen having two sequences where Telemachus has inconclusive meetings with his father's old comrades might have felt somewhat repetitive.

So yes, I wouldn't have made those changes, but maybe that's why I'm not one of the most accomplished and successful filmmakers in the world.

It's the nature of adaptations to adapt, after all, and surely this must be all the more the case when a story transcends its geographical origins and becomes the property of all mankind, as is the case with the greatest stories. Even in Antiquity Greek poets realised this, as did the Romans who learned from them. The peerless Aeschylus described his plays, for instance, as slices cut from Homer's banquet, and it's interesting that the film opts to realise something akin to his version of the murder of Agamemnon rather than Homer's version, just as in the character of Sinon it draws from Virgil's account of the Fall of Troy. It's perhaps a relief, though, that it doesn't opt for Euripides' take on Helen: there's no suggestion here that Helen sat out the war in Egypt, while a phantom version of her distracted everyone in Troy. Interestingly, the final sequence in the film draws as much from medieval Dante as from Homer, with Odysseus and Penelope sailing off to the unknown West to make sacrifice; the Odyssey does feature an injunction that after restoring peace in Ithaca Odysseus must travel and make sacrifice, but Homer has him travelling inland, whereas it is Dante, who places Odysseus -- or Ulysses -- in almost the deepest circle of Hell, who has him sailing west beyond the Pillars of Hercules to his eventual death in the uncharted Ocean.

Visually, the scene resembles nothing quite so much as closing 'Grey Havens' sequence in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which seems somewhat ironic given how Peter Jackson's 2003 adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork had itself cut the 'Scouring of the Shire' sequence that would have preceded that section, said sequence itself telling the story -- perhaps via 'The Return of Ulysses', the closing chapter of 'The Wind in the Willows' -- of an adventure returning to his home and clearing out the louts who had taken it over. But that, after all, is the nature of stories that are retold: they change with the telling, fuelled by the inspirations of their tellers and the needs of their audiences. 

Does the film get the hero right? I think so. Certainly he's intelligent, brave, patient, and skilful in various ways, with his courage and fortitude being obvious. Look, he's not the swashbuckling Errol Flynn type character he can sometimes be in the poem, but much of the swagger of Homer's Odysseus is in the stories he tells and the ways he tells them - the film opts to show the stories as recollections of directly experienced events, rather than as rather boastful narratives, so I think reducing that dimension of Odysseus is pretty reasonable. I say reducing rather than losing, because I don't agree at all with the takes that say the film doesn't show him as cunning, clever, wily, or even dangerously arrogant. It does show him, after all, having devised the scheme with the Trojan Horse, figuring out with enough rope his soldiers would be able to tie enough straw to themselves to blend in among the Cyclops's sheep and escape him, foolishly insulting the Cyclops with a final arrow shot, and coming up with the idea of deafening his men to the Sirens while exposing himself to their song. And of course the final plan to take on the suitors is his.

So yes, the classic attributes of Odysseus are there, albeit in some cases less prominently than in the poem. There's a sense in which Nolan in his adaptation has adjusted the sliders on his graphic equaliser to tone down Odysseus' cunning and swagger and raise up his trauma and sorrow, with the latter being things Nolan evidently thinks matter today. The trauma and sorrow are definitely there in the poem, we should remember, with Odysseus sitting and weeping on the shore of Calypso's island or weeping again as he hears the bard Demodocus tells the story of the Trojan Horse, and Nolan leans in to this, presenting Odysseus as being, in a sense, a kind of traumatised veteran, guilt-ridden by the horrors he has unleased. On this aspect of the character, I wonder if Nolan's drawing in some sense from Jonathan Shay's 1994 study Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and its 2002 sequel Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. Certainly he seems to be highlighting the fact that war is a horrendous thing, and that even wars launched for supposedly just reasons almost inevitably entail the unleashing of horrors; we do not see the rapes committed by Greek soldiers in Troy, but we hear the screams of women and girls.

What about the other characters? Here people will differ, of course, but I thought Robert Pattinson's Antinous superb, Anne Hathaway's Helen excellent, and John and Leguizamo's Eumaeus first-rate, while I felt Tom Holland, Zendaya, Elliott Page, Himesh Patel, and Samantha Morton all did fine jobs as Telemachus, Athena, Sinon, Eurylochus, and Circe. The only significant figures that didn't quite work for me -- almost, but not quite, were Calypso, in whom I think Charlize Theron is underutilised, and Menelaus, where it's hard at times to see behind other thuggish characters John Bernthal has played. And yet, maybe that's a good thing: Telemachus may be visiting him as a wise peer of his father, and as a sensible guide, but the thuggishness the actor carries helps sell the idea that he's responsible for the scars that mar his wife's face.

On which, advance discussion of the film focused, of course, on the decision to cast Lupita Nyong'o as Helen, with it being, apparently, unthinkable that Helen might be played by a black actress. I'm not entirely sure why anybody should have been especially distressed by this, not least because I'm not sure what the genetic composition of a demi-god who was sired by a god in the form of a swan and was hatched from an egg would be. Yes, Homer describes her as 'white-armed' but that's just a conventional term to indicate an aristocratic character without the sun-burning effects of manual labour. Perhaps more importantly, it seems churlish to complain in a world where we're used to that other great beauty of Greek legend, Andromeda, having been played by white actresses in both the 1981 and 2010 versions of Clash of the Titans, and having over the centuries been conventionally depicted by white painters as white. Andromeda, after all, was an Ethiopian princess, with 'Aethiopian' having been the standard Greek term for black Africans. Indeed, these Aethiopians were seen by the Greeks as especially close to the gods: in the first book of the Iliad we're told of the gods banqueting with them, a thing they don't seem to have done with anybody of a fairer-skinned persuasion, with the goddess Iris towards the end of the Iliad feasting with them again, while in the Odyssey we hear in the first few lines and again in the fifth book of Poseidon feasting with them. What's more, when speaking with the dead in the Odyssey, Odysseus says that the beauty of Achilles' son Neoptolemos was surpassed only by that of 'godlike Memnon' the Aethiopian king who fought alongside the Trojans. It's almost as though if a filmmaker wanted to present a character from Greek legend as being almost uncannily beautiful there's a decent case for picking a suitably attractive black actor, and that to find this inconceivable one would have to be straightforwardly racist or not especially clued in on the conventions of ancient legend and literature.

A major challenge with this sort of adaptation, of course, is how 'authentic' it should be. Some weeks ago I had a bizarre episode on The-Thing-That-Used-To-Be-Twitter where I'd tweeted about an annoying seminar I once attended and over three million sets of eyes, many doubtless bionic, spotted this, with the owner of one set accusing me of carrying water for what he was convinced would be 'the least accurate Hollywood movie ever'. 'I dunno,' I said, 'in a world where U-571, Braveheart, Gladiator, Michael Collins, and Prince of Thieves already exist, I'd be loath to call any film I've not yet seen -- much less one significantly set in imaginary magical lands -- "the least accurate Hollywood movie ever".'

And that was without mentioning 300, of which my favourite lecturer, the wonderful late Victor Connerty, memorably spat 'It. Was. Garbage.'

Other than Helen being black, what were the objections typically raised ahead of the film's release?

One was that the weather in the film, as shown in trailers and promotional picture, looked anything other than idyllic. Greece, so the cries went, is a sunny, bright, colourful land, and Nolan is misrepresenting it by showing it as dreary, almost like England. Now, I tend to think that people who said this sort of thing had never visited Greece, or had hardly done so. I've been just a handful of times, though that's included spring and autumn visits, as well as two summers working on archaeological digs in the Peloponnese, and that's been enough for me to see lush fields under grey skies, lethally impenetrable fogs on mountain roads, bitter cold, deluges like I have never experienced in Britain or Ireland. Greek weather, in short, can be awful. And that's not to get into how there were ancients who thought Odysseus' wanderings had taken him far beyond the Mediterranean, how Homer has Odysseus reaching Ithaca shrouded in a magical mist, and how it's a bit silly to assume that a few stills and trailers are representative of the film as a whole.

Another was that it was scandalous that Odysseus' ship is played in the film by a reconstructed Viking ship, tweaked in a few ways to look plausibly ancient Greek. I'm not sure if the people saying this wanted a CGI Greek ship, or several CGI Greek ships, or some reconstructed Greek ships built along what Mycenean or Classical lines. Whatever they wanted, though, I find it rather odd that people can accept French actors playing Italians and American actors playing Greeks and Brazilians playing Persians and balk at the idea of one inanimate object playing another one. Come to Ireland and hire a car so I can show you Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, the Normandy Beaches, Edinburgh Castle, George Washington's childhood home, and the London prison where Paddington Bear made marmalade and where Michael Caine and Noel Coward planned The Italian Job. George Washington apparently grew up just a couple of miles away, it seems. Frankly, Given Nolan wanted to film in rough waters, and to look convincing doing so, I'm not sure that it was a bad call to deck sturdy replica Viking ships up to look like ancient Greek ones.

