Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

LOCAL HISTORY:FINDING OUT things you did not know is one of the many pleasures of reading local history. I learned a great deal from A Historical Atlas of Dublin, by Richard Killeen (Gill Macmillan, 176pp, €19.99). For instance, who were the pinkindindies? (Answer: gentlemen scoundrels of the 18th century.) The book gives an outline in 12 highly readable chapters of the political, social and economic history of Dublin from earliest times to the present, illustrated in colour with more than 30 maps.

Starting with Ptolemy, and his map of the known world in 100 AD, it looks at factors which shaped the development of the city, from the arrival of the Vikings and their establishment of trade routes, to the spread in the 14th century of the Black Death, which took only a year to arrive in Dublin from the East through the Mediterranean trade routes. Arriving in August 1348, it had killed 14,000 people in the city by Christmas.