My dad used to tell me about the numerous pawnbrokers in Dun Laoghaire, and how it was common for people to use them at the end of a week, or coming up to some big event, to get cash for clothes, jewellery or anything that could be used as collateral. If the person...
Have you noticed the way Irish property investors are like Man Utd supporters? Last week, the poor Man Utd supporters trending on Twitter swung between optimism and anger. Deep down, both emotions come from the belief that a couple of results back to back must signal...
Every month you’ll hear about the number of new cars that are sold. This is usually taken as a bellweather for the health of the economy. Cars are expensive and the more that are shifted in any one month, or indeed year, the healthier the economy. Also because...
In the summer of 1787, determined to show foreign ambassadors the might of Russian power in the newly subjugated Ukraine and Crimea, Catherine the Great organised a boat trip down the Dnieper past modern-day Kiev. Her trusted field marshal, and her lover at the time,...
It’s not every day I can open the column from such an exotic location as Sarajevo. I am sitting in a small cafe opposite the very bridge where Gavrilo Princip, the young Serb radical, assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, triggering a...
My earliest memories of Castle Street, Dalkey, were Saturday mornings in Dom McClure’s barbershop with my father. Dom cut my Grandad’s hair, my Dad’s hair and now he was shearing mine. As usual when I peeked into the shop on a Saturday morning, Dom...