Related to this criticism is the complaint that the costumes in the film aren't accurately Mycenean, the late Mycenean period being when the story is supposedly set, or at least late Archaic, that being when the story seems to have been written down. I think this is an interesting criticism, not least as I don't really think it's correct to say that the Odyssey was set in the Mycenean age. Yes, the later Greeks thought the Trojan War happened just after 1200 BC, but they would no more have said 'Mycenean Age' or 'Bronze Age' than they would have said 'Before Christ'. The Trojan War was pretty much the final chapter for them not of the Mycenean Age but of the Heroic Age, a magical never-never time from a long time before. As it happens, there's very little of the historical Mycenean period to be spotted in Homer -- the most obvious Mycenean detail in the Iliad is a reference to a boars' tusk helmet that's featured in a part of the book most scholars think was written later than the rest of the text, and the world of the Odyssey in particular seems to be a fantastic version of the world of late Archaic Greece. 

Perhaps, then, since it's a fantasy, the filmmakers could have gone with a more creative or inventive look for the characters' costumes, fusing together to a dazzling extent boars' tusk helmets and Argive panoplies and Dendra panoplies made of bands of bronze with helmets and cuirasses the likes of which the world has never seen, with gleaming gold decoration and even the brightest of enamel colours. Surely, after all, this would have been better than the dowdy brown bronze and leather of the Greek soldiers, outfits the likes of which we've seen in innumerable films?

Well, maybe. But I like how bland and functional Odysseus' outfit and those worn by his men look. They're not distracting. They're about as familiar as can be. They look normal -- insofar as anything in this film looks normal. And that very normality, that very functionality, allows the strange white armour of the Trojans to look slightly alien, slightly unsettling, slightly 'other', and it enables Agamemnon's ridiculous, ostentatious costume to stand out as all the more preposterous. Look at him in his navy-enamelled and gold-embossed outfit, not a scratch on it anywhere, and him looming over his men. In his fascinating 1987 book The Mask of Command, the late John Keegan talked of 'heroic leaders' like Alexander, 'anti-heroic leaders' like Wellington, 'unheroic leaders' like Ulysses S. Grant, and 'false heroic leaders' like Hitler: dressed in his preposterous generalissimo outfit, decked out like the warrior he is not, Nolan's Agamemnon is the model of the fraudulent and narcissistic false heroic leader that Achilles describes in the first book of the Iliad as having the face of a dog and the heart of a deer. Agamemnon looms over the other Greeks in his ostentatious armour, whether looking down of Odysseus as the Ithacan king pays him homage, or standing Vader-like and imperious in the gates of Troy as his troops charge past him to murder, rape, and loot. He, himself, does nothing -- he shows no skill in combat at all, and as far as we can tell kills no Trojans, with the only person to fall by his hand being his own young daughter. It's fitting, then, that when he finally appears without armour he is immediately shown as being slain by his wife. 

The sheer familiarity of the Greek outfits helps mark out too just how weird are their storm-tossed and confused encounters at sea, at least as recollected by Odysseus. Circe has the men remove their armour, of course, ahead of one of the most eerie and viscerally disturbing sequences in the film, while the alien character of the Laestrygonians' armour helps underline just how weird, how incomprehensible and terrifying that episode would have been for Odysseus and his men. The Laestyrygonians, as they appear in the poem, are man-eating giants, but unlike the Cyclopes, to which they are related, they are civilized: they live in cities and have a king, unlike Polymphemos and his fellow anarchic pastoralists. Nolan's portrayal of them in fantastic armour that echoes Greek armour while being clearly alien marks out just how bizarre they are. And crucially, the film never explains them: this is simply a horrific and inexplicable episode that emerges from the lotus-drugged depths of Odysseus' memory, and no attempt at decoding the murderous episode is ever put forward.

This sense of confusion and shock is key to the  Cyclops episode too, of course, this being one of the real stand-out sequences of the film. Yes, gone is the wordplay and the Errol Flynn style swashbuckling that marks how Odysseus relates this adventure to the Phaeacians in Homer's poem, but instead we have a deeply unsettling, terrifying scene, a scene where the events are shown rather than told, and where the sheer aghast terror of Odysseus and his men in the face of this savage giant is palpable. Sure, it's easy to miss the 'Nobody' pun that's so familiar to people who have known this story since childhood, but aside from that being a tonal choice as much as anything, it's a gag that only works if Polyphemos is presented as just one of many Cyclopes, and I'm not sure the incomprehensible terror of that scene as painted by Nolan would have withstood the impact of the blinded monster chatting with a group of his cheese-making peers. And the impact of that story is retained, since in the poem it's as he's escaping that Odysseus reveals his real name and so brings down the wrath of Poseidon, while in Nolan's version the escape ends with a needless, foolish, cocky, infuriating final arrow shot, after which the crew point out to Odysseys that that insult would have repercussions, since the men had heard the Cyclops calling upon the god Poseidon as his father; in both poem and film Odysseus would have to pay for that impiety.

Questions of piety, it should be stressed, are at the heart of the film, not in the same way they would be in Virgil's Aeneid, of course, but they're there nonetheless, specifically with reference to the code of hospitality known as xenia, that religiously-bound code that is almost omnipresent in Greek literature, so much so that questions about hospitality in the Odyssey were long a staple of Leaving Certificate and first-year university exam papers. As presented by Nolan it appears to resemble nothing so much as Christ's account of the Day of Judgment in Matthew's Gospel:

"When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.

Then the King will say to those at his right hand, `Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?'

And the King will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

Then he will say to those at his left hand, `Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'

Then they also will answer, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?'

Then he will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.'

And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Those who would claim -- as did Robert Kaplan twenty or so years back when he wrote in Warrior Politics that 'leadership demands a pagan ethos' -- would do well to consider how some things we think of intrinsically Christian had pagan ancestry, or least expressed ideas that our Greek and Roman and German and Celtic forebears had thought of even before the Son of God taught them in a definitive way. The Greeks, after all, at least held to ideals of ritualised friendship with people from abroad, these relationships being bound by the code of xenia, blessed as they were by Zeus Xenios, Zeus of Hospitality or of Strangers. This code is referred to time and again in both the Iliad and Odyssey, and to unpick it it's not a terrible idea to read how the Roman poet Ovid considered the idea; as a friend has pointed out more than once, it can be hard to read Homer save through the lens of Ovid.

In the Metamorphosis Ovid relates a tale, probably based on an at least slightly older Greek original, of how Zeus and Hermes had wandered the earth in disguise and were denied hospitality by all and sundry, only being treated with respect by the elderly peasant couple Baucis and Philemon. Everyone else was punished for their lack of hospitality by being drowned in a great flood, while Baucis and Philemon lived out their years happily as stewards of the temple into which their home was transformed, eventually themselves being transformed into an intertwining pair of oak and linden trees. Why not, then, have the Greeks of the film believing that strangers should be cared for as we never know when gods walk among us?

Xenia, or 'Zeus's law' as Nolan puts it, is at central to the film and breaches of it are seen and mentioned time and again: Paris had stolen Helen away from Menelaos while his guest; Odysseus had landed at the town of the Cicones and ransacked the town rather than asking for hospitality; the Cyclops had attacked and eaten people who had waited in his cave in the hope of welcoming him home; the Laestrygonians had launched themselves at the Greeks who said they came in peace, slaughtering almost all of them; Circe turned her guests into swine; and most obviously Antinous and the other suitors had squatted for years at the palace of Ithaca, abusing the hospitality of Penelope and Telemachus while treating like dirt those beggars who sought simple hospitality in line with the code. And, of course, the Trojan Horse itself is presented as the supreme breach of the code, a supposed peace offering that was left for the Trojans as a kind of departing guest-gift, in reality being a vehicle for treachery, slaughter, rape, pillage, and arson.

Despite Odysseus's eventual lament, this did not in isolation break Zeus's law. On the contrary, the fact of the war itself showed that the code had been abused in the past. But perhaps, as he realises, this was the point at which the international code of the day, the norms of the day, the civilization of that legendary day were set alight. Never, after all, had anybody ever held up as a good thing Paris's abduction -- or seduction -- of Helen from Menelaos, with Hector in the Iliad being especially critical of this, but the Trojan Horse, that murderous weapon disguised as a peace offering, is presented in the Odyssey as a clever ruse of which the Greeks could and did boast.

It had, after all, shortened the war, and saved Greek lives in the process. In such circumstances, who would even mention whether this trickery, this poison-coated white flag of pseudo-surrender, might have been profoundly dishonourable? And weren't, in Homer's account, the gods in on this?

They were, in Homer's account anyway, Athena having helped Epeios to fashion the horse Odysseus had thought of. Not in Nolan's version, though. He is telling a story that he thinks we need to hear, a story of how if we cast aside our codes and manners, doing whatever it takes to get whatever we want, we set the world on fire. There's more to the film that that, of course, but that's certainly at the heart of it, a warning against being the sort of people who just want to watch the world burn, or who make weapons that enable that to happen.

And so the film ends, with the hero sailing to the ends of the world, while lamenting the end of the world and hoping for a better one to rise from its ruins.

Honestly, I think this was a masterpiece.

For those who have gone before

Today being the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it, it's once again time to revisit my annual post where I remember those gone before me. This is a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved -- and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known -- to make their way towards God and towards becoming who they were truly created to be.

