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Mon 12 Dec 2008An Irishman's Diary
'WELCOME to Tipperary," proclaims a large roadside sign, "You've Come a Long Way!".
No-one with a sense of history, or any appreciation of popular culture, can approach Tipperary town without a keen feeling of anticipation. It is a journey about which millions of people throughout these islands have been singing ever since that song seeped out of Edwardian music halls and was adopted by soldiers marching off to the first World War. Yet few who belt out the words can have any idea of what really lies there. Home to "the sweetest girl I know", for generations of Britons it has been a fabulous, mythical place to which Tommies dreamt of returning after the horrors of the trenches. Most never came back.
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