The life of John Stanislaus Joyce, father of James, Fenian, Parnellite, drunk who claimed to have cured himself of syphilis. Obsessed with the burden of being the only son of an only son, John Joyce himself fathered no fewer than seventeen children with his long-suffering wife (despite many affairs and many engagements he actually married only once) but was concerned only with his eldest surviving son, James. This was through no intrinsic merit on James's part but because of John Joyce's excessive belief in the rights of primogeniture such that all his other children were excluded from his will and those who predeceased him were not even named on the family gravestone. John, as James liked to claim, gave to his son all of his wit: most of the characters in Ulysses are barely disguised friends of his and the incidents from his life pepper James's fiction. John Joyce was the most important person in James's life. But as well as the light thrown on the century's greatest novelist, this is a depiction of the high-spirits, ebulliant passions, deep depressions, good humour and warm linguistic skills of the ultimate Dublin character.

Dublin's writers rarely remain solemn for long: their wicked sense of humour has travelled the world. This is an irresistible new anthology of what used to be called 'comic and curious verse' about the city, written by some of her most entertaining poets and songwriters. Fashions in verse come and go. Too often we forget - paradoxically - the most memorable works of wit, sarcasm or absurdity. The ones gathered here were written over four centuries, and were inspired by many things - among them love, injustice, history, politics, animals and alcohol, but most of all by the citizens of Dublin themselves. Whether the lines are satirical, sentimental, subversive, sexy or just plain silly, you will find that many of them show a rare seriousness as well. Each poem comes with background information about where it originated, and each page is illuminated by Hector McDonnell's wonderful, witty drawings.

Stuff Dublin into your coat pocket. The perfect companion for a visit to the Fair City, or indeed to any inn, bar or cafe in Ireland. Some of the greatest writers in the English language were born in Dublin and every corner of the city has links with the written word, made explicit in this far-ranging collection. From Oscar Wilde to Rudyard Kipling, from Jonathan Swift to WB Yeats and Samuel Beckett: the city of Dublin has enchanted and inspired some great poetry.