The word 'Purgatory' may not appear in the Bible, but that doesn’t mean the doctrine isn’t there, readily drawn out from references to prayers that help the dead, to how nothing imperfect can enter heaven and a fire that purifies us after death, and to a prison where souls go till their debts are paid. Those are the lessons the early Christians drew from these lessons, and from their Jewish forebears. Just as it’s for the Blessed in Heaven to pray for us, so it is for us, then, to visit those souls in prison but guaranteed to share in the Blessed Vision, praying for those destined for heaven that they may more quickly reach the top of Dante’s mountain of hope. Having done the Camino de Santiago, and even the three-day pilgrimage at St Patrick's Purgatory at Lough Derg, I have a better sense these days than I once did of how we're all obliged to pull together to help each other to the finishing line. And with all the reading I've done over the past few years I've a much better sense now than I ever did of how the medieval Irish shaped how the Church thought about this reality: in many ways ours was a penitential and purgatorial church, looking from the first towards the Last Judgement.

With that in mind, then, I have a lot of people to pray for today, just as I hope lots of people, here or up above, are praying for me, since we all need each other's help at one time or another. Many of these, I'm sure, don't need any prayers at all, but it certainly can't hurt, and if anyone here needs any help at all, I do hope my prayers will give that, in whatever meagre way they can.

Like last year, I should say, this has been a tough one, with many losses for me and for those I care about.

Gabriel Doherty of UCC died in early November last year. I'd first encountered Gabriel in the aftermath of the special 1916 issue of the Irish Catholic I'd put together, when he'd written to the paper praising it and I'd contacted him to ask if we could use his comments to promote a revision of that issue as a book. In his response he said something that made my jaw drop: 'As a member of the advisory group on the decade of centenaries I have been paying minute attention to pretty much everything that has appeared (in books, newspapers, on tv, radio, internet, via talks, conferences etc.) on the Rising (and the associated events) for the last 4 years, and amongst all the thousands of articles and dozens of supplements that have so far appeared, I have no hesitation in saying that the supplement with the Irish Catholic was not alone the best, but the most important, because it helped to fill a huge gap in the knowledge within the church about what happened in those times, as much as about what it did.' Cue his writing an introduction for the subsequent book in which he said 'this volume represents a huge stride forward in the public understanding of the Rising, of the Church, and of modern Irish history more generally, and those involved deserve to be applauded for their initiative'. I finally got to meet him at the book launch in the Capuchin hall, and met him at several subsequent consequences, always being charmed by him, though I think I'd just scratched the surface of how kind, how thoughtful, how energetic, how supportive, and how interesting he was; I couldn't make it to Cork for the funeral, but joining it remotely online I really got a sense of how profoundly special a person he had been. I had hoped to talk to him about doing a book together, and though we'll not manage that, the idea is still with me. Maybe someday. It would be a tribute he'd like, I'm sure.

Teresa Coakley died a few weeks later. The mother of childhood friends, she'd been a wonderful host time and again through those primary years, and as the decades have passed she was always someone I was delighted to meet when visiting Palmerstown.

Michael Dwyer was someone I met far too rarely -- we first got to know each other online, then met in the Davenport Hotel after some event or other back in 2011 or so. He was a fun and unusual thinker, and a great host when he had me down to Gorey to give a talk at a summer school there some years ago. He was also the dearest friend of another friend of mine, and somebody I think I'd have enjoyed knowing rather better and disagreeing with as often as I'd have shared his views.

Gordon Fitchett, my friend Polly's birth-father, was the last death of that rough November; I never knew Gordon, and Polly got to know him late, but I'm glad for her sake that she got to know him when she did, and has written so eloquently of him elsewhere.

Carine O’Grady, secretary of UCD's Classics Department from my first and longest stint there, died this January. She was a wonderful, kind, sharp, elegant lady, peerlessly efficient and host of the most marvellous garden parties. Back in the day, during a particularly acrimonious society election, Carine was the only member of staff to vote -- others felt they should exclude themselves, but Carine took the view that never in her life had she shirked an opportunity to vote and this would be no exception. I think she voted for me. If she did, hers might have been the single vote that carried me over the line.

My uncle Noel's sister Dorothy Sheridan died the day after Carine. I never met her, but that whole Spaine family has always seemed wonderful in all its expressions, and my dad speaks of having spent much of his happy teenage years in that home.

Having finally worked out how I could take time off and visit her at long last in Aberystwyth, I texted Eleanor Morris in late January only to learn she had died four days earlier, little more than a year after her beloved William. Eleanor was so good to me in my Wilmslow days, the late Kate Gregg and her I think finding me a bit lost and battered and in need of some kind of maternal support; I must have had coffee with her after Mass hundreds of times, and been round to the house for dinner at least a dozen times too. I'm so sorry I didn't manage to visit her in Wales after she and William moved, but am at least glad I travelled over for the funeral and helped too with the organising of the readings, as she'd asked me to do that when in touch early last year. I learned a huge amount about her and laughed very hard during and after the funeral, but really: it's so hard to think of her gone.

David McArdle, another neighbour from my childhood, died in early February. David was the middle one of three brothers who lived across the road from me, and in truth the one I knew least well, but he's always been part of my mental landscape and I'm sure is dearly missed by his mum and brothers.

My friend Neasa's dad Willie Woods died at the end of the month; I'd got to know them both through working at the pub, Neasa as a co-worker and Willie as a customer. He always seemed a gentle, funny, low-key Dub of a classic type I've always liked, and I'm deeply sorry for the loss to Neasa.

My friend Kevin's godmother Maria Rynn died in early March; I never knew her, but Kevin's a special person and anybody who's helped him on his path must have been a truly special person.

Mary Wright, the mother of a childhood friend, died later that month. It had been a long time since I'd seen her, but she'd been a really lovely lady.

Pat McLoughlin, another neighbour from my childhood, died in April. He'd always been a friendly face in the neighborhood and somebody who'd made a massive contribution locally as one of the founders of our credit union. I'm afraid too often I talk of him in connection with his stuntman brother, but Pat was a genuinely important figure where I grew up.

May, then, saw my friend Alan's dad Colum McGaughey dying. Alan, with whom I'd travelled around Europe almost thirty years ago and in the last couple of years visited New York and Madrid, is one of my oldest friends, and so I'd known Colum since I was at least in my early teens. He's been ill a while, but still, he was no age really.

Vic Connerty, about whom I've written at length here, died while I was away on holiday in Italy. He'd have approved of at least my being there when I got the news. He was one of the most extraordinary people I've ever known, and the world is so much better for having him in it. I'm glad I was able to get to the funeral, the day after I got back from holidays, and to be there in the church with Vic's family and friends and so many former students, bursting with laughter at times, unable to hold back tears as mementoes of him were brought up, including that briefcase we'd all seen so many times, and heading over to the pub and eventually a friends' house afterwards to keep him in our minds. Such was the funeral we gave Vic, teacher of multitudes.

Bro Kevin Crowley, one of the greatest Irishmen of my lifetime, died in early July. There's nothing I can say of him that surely hasn't been said a million times, but he was always a joy to meet and interview and I still laugh to think of his reaction when I told him of how a certain Irish politician had said the Church should be 'put in the dustbin'. 'I'd put her in the dustbin!'

My friend Zelie's mum Philomena McGrath died a few days later. I'd never met her, though for years -- not least through Covid -- I'd paid careful attention to all Zelie's updates on her and the dedication she gave her. Facebook may be terrible nowadays, but sometimes it's worthwhile and watching that constant testimony of love and care has been truly edifying.

Having spent much of the aftermath of Vic's funeral with my friend Louise in the pub with Bronwyn, and then over dinner with her family at home it was a shock just a few weeks later in late June to learn that her dad Alan Aitchison had died. Alan and his wife Patricia had taken me in and put me up for a while when I had ended up effectively homeless at one point a decade or so ago, and so they have long been people who've meant the world to me. A crisp, wry, funny, practical, loving person, he was clearly a fabulous father and a devoted husband. That he was a spectacular grandfather was all too clear too, and his being a remarkable chef was something I was honoured to discover for myself! He wasn't even seventy and had seemed as healthy as could be. Sometimes it feels as though people are robbed out of our lives.

My dad's friend Frank Coffey died this August. Dad had been to see him in hospital one day, and the following day, uneasy about a message from Frank, had wrapped up our lunch efficiently to make his way out to see him again; it's as well he did, as Frank died the next day. My dad's lost too many people he cares about these past few years.

September, then, saw my wife's uncle Mark Winker die back home in Escanaba, Michigan. My mother-in-law's brother, I'd met Mark maybe half a dozen times and always liked him immensely. He had an infectious laugh, a deep love for his grandchildren, an improbable fondness for lego, and a joy in cars that I didn't understand but liked basking in. And how could you not like somebody who within hours of meeting you would bring you over to his trailer so he could produce his various guns and set you up shooting a target in his mother's back yard. "Tell them we're shooting!" he hollered to his brother-in-law Dale who was sauntering by, drink in hand. "They'll know," said Dale. Mark's family are all such warm and gentle people, and I really feel for them this autumn. Again, people go too soon.

