There are a number of places in Europe where no one, except for some not very numerous sellers of tourist tat, wants any more visitors. In fact they’d prefer to be without the ones they have. So will we be staying away? No, no, let the others stay away. I need my culture.

Flora Mitchell’s warm tribute – in words, ink and watercolour – to old Dublin, published in the mid-1960s, records the city at a time when much of it was about to disappear forever, a victim of better economic times and the optimism, and heedlessness of the past, that accompanied them.

Sunday’s general election saw a disastrous drop in the votes of the main right-wing party, the Popular Party, a qualified success for the centre-left PSOE and a smaller than forecast breakthrough for the new, ultra-nationalist party of the Spanish right, Vox.

There is a widespread belief in the US that not only must China be contained but that the traditional American style of conducting international politics through alliances no longer serves the interests of the US. A radical change of approach is required. This is where Trump, the great disrupter, comes in.

Lucy E Salyer responds to comments by Breandan Mac Suibhne in his review of her book 'Under the Starry Flag'.

Well of course we all love books. There’s absolutely nothing like a book. Nothing so gripping. Nothing so enthralling. So why do I sometimes fall asleep in my armchair?

A beautifully illustrated book published in a small edition in 1966 featuring descriptions of numerous streets and lanes in the capital has become a collector’s item. In Stephen Street the street sellers called out ‘Some good fish here!’, perhaps leaving open the possibility that there were some not so good too.

John Rocque’s Dublin map offered an image of harmony, order and industry. It lied of course. But George II was so taken by it he hung it in his apartments. Perhaps on sleepless nights, Peter Sirr speculates, he climbed out of bed to count his way down Sackville Street or follow his little finger down the lanes of the old city.

Childcare costs in Ireland absorb 28 per cent of disposable income; the European average is 12 per cent. We seem to be modelling our economy on the US, where there is no paid maternity leave. As increasing numbers of Irish people feel the squeeze, something is likely to give politically.

Ireland has a tradition of seeking help from the Continent, in the form of soldiers, swords, cannon - generically fíon Spainneach. It’s not surprising that we are comfortable in the Union. For the British, where sovereignty has been long attested by ‘divers sundry old authentic histories’, it’s a different matter.

A fifteenth century English treatise loudly complained of the tricky trade practices of foreigners and argued for a protectionist regime under which home industry would thrive. The future would be bright, since England dealt in solid goods everyone wanted while the foreigners sold only ‘fripperies, niffles and trifles’.

Two novels by Irish authors, 'Conversations with Friends' by Sally Rooney and 'Midwinter Break' by Bernard MacLaverty, will compete with eight others from France, Pakistan, the UK and the USA for a prize that is worth €100,000 to the winner.

They say that keeping a pet and learning to look after it ‑ even experiencing its death ‑ can teach a child valuable lessons. So too can following a football team. It teaches you that though sometimes in life you can win you can just as easily lose. Oh how you can lose.

A huge influx of beggars displaced from the land frightened 19th century Dubliners: the benevolent were imposed upon, the modest shocked, the reflecting grieved and the timid alarmed, one observer wrote. In 1818 the Mendicity Institution in Hawkins Street was opened to deal with the problem.

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate. So the hymn went, and many in nineteenth century Ireland believed it. But not everyone.

People will tell you it’s hard to make a fortune. Don’t listen to them. They’re the losers. They don’t know what they’re talking about. All you have to do to become seriously rich is follow three simple rules.

A regularly updated diary of events of literary and artistic interest and news from the publishing and arts worlds

Ireland is dependent on inward investment, which is hostile to regulation of the market. At the same time our history is one of above average social integration and consensus. With the housing crisis, which will not be solved without huge state intervention, these two elements are headed for a clash.

An architectural competition for a design for a new church in Clonskeagh in Dublin attracted 101 entries. The winning entry, from a young architect with the OPW, was modernist in style. But the archbishop of Dublin wasn’t having any of it. Instead a ‘monstrous barn’ was built.

The much-decorated American poet – he won two Pulitzers and a National Book Award – was known for conveying ‘in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth and underground’.