In Dublin’s Fair City

Dublin is probably the city I know best outside the UK, yet every time I visit I find a new surprise – a plaque to one of the city’s countless famous writers that I hadn’t known about before; an excellent Greek, Italian or Spanish restaurant nestled unobtrusively between traditional pubs; a previously-undiscovered swimming spot tantalisingly close to the city centre by public transport, making the Irish sea much more attractive than it looks from the plane or (God forbid) the ferry.

Yet it was with complicated feelings that I left Ireland this summer, because I had been there not for pleasure (though, as it turned out, pleasures were abundant) but for work, because our campus there found itself understaffed. And this is emotional because I am one of an estimated 80 million people around the world who can claim – however tenuously – to be part of the Irish diaspora. Our families left Ireland over a period of centuries – indeed, some are still leaving now – with numbers peaking during the potato famine in the mid 19th century, and again around the early part of the 20th century. In one ten year period, it’s estimated 30% of the island’s under-30s left, in search of a better life, better opportunities and better wages. My family were among them, moving to Bradford when the textiles industry was at its height. Many, many more crossed the Atlantic – the film “Brooklyn” (from Colm Toibim’s book of the same name) depicts sensitively and painfully the transition from a dark, old world to a bright new one full of possibility – and this is why so many Americans – from Kennedy to Biden – invoke their (increasingly distant) Irishness at every given opportunity. According to the EPIC Museum (of which more later), Ireland has the dubious distinction of being the most emigrated nation on earth.

Dublin’s Memorial to the Potato Famine

And so it was that, just over 100 years after my family left Ireland because there was no work, I was back, because there was too much of it.

Visiting as I was to help 50 Americans – many of whom fall into the a study abroad group known as “heritage seekers” – settle into three-month study abroad programmes in Dublin and beyond, reminders of this poignant truth were everywhere, both in the students who came and the things we did together.

The bittersweet nature of Irish emigration is most sharply and beautifully presented in EPIC – while many cities, from New York to Melbourne, have museums of Immigration, presenting a selective history of a welcoming nation in a self-congratulatory pat on the back that often whitewashes a reality of quotas and entry tests, Dublin’s museum is instead a homage to Emigration. EPIC is a museum that simultaneously mourns whole generations lost to other countries while celebrating their profound impact on those countries’ cultures and histories. While a friend scathingly dismissed the museum for “not having any actual stuff in it” (it consists of a series of multimedia displays and a disappointing lack of any artefacts, though there are many opportunities where these would enhance the content) it nonetheless presents a powerful picture of a complex nation, reducing the visitor to tears in one room and smiles of joy in the next. From black and white film footage that shows the old waving farewell to the young as a ship pulls away from the pier, you are next transported into the heart of Brooklyn’s dance halls, where Irish culture thrived and grew and influenced the wider culture around it. To emphasise this, the final room shows, on a big screen, the fateful interval entertainment at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, when Irish-Americans Michael Flatley and Jean Butler unleashed Riverdance on the world.

As a musician with a genuine Irish fiddle (an heirloom from my great-grandfather) I have been obsessed with the rhythms of Riverdance for almost 30 years, and couldn’t believe my luck that an anniversary version of the show was just finishing its run at the glorious Gaity theatre. Even in relatively modest surroundings (the intimate Gaity can’t compete with the vast Eurovision arena) the music was unbelievable – joyous, manic, prodigious, infectious – and the symmetry of many pairs of feet working in perfect unison transfixing. I was worried that it would somehow be a disappointment, but it was anything but.

Looking for Oscar

For such a tiny nation, there’s no doubt that its influence on the world – from both those who left and those that stayed – has been disproportionate. The city is filled with reminders of famous residents, from James Joyce to Oscar Wilde. Yet Ireland is also no longer shying away from the darker sides of its history – EPIC mentioned that many emigrated due to prejudice, particularly against gay people or unmarried mothers, and Dublin’s last Magdalene Laundry – institutions brought to public attention by the currently-showing BBC Drama The Woman In the Wall, and before that by the film The Magdalene Sisters – is being turned into a permanent memorial to the women and children who suffered abuse behind its walls while the government – at best – turned a blind eye.

Recent work visits have allowed me to explore the Dublin beyond the raucous, garish pubs of Temple Bar and the unnecessarily generously-endowed statue of Molly Malone, heading out of the city on its wonderful DART line (Dublin isn’t a city that springs to mind when you think of public transport, and yet the DART facilitates a smooth and stunningly beautiful commute into the city from Howth in the north and Bray in the south). A mere half hour from the city you can find the seaside suburb of Sandycove, with its famous Forty Foot (yes, of course I did) – a set of steps down into the famously tempestuous (and, even in the middle of summer, impressively cold) Irish sea.

