The chosen Dubliners are W.B. Yeats, Wilde, Joyce, Carson, Swift, and Wolfe Tone. The approach is popular and not literary or specialised, but without deliberate "writing down" or aiming at the lower levels of cultural tourism. Yeats, Wilde, Joyce have by now been so documented by biographers that there remains little to be said about them, and what is given in this book is essentially a recapitulation of other, specialised writers. The cause of Wilde's death is given as encephalitic meningitis, which contradicts the popular idea - based on what, evidence, I do not know that it was syphilis which killed him. Tone is not always thought of a Dubliner, though in fact he was born, (ironically enough, in view of his end) close to Dublin Castle. Michael Stanley quotes from his famous journal Tone's description of the young Napoleon Bonaparte: He is about five feet six inches high, slender and well made, but stoops considerably; he looks at least ten years older than he is, owing to the great fatigues he underwent in his immortal campaigns in Italy. His face is that of a profound thinker ... It is rather, to my mind, the countenance of a mathematician than of a general. He has a fine eye and a great firmness about the mouth; he speaks low and hollow." The section on Swift rightly emphasises how much Ireland owes to him, but also quotes Lecky's remark that "he always looked upon his country as a place of exile, and upon the great masses of its people with undisguised contempt". Neither does it gloss over Swift's hatred and intolerance of "Popery" and of Nonconformism. (Incidentally, there is a historical howler in this section which describes Queen Anne as the widow of William III - she was, of course, his sister in law, and as a Stuart and younger sister to Queen Mary, heir to the throne in her own right.) Carson, whose political reputation is still partly in the shadows, is an interesting inclusion, though it remains obstinately difficult to avoid the conclusion that his hardline opposition to Home Rule did much to make partition inevitable.