Taking an opsimathic interest in the history of my hometown, I’ve been contentedly engaged by Maurice Craig’s landmark publication, Dublin 1660-1860: The Shaping of a City. Craig’s aphoristic style (“[In] Dublin luxuries have always tended to come before necessities.”) and interest in the wider intellectual milieu combine to produce a book that transcends the category of architectural history*. The author’s inclination to colourful digression is demonstrated by the following anecdote, which shows that the gougers of yesteryear could have given the dead-eyed killers of today’s city a run for their money:

“The ‘Liberty-Boys’ . . . were the most turbulent and independent section of the Dublin populace. Extravagantly protestant, they were neither the first nor the last example of immigrants whose behaviour has done so much to secure Ireland her reputation for light-hearted faction-fighting. They nourished a deadly hatred against the butchers of the Ormonde Market, who were mostly Catholic. All through the eighteenth century the quays and bridges would become impassable for days on end, as fierce battles, attended with atrocities and reprisals of the utmost barbarity, raged throughout the centre of the city…The vanquished were treated with incredible ferocity; the Butchers cut the leg-tendons of the Weavers with their long knives, or the Weavers hoisted the Butchers and left them hanging by the jaws on their own meathooks.”

*Unfortunately, this re-issue of a work first published in 1952 bears the marks of a negligently supervised scanning job. Eighteenth-century events are given 20th century dates, Lord Mornington (father of the Duke of Wellington) is referred to as “Momington” more than once, and the founder of the Rotunda hospital, Bartholomew Mosse, is laughably called “Mouse” at one point.