Finally, then, another of the most impressive Irishmen of my lifetime passed in late September; there's nothing I can add to the obituaries and such for Martin Mansergh, save to say that I always enjoyed dealing with him in connection with the paper, chatting with him about Brexit and the role of the EU in bringing peace to the North was fascinating, and I'm glad he was able to write a piece for our 1916 issue and my book. I really do wish we'd all been graced with an account of the Peace Process and the Good Friday Agreement from his perspective. That would have been one more gift to the country.

And so, to turn to those who would have been in mind this day last year too...

I pray for my mum, Veronica Daly, who we lost at Christmas 2020 and laid to rest in Dublin and Liverpool over the next two years, her ashes divided between the city where her family raised her and the city where she raised her family. I pray too today for Nana and Grandad, all the Dodds, Auntie Maureen, Valerie McKenna, my cousins Philip and Lyn, David, Susan, and Lily, and my dad's cousin Cecil Doyle; for Auntie Brenda and Uncle Tommy, Auntie Kathleen, Auntie Eileen, Great Auntie Mary, my cousins Janet and Michael, and my cousins Richard and Ian; for my uncle John; for Mam's parents, for aunt Doreen and for Monica. I pray too for Joan's husband Gerry Kavanagh, and for Edwin Bergquist and Terry Winker, both of whom I've lost from the wonderful family into which I've been blessed to marry. 

I pray for Mary and Paddy Hoare, for Mr Harwood, for Mr and Mrs McCourt, for Mrs Carrigan and for Michael Carrigan, for Mr Gahan, for Mr and Mrs Reeves, for John Ryan, Mick Doyle, Mr Lyons, Jim Freeman, Mrs Gibson, Mr and Mrs and Bernie Flanagan, Mrs Mannelly, Mr Doyle, Elizabeth Kenny, Matt and Clare O’Reilly, and Charlie and Breda Gunning.

I pray for Therese Delaney, and her aunt and uncle Sr Margaret Murtagh and Vincent Murtagh; for Johnny McGrath, Delores Spittal, Dick Molumby, Frank Beggan, Dessie Breen, Sean Forde, and Mollie O'Callaghan, and all those I know from Palmerstown Credit Union; for Gerry Hendricken, Frank Coakley, Damien Brunton, and Paddy and Margaret Trodden; for Joe and Nora Hanrahan, Matt Garrigan, Dave Leavy, Frank and Mrs Towey, Jack Farrelly, Shay Lord, Jim Skerritt, David Fitzgerald, Billy Callaghan, Jimmy Owens, Gary Kennedy, Liam Coffey, Gerry Murray, Paul's uncle Francis Kennedy and Neasa's aunt Marie Doyle, all known to me from the Silver Granite; for Mary Ward; for Tom Corr, Sean Mitchell, Eamon Woulfe, Liam Glynn, Eddie Martin, Padraic Naughton, and Bro. John Hyland from Moyle Park.

I pray for so many of my peers, taken far too soon, and for those with whom I have worked and walked: Gavan Nugent, Padraic Ryan, Anthony Desmond, Sean Kenny and his sister Emma, Paul Brown, Claire Edmonds, Conn Murphy, Marie Plisnier, Agueda Pons, Michelle Cosgrave and her father Ollie, Ultan Sinclair, Susan Dunne and her parents Paschal and Angela, Renate Kurzmann, Nina-Jayne Birley, Paul Mullally, and Seb Carney; for Kathleen Griffin and Niamh Moloney from Catholic Voices; for Maria Lezama from Cork L'Arche; for Julie Yipp and Kevin Hunneybell from my Camino, for Francis McKenzie from my visit to Peru; for Declan Moroney and Paul MacKay from the Irish Catholic, and Mark Howard from Veritas.

I pray for Val Grant, Alex Walker, Theresa MacDonagh, Gerard McCarthy, Sheila Griffith, Brian Pullan whose death I missed when it happened in 2022, and Alan Gilbert from the University of Manchester; and for John, Kathleen Bibby, Mary McFaul, John and Agnes Ainsworth, Kate Gregg, William Morris, and Fr Anthony Cogliolo, all from Wilmslow.

I pray for Sr Mary David Totah; for Fr Con Curley, Fr Gerard Byrne, and Fr Flo Lynch; for Fr David Lumsden and Fr Martin Ryan; for Fr Tom Heneghan; for Fr Simon Roche OP, Fr Martin McCarthy OP, Fr Dermot Brennan OP, Fr Bob Talty OP, and Fr Denis Keating OP; for Sr Margarita Schwind OP; and for Bishop Noel Treanor.

I pray for Jenny Daly, and Sr Agnes, and Helen, and all the other ladies from Mam's nursing home.

I pray for Bill Kinsella from Boora; for Marion Doyle from Kilcormac; for Fritz Schult from Pollatomish; for Steve's wife Ruth Southall; for Sarah's grandad Alan Martindale; for Laura's grandad Tony Adams; for Jason's mum Marlene Crowley and Sophie's dad Johnny von Pfluegl; for Christopher's mum Mary Dawson; for Michael's mother Ann Kelly; for Colum's dad Joe Keating, for Eamon's parents Packie and Ella McGarty, for John's dad Gerry Duffy, for Aidan's father Colin Higgins, for the fathers of Daron Higgins, Lucy Corcoran, Dara Gantley, Bláithín Ni Giolla Rua, Martin Brady, and Bridget Martin, and the parents of Claire O'Brien; for Ned's mum Maura Hughes; for Jean's dad Kevin Callaghan; for Breda Polly and Tom Crotty; for Rory's mum Anne Fitzgerald; for Dan's wife Naima Jackson; for Mike's sister Katie Lewis; for Bob's dad Brian McCabe; for Dawn Foster, Liam Cahill, and Greg Hillis who I knew just through their writing and their warmth and wisdom over the internet; for Polly and Dan’s friends Will Scott and Dominic Crisp; for George Kiely, who stood with me when I needed true support; and for John Brierley, who helped guide me on Spanish and other paths.

I pray for the souls of all those dear to those I love, for the souls of all those dear to me, and for the souls of all those whose names and faces I have forgotten. 

I pray too for the families of all those I remember, and of those who, like Francis Benedict Pyles, Margaret Mary Hill, and Meadbh Versuri Gorman, are not themselves in need of any prayers and went to God assured of their rest in his blessed vision.

May the Lord God almighty have mercy on their souls, and may his perpetual light shine upon them; may they rest in peace.

Amen.

O Captain! Our Captain!

There’s a line in the Aeneid where a heartbroken Aeneas steels himself to tell his shipwrecked compatriots that a time will come when they will look back with fondness on their misfortunes. 

'My friends, this is not the first trouble we have known,’ he says in the West translation I read back in UCD thirty years ago. ‘We have suffered worse before, and this too will pass. God will see to it. You have been to Scylla's cave and heard the mad dogs howling in the depths of it. You have even survived rocks thrown by the Cyclops. So summon up your courage once again. This is no time for gloom or fear. The day will come, perhaps, when it will give you pleasure to remember even this. Whatever chance may bring, however many hardships we suffer, we are making for Latium, where the Fates show us our place of rest. There it is the will of God that the kingdom of Troy shall rise again. Your task is to endure and save yourselves for better days.'

I’ve been thinking of this a lot since Saturday, when I got the shocking news that Vic Connerty had died. These few days have been ones where deep sorrow has mingled with gratitude, and the thought that I’ve been so lucky to have been taught and guided by Vic, and to have known him for so long as a friend.

It’s strange to think back to to those magnificent lectures in UCD where Vic could cast his spell over a packed Theatre L, the 450 or so students who were meant to be there bolstered by cohorts who’d come over from the faculties of Engineering, Science, and Architecture to hear Vic tell us about the Gracchi, of Marius and his seven consulships, of Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, and the constant fatal relationship of land and the army. Despite how many wonderful lecturers there were in the Arts faculty at that time - I had a lot of great ones across Greek and Roman Civilization, History, and one year of English - it’s hardly surprising that when thousands of UCD alumni were polled a dozen or so years back and asked who their favourite lecturer had been, Vic was the winner for the 1990s.

Starting second year I met my tutor from first year, the lovely Jane McEntaggart, who said Mr Connerty wanted to meet me, so when I spotted him in a stairway a few days later I nervously approached him. We were talking in no time at all about my working in the pub in Palmerstown, about the comics convention I’d been at in London because I’d wanted back then to be a comic artist, and about how he and my mum had both moved here from Liverpool within a couple of years. Within a a week or so the tutorial lists were up and I was thrilled to see that I was in his group, along with Valerie who I’d known from the previous year, Claire who’s still a dear friend to this day, Joanne, Paula, Johanna, Gerry, Jacqui, and Suzanne. And so began a year of such wonderful memories, anecdotes, lessons, and ideas. Too many to share, though I’ll never forget in particular how Vic told us of the last words attributed to the emperor Vespasian, distracted from the canonical “I think I’m becoming a God” by the sight of a rainbow apparently ending in the bushes of Belfield.

