Donal Fallon

For centuries, the public house has been an important part of the social and cultural history of Dublin. Beginning with the taverns and ale houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this book brings the reader on a visual journey that passes through familiar institutions as well as much-lamented public houses that are no longer to be found. Along the way, we encounter characters as diverse and famous around the capital as Theobald Wolfe Tone, Nell McCafferty and Con Houlihan. Visitors to Dublin are here, as the photographer Lee Miller seeks out the city of James Joyce. The ‘Plain People of Ireland’ are present too, in chapters exploring everything from temperance to karaoke. The hidden histories of world-renowned public houses such as The Long Hall, Grogan’s and The Palace feature, as do the stories of Dublin’s early houses, gay bars and shebeens. Drawing from rich archival collections, The Dublin Pub includes previously unpublished photographs as well as oral recollections that bring the history of the Dublin pub to life. From the Irish revolution to social revolutions of more recent times, this is the story of the Dublin public house.

50th Anniversary Edition A beautifully presented and attractively laid out commemorative edition, with new introductions by Ivan O’Brien, MD of The O’Brien Press and best-selling author Dónal Fallon. The very first book published by The O’Brien Press in 1974 celebrates fifty years in print. The O’Brien Press launched its first publication in November 1974. Me Jewel and Darlin' Dublin, written by Éamonn MacThomáis and published while the author was in jail, was an immediate success and has become a classic. Full of historical facts, anecdotes and Dublin wit, this book evokes the spirit, the characters and colours, the sights, sounds and even the smells of old Dublin. With sections on markets, pawn shops, street characters, the Liberties, slang and wit of Dublin’s newspapers, the city’s history is traced right back to Brian Boru, the Huguenots, ‘the debtors’ prison', and Dublin's troubled history of risings and revolutions. Celebrating fifty years of Me Jewel & Darlin’ Dublin – and of The O’Brien Press.

The Phoenix Park in Dublin holds a special place in the collective memory of Irish people. From the assassinations of 1882 and the destruction of several imperial monuments, to the arrival of Douglas Hyde as Ireland's first president and Pope John Paul's 1979 visit, it has been at the centre of Irish society for centuries. But the park is also part and parcel of daily life for many Dubliners - none more so than the Flanagan family, who have been lighting the gas lamps within its walls since 1890. Here, historian Donal Fallon speaks to brothers Frank and James Flanagan, lamplighters of the park, to give us a snapshot of a fading tradition, and a unique history of one of Ireland's most beloved places. With stunning photographs, historical events and personal stories, The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park shines a light on the park at the centre of our national identity, through the prism of this singular family, whose histories have been intertwined for more than 150 years.

Eason Favourite Book of the Year 2022 ‘she is no small town, and this is no small story . . .’ BASED ON THE POPULAR DUBLIN HISTORY PODCAST A companion to the hugely successful podcast of the same name by Donal Fallon, THREE CASTLES BURNING is an enjoyable wander through some of Dublin's less obvious but more interesting streets and roads such as Henrietta Street, Watling Street, Fownes Street and Kildare Road. On the Dublin streets we walk every day, there are hidden reminders of the lesser-known heroes and events that have contributed to the evolving story of our capital. The city’s motto, ‘the obedience of the citizens produces a happy city’, may feel outdated and loaded today but the three burning castles of its ancient coat of arms have come to represent the indomitable spirit, creativity and vision that define this big town. Inspired by the No. 1 podcast, Three Castles Burning: A History of Dublin in Twelve Streets champions the activists, workers, architects, poets, migrants, artists and merchants who have made and remade the city we know and love by going beneath the many layers of twelve key streets where they lived and worked. Because, in the city Joyce called the ‘Hibernian Metropolis’, the disobedience of its citizens is the cornerstone of its past, present and future. This combination of social, cultural, industrial and commercial, and political history, through the prism of the places where revolutions great and small were sparked, offers the reader a fresh and unexpected take on Ireland's capital city.

Major John MacBride, who was Born in Westport, County Mayo in 1868, was a household name in Ireland when many of the leaders of the Easter Rising were still relatively unknown figures. As part of the ‘Irish Brigade’, a band of nationalists fighting against the British in the Second Boer War, MacBride’s name featured in stories in the Freeman’s Journal and Arthur Griffith’s United Irishman. The Major went on to travel across the United States, lecturing audiences on the blow struck against the British Empire in South Africa. His marriage to Maud Gonne, described as ‘Ireland’s Joan of Arc’, led to further notoriety. Their subsequent bitter separation involved some of the most senior figures in Irish nationalism. MacBride was dismissed by William Butler Yeats as a ‘drunken, vainglorious lout; Donal Fallon attempts to unravel the complexities of the man and his life and what led him to fight in Jacob’s factory in 1916. John MacBride was executed in Kilmainham Gaol on 5 May 1916, two days before his forty-eighth birthday.