So, when I boarded the (delayed, of course; I have never arrived in or left Dublin on time) plane home, it was with regret (as well as guilt that I could have such an incredible and – humour me here because I know it sounds cheesy – profound time here while I was working). Over the week, I realised that I would move back in a heartbeat should the right opportunity arise. I would love to live in this vibrant, diverse (the EU has brought immigration in its most positive forms to a nation more famous for people leaving than arriving), beautiful, humorous, warm city, a shining, beating, cheering, toe-tapping heart of a nation that got knocked down, then got up again. And again. And again.

Looking for Lovejoy

I was both a lonely child, and an odd one. My dad, not content with just buying a Harley and growing his hair long like any normal man suffering a midlife crisis, instead bought a pub more than 200 miles away and upped sticks, leaving his already sibling-less daughter looking for even more imaginative ways to occupy her time. I’d already learned all the capitals of the world, then all the capitals AND largest cities of every US state (like I said, lonely and odd), so at 12 I developed a (possibly unhealthy) obsession with the eccentric Suffolk-based comedy drama Lovejoy, and an even unhealthier obsession with its star, a pre-Deadwood – but still old (the same age as my pint-pulling father, in fact) – Ian McShane.

Not an awfully long way from Lavenham

And when I say obsession, that isn’t an exaggeration. I laboriously taped every episode onto VHS, writing “LOVEJOY! DO NOT TOUCH!” in smudgy, scrawly fountain pen on the labels. To demonstrate my commitment to the cause, I even taught myself how to read hallmarks, spent all my pocket money accumulating a collection of antique toast racks, and told my teachers that when I grew up I wanted to be an auctioneer. (The careers test we all took at 14 respectfully disagreed, suggesting I become a teacher, librarian or housing officer.) A programme about a cast of eccentric loners who didn’t quite belong anywhere, lived off their wits and liked pretty, old things appealed to both my sense of isolation and exaggerated opinion of my own abilities.

While I did not become an auctioneer (or indeed a housing officer), I did nonetheless, years later, become the resident nerd on a podcast about Lovejoy (with Em supplying both the technical and editing skills, Helen supplying the intellect and order, and all of us supplying the copious quantities of alcohol that went into making it.) For the second time in my life, Lovejoy gave me something of a purpose, as we raised money through the podcast during lockdown – selling memorabilia, running an online quiz, and finally running a half marathon – to raise money for Royal Trinity Hospice where Dudley Sutton (Tinker in the show) spent his final months.

Then, this weekend, I finally got to visit some of the sites that were featured in the series that dominated my early teenage years.

In my favourite episode – The Lost Colony – Charlotte – a delicious Caroline Langrishe whom I was completely unable to emulate with my dyspraxic clumsiness and general lack of poise – glided effortlessly into Lovejoy’s prison cell and reflected “we’re an awfully long way from Lavenham, aren’t we?” A fun fact, which I discovered many years later, was that although Lavenham was the ostensible setting for the programme, and featured sporadically, not least providing many of the backdrops and occasional trips to the Swan Inn (where Lovejoy would take his various female acquaintances, usually just before much drama/hilarity ensued), the more famous locations were a few miles south. The glorious Felsham Hall is actually Belchamp Hall in Belchamp Walter, and the church where Charlotte and Lovejoy didn’t get married (sorry – spoiler – but you’ve had almost 30 years to watch it) is St Mary the Virgin next door, which could have come straight out of a Lovejoy episode itself, with faded murals dating back to the 14th Century.

The past is a foreign country, and Lovejoy doesn’t live there any more

Seeing Belchamp Hall in 2023 looking exactly the same as it did when Lovejoy drove out of the gates for that final time in 1994 declaring “the past is a foreign country, and Lovejoy doesn’t live there any more” made me momentarily emotional (or, as Lovejoy would protest, “I’ve got wine on my shirt). As for Lavenham, it’s every bit as gorgeous as it looked as the apt backdrop for the intrigue and peril that lay beneath the programme’s sleepy surface.

The Swan, scene of much drama

A real antique shop in Lavenham

I ended my mini-pilgrimage in Cambridge, rather like Beth did, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, admiring on the way the colleges that featured occasionally, usually as a result of Charlotte pulling on her university connections.

I felt a huge nostalgia seeing these locations that were so central to my life for so long, and could almost see myself buying a little cottage somewhere there, and maybe discovering some priceless antique hidden there. Maybe I’m about to have a midlife crisis of my own.