Small wonder, then, that I did his third-year course on the decade of the Triumvirate, immersed in Caesar, Cicero, Plutarch, and others, letting the ancients speak for themselves, even if we viewed them at times with sceptical eyes. And even now I can’t but think of those classes without hearing Vic’s warmly growling voice with that unforgettable cadence, quoting Cicero’s “to listen to him you’d think he lived in Plato’s Republic, and not in the sink of Romulus.”

And so the following year I started my Master’s and became a tutor under Vic’s mentorship, making a host of friendships I still am so lucky to have, even if we’ve lost a few since: poor Renate passed on a couple of years ago, and Carine died just a few months back. Vic would be my boss whether tutoring or invigilating, my supervisor when Andrew Erskine was away in Munich, and most importantly my friend through the decades of his retirement: I was so glad to be able to build my first flexi-day off from my current job around one of our regular coffee meetings at Dunne and Crescenzi, there to talk of life and academia and the very different fortunes of our respective Merseyside football clubs. I’d never have imagined it would be our last coffee meeting, or that seeing him at UCD’s Classical Society Inaugural a couple of months back would be our last meeting of any sort.

In truth, countless people could tell stories like mine: when one of my friends shared the news of his death on Facebook she began with the words “O Captain! My Captain!” I’d had those words - whether thought of as Walt Whitman’s, or Robin Williams’s, or Ethan Hawke’s - in my head ever since Tom had sent me the news, and I’m sure there are so many others who could say the same.

I want to say that the world is darker today, but Vic’s was a fire that lit thousands of candles. One of my friends described him the other day as a champion of the ancient world who exemplified how to be a person in the modern world, and this is surely right: his warmth, his wisdom, his curiosity, and his deep care for people are things that will surely stay with me and so many others as long as we live. May he rest in peace.

For those who have gone before...

Today being the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it, it's time to revisit my annual post where I remember those gone before me. It's a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved, and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known, to make their way towards God and towards becoming who they were truly created to be.

The word 'Purgatory' may not appear in the Bible, but that doesn’t mean the doctrine isn’t there, readily drawn out from references to prayers that help the dead, to how nothing imperfect can enter heaven and a fire that purifies us after death, and to a prison where souls go till their debts are paid. Those are the lessons the early Christians drew from these lessons, and from their Jewish forebears. Just as it’s for the Blessed in Heaven to pray for us, so it is for us, then, to visit those souls in prison but guaranteed to share in the Blessed Vision, praying for those destined for heaven that they may more quickly reach the top of Dante’s mountain of hope. Having done the Camino de Santiago, and even the three-day pilgrimage at St Patrick's Purgatory at Lough Derg, I have a better sense these days than I once did of how we're all in this together, obliged to pull together to help each other to the finishing line. And with all the reading I've done over the past few years I've a much better sense now than I ever did of how the medieval Irish shaped how the Church thought about this reality: in many ways ours was a penitential and purgatorial church, looking from the first towards the Last Judgement.

With that in mind, then, I have a lot of people to pray for today, just as I hope lots of people, here or up above, are praying for me, since we all need each other's help at one time or another. Many of these, I'm sure, don't need any prayers at all, but it certainly can't hurt, and if anyone here needs any help at all, I do hope my prayers will give that, in whatever meagre way they can.

This last year, I should say, has been a hard one, with many losses, for me and for those I care about.

Paul Mullally, a friend from my days in primary and secondary school, died in early December last year; he was a deeply kind and supportive person, who I'd known since he'd eagerly shared his Star Wars fan magazines with me as a small child, and who would go on in our secondary days to tell me the most remarkable Palmerstown news of my life

William Morris, who I'd known and who'd hosted me for dinner and driven me home many times in my Wilmslow days, passed on a few days later. A funny, wry, wonderfully straightforward man, I'm very glad I'd known him through his wife Eleanor.

My mum's younger sister, Eileen Hawksey, followed a few days later. Auntie Eileen had always been someone I'd loved deeply as a child, and who I'd often been compared to. I'm glad I got to know her as an adult when I lived in Manchester and could visit family in Liverpool, though I'm still heartbroken I missed her funeral, having reached the airport gate just moments after it had closed, with my plane on the runway for half an hour after I got there.

Ella McGarty, my friend Eamonn's mum, died in March; she was a sweet, elegant, gentle person, and one who I'm very glad to have known.

Seb Carney followed in April, and to this day I keep thinking of the picture of him and Paul Brown and me from Sarah's 21st, and shake my head that neither of the lads are with us now. 

Of all the deaths this last year, I'm not sure any have hit me more than that of Therese Delaney, who died in June, on the birthday of my sister who had been Therese's best friend when they were children. I'd basically grown up in the Delaney house, and in a way always thought of Therese as my sister. I think too that in a way she thought of me as an extra brother, but as I realised at her funeral, that's how so many felt around her. What an extraordinary gift to have had, to make so many feel she was their sister, to make so many feel like her siblings. The world feels so much poorer without her. 

Paul MacKay died a few days later. I hadn't known Paul well, in his time as director of the Irish Catholic, but he was always good company, and I suspect too that insofar as the paper was well run at all it was down to him. 

Emma Kenny, a childhood neighbour, died a few weeks after that, in early July. She had seemed an impressive figure when I was a child and friends with her youngest brother, and now that I've got to know others of her siblings I rather wish I'd known her better.

Fr Anthony Cogliolo, my parish priest from my Wilmslow days, passed on a few days later; I'd always got on well with him, and enjoyed my time with him in the parish though I think I perhaps impressed more as a reader than a CAFOD chair. He had been seriously supportive of me when I was heading towards the Dominicans and for that I'm deeply grateful.

Charlie Gunning, another childhood neighbour, died a few days after that. The onetime nextdoor neighbour of the aforementioned Emma, I'd have known him as much as a child from funny stories my mam would say as I would have from him himself, though I'm glad I got to know him in my years working in the pub.

Ian Roberts, one of my Liverpool cousins, was the first death I knew of in August. I only ever met him a few times -- usually in the company of his sweet and much-missed brother Richard -- but he was always fun to meet and I'm glad we at least got to know each other a little online in recent years. 

I did not know her, but my friend Susan lost her beloved little niece Meadbh Versuri Gorman a couple of days later; the world is dreadfully hard sometimes.

Bishop Noel Treanor died a few days after that; I had met him a few times and interviewed him at length in Belfast once, with him ringing the paper a few days later to thank me for the piece, him having been I think rather surprised at how I'd made sense of such a long and wide-ranging conversation. I do feel that both the Irish and wider European church may miss him.

Barely two months after Therese's death, her uncle Vincent Murtagh died; he was always good fun at those family events I was lucky enough to be invited to; his loss, coming after Therese's, must have been very hard.

And rounding out August, Breda Gunning, Charlie's widow, died less than a month after her husband. I'd always liked her as a child, and am glad I got to know her too as one of my regulars in my days as a loungeboy and a barman in the pub. I'm only sorry it's been so many years now since I last saw her.

Greg Hillis died in early October, having had cancer for a long time. I'd never met Greg in person, though I'd known him online for a decade or more, and had long wanted as one of my great online aspirations, to go to a baseball game with him and just spend the hours enjoying that beautiful pastime and listening to what he had to say. His was a voice of rare warmth and wisdom, and the world of online Catholicism is desperately diminished without him among us.

A couple of days later, my dad's cousin Cecil Doyle passed on. I'm afraid I didn't know him well, just as I'd not known many of my parents' cousins, but the losses of those close to us matter, and we should remember them too.

Finally, just a week ago my cousin Lyn O’Toole died. Lyn had always been part of my life, just a couple of years older than me, and it's very hard to believe she is gone - or that her mum has now outlived two of her four children. Life at times seems profoundly unfair, and I can really only just hope and pray that things make more sense on the other side of the tapestry.

And so, to turn to those who would have been in mind this day last year too...

I pray for my mum, Veronica Daly, who we lost at Christmas 2020 and laid to rest in Dublin and Liverpool over the next two years, her ashes divided between the city where her family raised her and the city where she raised her family. I pray too today for Nana and Grandad, all the Dodds, Auntie Maureen, Valerie McKenna, my cousins Philip, David, Susan, and Lily; for Auntie Brenda and Uncle Tommy, Auntie Kathleen, Great Auntie Mary, my cousins Janet and Michael, and Richard; for my uncle John; for Mam's parents, for aunt Doreen and for Monica. I pray too for Joan's husband Gerry Kavanagh, and for Edwin Bergquist and Terry Winker, both of whom I've lost from the wonderful family into which I've been blessed to marry. 

I pray for Mary and Paddy Hoare, for Mr Harwood, for Mr and Mrs McCourt, for Mrs Carrigan and for Michael Carrigan, for Mr Gahan, for Mr and Mrs Reeves, for John Ryan, Mick Doyle, Mr Lyons, Jim Freeman, Mrs Gibson, Mr and Mrs and Bernie Flanagan, Mrs Mannelly, Mr Doyle, Elizabeth Kenny, and Matt and Clare O’Reilly.

