Author: Life After Stalin - A Dubliners Diary

Casement was a distinguished British public servant who was executed for treason following an attempted gunrunning in 1916  and became one of the principal Irish martyrs in the rebellion against British rule in Ireland. He was re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery with full military honours after a State…

We could hear the Artane Band practicing from our back garden. My mother used to say it was where the bold boys were sent. It’s only in retrospect I realise what those children were going through. About the series Life after Stalin…

Tomorrow’s World. When the TV remote control was a futuristic device; the moon landing in 1969 and how, in 1977, Dunsink Observatory managed to loose the moon rock which President Nixon presented to Ireland. About the series Life after Stalin – A…

The gin didn’t agree with me. Teenage drinking in the late 1960s and one particular night at the dance in the school hall. About the series Life after Stalin – A Dubliner’s Diary is a podcast series written and presented by Paul Harrison.…

Leave no trace. I’m not a fan of bucket lists but, the older I get, the more I wonder about legacy. ‘Leave no trace’ is the hikers’s motto – but it would be a sad life that didn’t leave even the faintest…

Who is my neighbour? In the early 1970s I volunteered one night a week in a Simon Community night shelter to work with Dublin’s street drinkers and rough sleepers. Later on Simon started to buy suburban houses to provide long term accommodation for…

Episode 16 – The Troubles. Recalling the start of the Troubles when, on a shopping trip to Newry with my parents in 1968, we came across a civil rights march. They were calling for ‘One man, one vote’. My experience of studying…

Episode 13 – Reds under the Bed. Reflecting on the perceived Soviet threat in the 1960s when every household got a leaflet on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. Then, in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the…