I pray for Sr Margaret Murtagh; for Johnny McGrath, Delores Spittal, Dick Molumby, Frank Beggan, Dessie Breen, Sean Forde, and Mollie O'Callaghan, and all those I know from Palmerstown Credit Union; for Gerry Hendricken, Frank Coakley, Damien Brunton, and Paddy and Margaret Trodden; for Joe and Nora Hanrahan, Matt Garrigan, Dave Leavy, Frank and Mrs Towey, Jack Farrelly, Shay Lord, Jim Skerritt, David Fitzgerald, Billy Callaghan, Jimmy Owens, Gary Kennedy, Liam Coffey, Gerry Murray, Paul's uncle Francis Kennedy and Neasa's aunt Marie Doyle, all known to me from the Silver Granite; for Mary Ward; for Tom Corr, Sean Mitchell, Eamon Woulfe, Liam Glynn, Eddie Martin, Padraic Naughton, and Bro. John Hyland from Moyle Park.

I pray for so many of my peers, taken far too soon, and for those with whom I have worked and walked: Gavan Nugent, Padraic Ryan, Anthony Desmond, Sean Kenny, Paul Brown, Claire Edmonds, Conn Murphy, Marie Plisnier, Agueda Pons, Michelle Cosgrave and her father Ollie, Ultan Sinclair, Susan Dunne and her parents Paschal and Angela, for Renate Kurzmann, and for Nina-Jayne Birley; for Kathleen Griffin and Niamh Moloney from Catholic Voices; for Maria Lezama from Cork L'Arche; for Julie Yipp and Kevin Hunneybell from my Camino, for Francis McKenzie from my visit to Peru; for Declan Moroney from the Irish Catholic and Mark Howard from Veritas.

I pray for Val Grant, Alex Walker, Theresa MacDonagh, Gerard McCarthy, Sheila Griffith, Brian Pullan whose death I missed when it happened in 2022, and Alan Gilbert from the University of Manchester; and for John, Kathleen Bibby, Mary McFaul, John and Agnes Ainsworth, and Kate Gregg, all from Wilmslow.

I pray for Sr Mary David Totah; for Fr Con Curley, Fr Gerard Byrne, and Fr Flo Lynch; for Fr David Lumsden and Fr Martin Ryan; for Fr Tom Heneghan; for Fr Simon Roche OP, Fr Martin McCarthy OP, Fr Dermot Brennan OP, Fr Bob Talty OP, and Fr Denis Keating OP; and for Sr Margarita Schwind OP.

I pray for Jenny Daly, and Sr Agnes, and Helen, and all the other ladies from Mam's nursing home.

I pray for Bill Kinsella from Boora; for Marion Doyle from Kilcormac; for Fritz Schult from Pollatomish; for Steve's wife Ruth Southall; for Sarah's grandad Alan Martindale; for Laura's grandad Tony Adams; for Jason's mum Marlene Crowley and Sophie's dad Johnny von Pfluegl; for Christopher's mum Mary Dawson; for Michael's mother Ann Kelly; for Colum's dad Joe Keating, for Eamon's dad Packie McGarty, for John's dad Gerry Duffy, for Aidan's father Colin Higgins, for the fathers of Daron Higgins, Lucy Corcoran, Dara Gantley, Bláithín Ni Giolla Rua, Martin Brady, and Bridget Martin, and the parents of Claire O'Brien; for Ned's mum Maura Hughes; for Jean's dad Kevin Callaghan; for Breda Polly and Tom Crotty; for Rory's mum Anne Fitzgerald; for Dan's wife Naima Jackson; for Mike's sister Katie Lewis; for Bob's dad Brian McCabe; for Dawn Foster and Liam Cahill who I knew just through their writing and their warmth and wisdom over the internet; for Polly and Dan’s friends Will Scott and Dominic Crisp; for George Kiely, who stood with me when I needed true support; and for John Brierley, who helped guide me on Spanish and other paths.

I pray for the souls of all those dear to those I love, for the souls of all those dear to me, and for the souls of all those whose names and faces I have forgotten. 

I pray too for the families of all those I remember, and of those who, like Francis Benedict Pyles and Margaret Mary Hill, are not themselves in need of any prayers and went to God assured of their rest in his blessed vision.

May the Lord God almighty have mercy on their souls, and may his perpetual light shine upon them; may they rest in peace.

Amen.

For those who've gone before

Today being the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it, it's time to revisit my annual post where I remember those gone before me. It's a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved, and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known, to make their way towards God and towards becoming who they were truly created to be.

The word 'Purgatory' may not appear in the Bible, but that doesn’t mean the doctrine isn’t there, readily drawn out from references to prayers that help the dead, to how nothing imperfect can enter heaven and a fire that purifies us after death, and to a prison where souls go till their debts are paid. Those are the lessons the early Christians drew from these lessons, and from their Jewish forebears. Just as it’s for the Blessed in Heaven to pray for us, so it is for us, then, to visit those souls in prison but guaranteed to share in the Blessed Vision, praying for those destined for heaven that they may more quickly reach the top of Dante’s mountain of hope. Having done the Camino de Santiago, and even the three-day pilgrimage at St Patrick's Purgatory at Lough Derg, I have a better sense these days than I once did of how we're all in this together, obliged to pull together to help each other to the finishing line. 

With that in mind, then, I have a lot of people to pray for today, just as I hope lots of people, here or up above, are praying for me, since we all need each other's help at one time or another. Many of these, I'm sure, don't need any prayers at all, but it certainly can't hurt, and if anyone here needs any help at all, I do hope my prayers will give that, in whatever meagre way they can.

At Mass today in Whitefriar's Street I had, as ever, new names to add to those I remember every year: Liam Coffey, a father to friends and a onetime regular from my days working in the pub, latterly someone to smile, nod, and chat to at the counter of the Lord Edward, left us the day after All Souls last year;  Marion Doyle, onetime neighbour to my parents and a warm host in Kilcormac when I was a child, who died last December; Mark Howard, a coworker who died so suddenly in April, surely long before his time; Renate Kurzmann, a friend for almost a quarter of a century, and a dear host in Vienna once upon a time, taken so suddenly this May; Maria Lezama, who had taught me to be more Mary than Martha in Cork's L'Arche Community, and who passed away in July; John Brierley, who I had the pleasure of meeting once and interviewing another time,  and whose Camino books led the way for me and so many others; and Nina-Jayne Birley, who once drove me hours out of her way for the sake of an interview, and who we lost this September; Gerry Murray too, a friend of friends and a onetime regular from my barman days, and Paddy Trodden, one of Palmerstown's more distinctive figures whose family background was somehow unknown even to his next-door neighbours until he died.

I thought that was today done, but then this evening, on the way home, I learned that Declan Moroney, my onetime mentor and sub-editor on the paper, the man who drove our journalistic bus in a very real sense, had passed on too: I'd wanted to meet him at the Vermeer exhibition in Holland this year, us having had a great day together at the Dublin exhibition a few years ago, but it wasn't to be, and another attempt at crossing paths a couple of months ago also came to nothing; I'm glad I still have his many texts, mind, and so many memories, and I hope I'll have his prayers: he'll certainly have mine.

And so, to turn to those who would have been in mind this day last year too...

I pray for my mum, Veronica Daly, who we lost at Christmas 2020 and laid to rest in Dublin and Liverpool over the next two years, her ashes divided between the city where her family raised her and the city where she raised her family. I pray too today for Nana and Grandad, all the Dodds, Auntie Maureen, Valerie McKenna, my cousins Philip, David, Susan, and Lily; for Auntie Brenda and Uncle Tommy, Auntie Kathleen, Great Auntie Mary, my cousins Janet and Michael, and Richard; for my uncle John; for Mam's parents, for aunt Doreen and for Monica. I pray too for Joan's husband Gerry Kavanagh, and for Edwin Bergquist and Terry Winker, both of whom I've lost from the wonderful family into which I've been blessed to marry. 

I pray for Mary and Paddy Hoare, for Mr Harwood, for Mr and Mrs McCourt, for Mrs Carrigan and for Michael Carrigan, for Mr Gahan, for Mr and Mrs Reeves, for John Ryan, Mick Doyle, Mr Lyons, Jim Freeman, Mrs Gibson, Mr and Mrs and Bernie Flanagan, Mrs Mannelly, Mr Doyle, Elizabeth Kenny, and Matt and Clare O’Reilly.

I pray for Sr Margaret Murtagh; for Johnny McGrath, Delores Spittal, Dick Molumby, Frank Beggan, Dessie Breen, Sean Forde, and Mollie O'Callaghan, and all those I know from Palmerstown Credit Union; for Gerry Hendricken, Frank Coakley, Damien Brunton, and Margaret Trodden; for Joe and Nora Hanrahan, Matt Garrigan, Dave Leavy, Frank and Mrs Towey, Jack Farrelly, Shay Lord, Jim Skerritt, David Fitzgerald, Billy Callaghan, Jimmy Owens, Gary Kennedy, Paul's uncle Francis Kennedy and Neasa's aunt Marie Doyle, all known to me from the Silver Granite; for Mary Ward; for Tom Corr, Sean Mitchell, Eamon Woulfe, Liam Glynn, Eddie Martin, Padraic Naughton, and Bro. John Hyland from Moyle Park.

I pray for so many of my peers, taken far too soon, and for those with whom I have walked: Gavan Nugent, Padraic Ryan, Anthony Desmond, Sean Kenny, Paul Brown, Claire Edmonds, Conn Murphy, Marie Plisnier, Agueda Pons, Michelle Cosgrave and her father Ollie, Ultan Sinclair, and Susan Dunne and her parents Paschal and Angela; for Kathleen Griffin and Niamh Moloney from Catholic Voices; for Julie Yipp and Kevin Hunneybell from my Camino, and for Francis McKenzie from my visit to Peru.

I pray for Val Grant, Alex Walker, Theresa MacDonagh, Gerard McCarthy, Sheila Griffith, and Alan Gilbert from the University of Manchester; and for John, Kathleen Bibby, Mary McFaul, John and Agnes Ainsworth, and Kate Gregg, all from Wilmslow.

I pray for Sr Mary David Totah; for Fr Con Curley, Fr Gerard Byrne, and Fr Flo Lynch; for Fr David Lumsden and Fr Martin Ryan; for Fr Tom Heneghan; for Fr Simon Roche OP, Fr Martin McCarthy OP, Fr Dermot Brennan OP, Fr Bob Talty OP, and Fr Denis Keating OP; and for Sr Margarita Schwind OP.

I pray for Jenny Daly, and Sr Agnes, and Helen, and all the other ladies from Mam's nursing home.

I pray for Bill Kinsella from Boora; for Fritz Schult from Pollatomish; for Steve's wife Ruth Southall; for Sarah's grandad Alan Martindale; for Laura's grandad Tony Adams; for Jason's mum Marlene Crowley and Sophie's dad Johnny von Pfluegl; for Christopher's mum Mary Dawson; for Michael's mother Ann Kelly; for Colum's dad Joe Keating, for Eamon's dad Packie McGarty, for John's dad Gerry Duffy, for Aidan's father Colin Higgins, for the fathers of Daron Higgins, Lucy Corcoran, Dara Gantley, Bláithín Ni Giolla Rua, Martin Brady, and Bridget Martin, and the parents of Claire O'Brien; for Ned's mum Maura Hughes; for Jean's dad Kevin Callaghan; for Breda Polly and Tom Crotty; for Rory's mum Anne Fitzgerald; for Dan's wife Naima Jackson; for Mike's sister Katie Lewis; for Bob's dad Brian McCabe; for Dawn Foster and Liam Cahill who I knew just through their writing and their warmth and wisdom over the internet; for Polly and Dan’s friends Will Scott and Dominic Crisp; and for George Kiely, who stood with me when I needed true support.

I pray for the souls of all those dear to those I love, for the souls of all those dear to me, and for the souls of all those whose names and faces I have forgotten. 

I pray too for the families of all those I remember, and of those who, like Francis Benedict Pyles and Margaret Mary Hill, are not themselves in need of any prayers and went to God assured of their rest in his blessed vision.

May the Lord God almighty have mercy on their souls, and may his perpetual light shine upon them; may they rest in peace.

Amen.

Hannibal, Cyrus, and lessons in followship

Back in 2003 Toni Morrison met Peter Olson, the then CEO of Random House, at that year’s Book Expo America, and mentioned having watched a documentary on the Mongols in her hotel after a flight which had left her unsettled. Olson lit up. “I wrote my college thesis on an anti-Soviet revolt in South Central Asia,” he said, continuing, “I would contend that military histories are better for learning about corporate strategies and management technique than any other books.”

Military history is one of those fields that lends insights, ideas, and examples aplenty to modern management discussions: given how it covers leadership, intelligence, logistics, tactics, strategy, and so much more, this probably shouldn’t surprise us, but the link wasn’t always so obvious.  Indeed, according to Peter Drucker, probably the twentieth century’s most influential management guru, strategy itself was seen as a military concept, largely irrelevant to business management, as late as the 1960s:

‘Managing for Results was the first book to address itself to what is now called “business strategy”. It is still the most widely used book on the subject. When I wrote it, more than twenty years ago, my original title was, in fact, Business Strategies. But “strategy” in those days was not a term in common usage. Indeed, when my publisher and I tested the title with acquaintances who were business executives, consultants, management teachers, and booksellers, we were strongly advised to drop it. “Strategy,” we were told again and again, “belongs to military or perhaps to political campaigns but not to business.”’

The situation wasn’t quite as stark as that, of course – just two years earlier, for instance, Alfred Chandler had published Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the history of the American industrial enterprise – but certainly it seems clear that the idea that warfare had anything to say to business was far from an orthodoxy at the time. Indeed, Drucker would later state that he had not written a book on leadership because an ancient Greek had made such a project superfluous. ‘The first systematic book on leadership was written by Xenophon more than 2,000 years ago,’ he told a student, adding, ‘and it is still the best.’

The book he had in mind, oddly, was not the extraordinarily instructive Anabasis, Xenophon’s memoir of the exploits of an army of 10,000 Greek mercenaries in the Persian Empire and their attempts to come home; neither was it his Hellenica, detailing the defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and the subsequent defeat of Sparta by the resurgent Thebes. Instead, he was referring to the Cyropaedia, the fictionalised biography of the Persian Cyrus the Great, which Drucker saw as a study in both leadership and followship.  The latter, Drucker felt, was too often neglected, to the detriment of any enterprise because it is impossible to be a leader without followers. ‘To lead, one must follow,’ he observed, ‘because it is only from the viewpoint of the follower that we can reflect on the basis of followship, which when turned around becomes the essence of leadership.’

I’ll talk about the Cyropaedia another day, but I think it’s worth saying that the point that the best leaders are willing to learn, to serve, and to follow wasn’t unique to Xenophon. Here, for instance, is the Roman historian Livy describing the Carthaginian Hannibal’s brilliance both as a commander and as a subordinate:

‘Power to command and readiness to obey are rare associates; but in Hannibal they were perfectly united, and their union made him as much valued by his commander as his men. Hasdrubal preferred him to all other officers in any action which called for vigour and courage, and under his leadership the men invariable showed to the best advantage both dash and confidence. Reckless in courting danger, he showed superb tactical ability when it was upon him.

Indefatigable both physically and mentally, he could endure with equal ease excessive heat or excessive cold; he ate and drank not to flatter his appetites but only so much as would sustain his bodily strength. His time for waking, like his time for sleeping, was never determined by daylight or darkness: when his work was done, then, and then only, he rested, without need, moreover, of silence or a soft bed to woo sleep to his eyes. Often he was seen lying in his cloak on the bare ground amongst the common soldiers on sentry or picket duty. His accoutrement, like the horses he rode, was always conspicuous, but not his clothes, which were like those of any other officer of his rank and standing. Mounted or unmounted, he was unequalled as a fighting man, always the first to attack, the last to leave the field.’

Much of this – perhaps all of it – should be seen as a series of rhetorical clichés, but things often only become clichés because they’re basically true. If these are conventional compliments, they merely highlight how Livy and his audience recognised that the best leaders are good followers, and that effective leadership demands a willingness to share the hardships of those being led.

Some things don’t change. 

Silos and synods

I was at a conference in Rome a few years ago where people from Google explained that Catholic websites tend to punch well below their weight compared to those of other religious groups for the simple reason that they don’t link to other sites; in the digital environment as so often in the world at large today, Catholicism is a siloed landscape. It doesn’t have to be, though. Even just thinking about Irish history, and the kind of lessons we might draw from our most influential period, those centuries between the coming of Patrick and the Viking attacks when we supposedly saved civilization – we didn’t, but we did a lot – it shouldn’t take long for us to realise just how important networks and networking were to ‘the land of saints and scholars’.

That won’t typically be our first thought, of course. We’re far more likely to think of the likes of the island monastery of Skellig Michael. Famously isolated, the stone huts on the pyramidal island are dramatically inaccessible, so much so that they were perfectly cast in recent Star Wars films as Luke Skywalker’s hermit hideout. This very inaccessibility, this remoteness – the monastery is high on a rugged rocky spike that arises from stormy waters that cut the island off from the south-western corner of the Irish mainland – defines the monastery, but can too easily mislead us into thinking that this kind of community was somehow typical of Irish Christianity in its earliest centuries. Anything but!

That’s not to say that there weren’t Celtic monks who went off into the wilderness to seek God through contemplation – the Cambrai Homily, written around AD700, speaks of this ‘green martyrdom’, as distinct from the classical red martyrdom of those who died for the Faith and the white martyrdom of those who left their homelands to become missionary exiles – but we go wildly astray if we ever think of this as the norm. On the contrary: in the first centuries of our recorded history the Irish countryside was dotted with hundreds, even thousands, of monasteries, and while some certainly were discreet centres of contemplation, many others had roles that were pastoral, administrative, scholarly, and evangelising. They were platforms for outreach, and they were linked together.

Clonmacnoise, established by St Ciarán where the river Shannon meets the great road that was the Esker Riada, is perhaps the most obvious of these, but even when we think of the ostensibly remote beauty of Glendalough, we should keep in mind that though St Kevin settled in a beautiful spot in the Wicklow Mountains, he hardly did so in an obscure one; the monastic city that grew up around him is, after all, barely a mile from the crossroads of Laragh. St Cronán is famously described in his medieval biography as having moved his community to Roscrea because people couldn’t find it in its original home. ‘I will not be in a desert place where guests and poor people cannot easily find me,’ he supposedly said, continuing, ‘but I will stay here now in a public place.’

Our early lives of St Brigid show her travelling around the roads of central Ireland by chariot, praying as she went like an efficient commuter, and even helping her people in the building of a road, designed to carry chariots and wagons even across bog and riverside swamps. They describe her too as paying careful attention to how Mass was celebrated in Rome, so the prayers could change in Ireland if they changed in Rome, while contemporary letters from the likes of St Columbanus underline how letters and appeals to Rome were indeed a real phenomenon for the Celtic saints.

Roads, rivers, and letters all served to bind communities together, and communities would be aware too of their familial links – not merely because they’d often be expressions of local tribes and kingdoms, but because they’d be part of loose familial federations, known as paruchia, deriving from particular founder saints and those with whom he or she had studied. These federations could cross the sea, or even straddle the continent. Not that all was harmonious in or between these paruchia, of course – families can be tricky things, after all – but there were links, and the links mattered.

What’s more, the monastic leaders would travel to meet with each and learn from each other, and could come together occasionally in gatherings called synods. One synod from AD 697 begot the Cáin Adomnán, attempting to ban violence in warfare against non-combatants and especially women, for instance, while another, known as the Synod of Patrick, issued more than thirty rulings, including ones banning the receipt of donations from pagans and  threatening excommunication against anyone who believed in vampires!

Coming from the Greek syn-odos, meaning a shared journey or even a common path, synods are things we hear a lot about in Church circles nowadays, with talk of synods, synodality, synodal paths, and synodal ways. In the end, though, we should realise that they are, above all else, antidotes to siloed landscapes, a way of helping give reality and life to the Church as a network of networks. If St Brigid helped build roads across bogs, it must in part have been because without such ways – without such common paths – our monasteries would have been isolated and ineffective. Like the proverbial lighthouse in a bog, they’d have been brilliant but useless.

If synodality does nothing more than keep people talking together and praying together and working together towards common ends, it will have achieved something. Networks matter, after all.

Samildánach

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about specialisation, about picking one area and being known for being great at one thing. I’m not sure about this, though, because to take a pointer from Archilochus, the world surely needs foxes as much as it needs hedgehogs. One of the great insights in medical practice over recent decades has been that for all the status that accords to consultants, general practitioners are experts too: general practice is a specialism, as being good at many things is a remarkable gift, a speciality in its own right. Sometimes jacks of all trades are indeed masters of none, but sometimes too they are masters of many.

This reality has been recognised for millennia through the repository of human wisdom that is the world’s myths and legends, of course. Back in the seventh century BC Homer famously described Odysseus as polytropos – a word literally meaning ‘of many turnings’ – and also as polymētis (‘many-skilled’) and poikilomētis (‘dapple-skilled’). Even more than Achilles, the intense and shortlived hero of the Iliad, the hero of the Odyssey is a figure who excels in all manner of fields. As H.D.F. Kitto put it in a passage so memorably quoted in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

‘Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Pheacian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by song.  He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arēte.’

Irish legend has made the same point since time immemorial, with one of its most remarkable figures being the mercurial Lugh, hero of the wars against the Fomorians and eventual father of Cuchulainn. Lugh would be famously known as Samildánach  –  ‘equally skilled in many arts’, the story of how he came to Tara underlining how wide-ranging his abilities were. As told in the medieval Second Battle of Moytura, it goes something like this:

One day, after Bres the traitor had been banished and Nuada was once more king, the Tuatha Dé Danann were feasting and celebrating at Tara when a young and handsome warrior arrived at the palace’s gate. 

‘Who are you?’ asked Gamal and Camall, the palace doorkeepers. 

‘I am Lugh Long-arm,’ the young man answered, ‘son of Cian son of Diancecht and of Ethne, daughter of Balor, fosterson of Eochaidh and Tailtiu, daughter of the King of Spain.’

‘And what can you do? No one without an art enters Tara.’

‘Try me. I am a carpenter,’ said Lugh. 

‘Then we don’t need you. We have a carpenter already – Luchta son of Luachaid.’

‘I’m a smith too,’ said Lugh.

‘We also have a smith – Colum Cualleinech of the three new processes.’

‘I am a champion.’

‘We don’t need one! Ogma son of Ethliu is our champion.’

‘I’m a harper as well.’

‘We have a harper already, Abcan son of Bicelmos, who we chose in the fairy-mounds.’

‘Well, I am a hero.’

‘We’ve no need of one – Bresal is our hero.’

‘I am a poet, and I am a historian.’

‘En son of Ethaman is our poet and historian.’

‘I’m also a sorcerer.’ 

‘Sure, we’ve no shortage of sorcerers!’

‘I am a healer.’

‘No need. Diancecht is our healer.’

‘I am a cup-bearer too.’

‘We have nine of those already!’

‘I’m even a metalworker, skilled at working in brass.’

‘We don’t need you – Credne Cerd is already our brazier.’

Lugh paused, and then said: ‘Ask the king whether he has a single man in his whole household who has all these skills. If he has, I will not enter.’

And so Lugh was welcomed to Tara, where he became the greatest of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and was known henceforth as Samildánach, for he had many skills. 

Sometimes a breadth of expertise and the vision that comes with that is the skill we are slowest to recognise, but it can be the most valuable skill of all.

Coronation

It’s strange to read commentary on the Coronation when it wasn’t even on the radar for me on Saturday; a bit like missing the Biden visit and the indignant rantings about it from some elements of our neighbours’ fourth estate, I missed the Coronation entirely, as we had a First Holy Communion to celebrate in the family.

It seems strange to have passed over so rare an event - the first in the my lifetime, at any rate, and it only being a few years since I’d delighted my mum by meeting and shaking hands with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at a Great War commemoration in London. While I was indeed curious to watch it for historical interest, the immediate and familial won out. Why wouldn’t it, though? Kavanagh had it right, in ‘Epic’:

I have lived in important places, times

When great events were decided; who owned

That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land

Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul!’

And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen

Step the plot defying blue cast-steel –

‘Here is the march along these iron stones’

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which

Was more important? I inclined

To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin

Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.

He said: I made the Iliad from such

A local row. Gods make their own importance.

What’s that line in Gaiman and McKean’s Signal to Noise? ‘There’s no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.’ I’m not saying that big far-off events don’t matter, not least as you not being interested in them doesn’t mean they’re not interested in you, but it’s too easy to focus on distant spectacles and miss what matters under our noses.

I may yet catch the highlights, if anybody has a good link.

Colonists

I saw yesterday that this year’s Dublin Handelfest is being advertised, and perhaps unsurprisingly I felt that same ambivalent twinge of troubled anticipation I felt last year. The festival is great, with concerts and tours and exhibitions, but too often celebrations of Handel’s Dublin sojourn, like the city’s Georgian architecture or writers like Swift and Goldsmith, go hand-in-hand with nonsense about the eighteenth century as the capital’s golden age.

Such claims only make sense if we only care about our elites, the 3% of the population who could vote and who lived in the houses we admire today. They only make sense if we disregard the vast majority of the city’s population, the mass of urban poor who lived in destitute slums, the thousands of beggars, the thousands of prostitutes, the thousands who died in the freezing famine that killed up to a fifth of the population between 1740 and 1741 in what history would record as the 'Year of Slaughter'. They only make sense if we disregard the regular riots of the urban poor that the army was called upon to suppress time and again. They only make sense if we disregard the fact that the Kingdom of Ireland was what we would now call an apartheid state, one where the country’s Catholic majority were barely tolerated, their most basic rights curtailed and denied, discreet chapels only allowed in Dublin at all when riots were feared after a house where Mass was being celebrated collapsed, killing the celebrant and nine of those worshipping. If we disregard the violence, the robbery, the overcrowding, the typhus, the open sewers.

Pádraig Daly, the Augustinian priest-poet, has a poem called ‘Colonists’, in which he reflects on how we might be tempted to celebrate the domestic glories of those who colonised Africa. It’s not long, so I may as well quote it in full:

What hits you as strongly as the first blast

Of African heat

Is their absolute presumption,

Dividing out a land

Others had wandered since forever,

Erecting fences across the paths of hippo, zebra, lion,

Calling rivers for themselves and their bloated queens,

Corrupting the names of hollows and mountainranges,

Terming the old uncouth,

Patronising,

Slaughtering, 

Teaching servitude.

The beauty they achieved in their houses

And sweeps of trees

Is by the by.

I’m not saying the beauties and glories the elite of Georgian Dublin enjoyed amongst the squalor and sorrow of those they’d dispossessed and oppressed are ‘by the by’ -- we can, after all, enjoy them now. And, in truth, we may as well take advantage of whatever good that shower did. There was precious little of it, after all, compared to the harm they inflicted. But still: let’s not pretend this was a Golden Age; what gold there was shone among the blood and filth of a boot-trodden charnel pit.