Dublin Literary Bars Remembered Through Smoke and Verse

Dublin holds a strange kind of gravity for anyone who has ever cared about the written word. The city hums with the ghosts of writers who drank their way through long afternoons, scribbled poems on napkins, argued about politics between pints, and then walked out into cobbled lanes with their heads full of sentences. To drink in Dublin is, in some quiet way, to walk into a continuing conversation that started with Swift and Goldsmith and has not yet ended. Every pub in the city seems to carry a fragment of that conversation.

I write this from a different shore. The distance from Sydney to Dublin is roughly seventeen thousand kilometres, but the cultural span feels shorter than the cabin pressure on the long-haul flight. Australian readers have long claimed Beckett as one of their own, despite the inconvenient matter of his Irish birth. Universities in Melbourne and Brisbane keep Joyce on required reading lists. The literary tourist trail through Ireland has become almost as familiar to travellers from Adelaide and Perth as the coastal drive from Sydney to Byron Bay. We arrive in Dublin expecting to find something we have already imagined, and we leave with the realisation that imagination was only the rehearsal.

These recollections are not a guidebook. They are notes from memory, gathered across several visits, some recent, some softened by time. The bars described here are ones where a writer might settle in for an hour with a notebook and come out with a paragraph, or simply listen to the talk around him and feel the city speak. A few of these pubs are obvious; others are quieter, less photographed, easier to overlook. All of them have their place in the geography of Irish literary life.

Doheny and Nesbitt's, where the cabinet still stands

Few Dublin pubs feel as deeply literary as Doheny and Nesbitt's on Baggot Street. The snug at the back, with its worn leather seats and the timber screen that keeps the draft at bay, has barely changed in a century. Aficionados of the place speak of it the way Australians speak of the Hero of Waterloo in The Rocks, or the Lord Nelson Brewery in Pyrmont, a survivor, a place where the past has not been polished into a stage set.

The pub's literary reputation rests on more than atmosphere. Brendan Behan drank here. Flann O'Brien drank here. The cabinet behind the bar, filled with curious objects and fading photographs, was built up over decades by publicans who understood that their customers were storytellers. A glass of plain stout, a corner stool, and the sense that the room is listening, this is what Doheny offers. Visitors from Parramatta or Fitzroy often remark that the pub feels more like a private club than a public house, which is, of course, exactly the point.

What makes Doheny special is its refusal to perform. There is no plaque at the door announcing its fame, no menu printed in three languages. The pub simply is, and the writer who steps inside becomes part of a tradition that asks nothing of him except that he order another round when his glass empties.

Toner's on Lower Baggot Street

Toner's sits a short walk from Doheny, far enough that its regulars would never accept a suggestion the two pubs are interchangeable. Toner's is darker, narrower, more severe in its beauty. The mahogany bar glows like something pulled from a Victorian drawing room, and the bartenders pour measures that remind Sydneysiders why they fell in love with Irish whiskey in the first place.

The literary pedigree here is substantial. Samuel Beckett is the name most often whispered at Toner's, and the pub wears that association lightly. The man himself would have hated the fuss. Toner's rewards the visitor who comes to sit, not to sightsee. Order a Powers, find a stool near the back, and the room will eventually begin to speak. Conversations overheard in Toner's have the cadence of unfinished essays, the rhythm of someone working out a sentence mid-thought.

For Australian writers passing through Dublin, Toner's offers a particular kind of comfort. The pub is unfussy in the way that good country pubs in regional Victoria or Tasmania are unfussy. There is no need to perform Irishness, no obligation to pronounce anything correctly. The bartender will pour, the regulars will nod, and the visitor is welcome to be a stranger for as long as he wishes.

The Palace Bar, Temple Bar's quieter cousin

The Palace Bar stands at the corner of Temple Bar and Fleet Street, and it manages to be both central and removed. Tourists walk past its red-and-green frontage without pausing, drawn instead to louder, more obviously themed establishments nearby. This is a quiet triumph. The Palace has kept its dignity while the district around it has become a stage for stag parties and souvenir shoppers.

Inside, the Palace feels like the office of a literary magazine that has been operating without interruption since 1823. The snugs are dark, the regulars are well-read, and the barmen move with the unhurried patience of people who understand their work as a vocation rather than a transaction. Writers who drank here include Brendan Behan, Flann O'Brien, and a long roster of journalists from the newspapers that once crowded nearby Fleet Street.

Australian readers will recognise the type. The Palace is the Dublin cousin of a quiet Melbourne establishment like the European, or the Young and Jacksons of an earlier era, a place where the bar staff know their trade and the customers know their manners. Sitting in the Palace with a small whiskey, watching the room, a writer begins to understand why so much Irish writing sounds like conversation overheard rather than monologue delivered.

McDaids on Harry Street

McDaids is the pub most often associated with Brendan Behan, and rightly so. The place has a haunted, slightly defiant air, with its tall windows, its narrow floor, and the low ceiling that seems to press the regulars closer together. McDaids is the kind of pub that makes a Sydney visitor nostalgic for the warmth of the Marble Bar in winter, or for the snug corners of the Courthouse Hotel in Newtown.

The literary history here is dense and a little melancholy. Behan wrote parts of Borstal Boy while drinking in this room. Patrick Kavanagh came often, looking for the silence he never quite found. The pub feels less like a tourist destination than like a memorial in use, a place that has not been turned into a museum because it has no need to be. Writers come to McDaids to feel the weight of what was written in this room, and to understand that writing has consequences.

For anyone tracing the literary map of Dublin, McDaids is essential. For Australian readers, the pub offers a lesson in how a place can carry memory without performing it. The bartender will pour, the regulars will drink, and the visitor is welcome to listen.

Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street

Mulligan's is Joyce's pub, though the man himself would probably have rejected the label. Joyce drank here, and the pub is proud of that fact without being smug about it. The interior is plain, the pints are good, and the conversation stays at a register that rewards the patient listener.

The location matters. Mulligan's sits on Poolbeg Street, just across from Pearse Station, in a part of the city that has not entirely surrendered to gentrification. Australian travellers arriving from the airport will find themselves here sooner than they expect, and the pub offers a useful first lesson in Dublin geography. Order a pint of plain, take a stool near the door, and the city begins to make sense in a way no guidebook can manage.

What Mulligan's offers the literary visitor is a sense of continuity. The same bartenders, or their successors, have been pouring pints here for over a century. The same newspapers have been read, the same arguments have been had, the same jokes have been told and retold. For an Australian writer used to the churn of Sydney's inner west or Melbourne's ever-shifting cafe scene, Mulligan's offers a rare kind of permanence.

The Long Hall and the patience of timber

The Long Hall on South Great George's Street is a temple of Victorian mahogany. The bar glows like an altar. The pints are poured with the solemnity of a sacrament, and the regulars sit with the patience of people who have learned that good things cannot be hurried. The Long Hall is the kind of pub that makes an Australian visitor think of the older hotels in The Rocks, or the bar at the Grosvenor in Sydney before its renovations, a place that has kept its bones.

The literary connections here are real but quieter than the more famous establishments. Anthony Cronin drank here, as did several of the poets associated with the literary revival of the mid-twentieth century. The Long Hall rewards the reader who has done the reading. A visitor without context might see only an old pub; a visitor with context sees a room that has absorbed decades of conversation.

For anyone who loves Dublin and writes about it, the Long Hall is a place to remember. The bartenders are kind, the regulars are courteous, and the pints are among the best in the city. Australian travellers will recognise the warmth immediately, the warmth of a country pub in Bungendore or Daylesford, transplanted to a colder climate and given a longer history.

Davy Byrnes and the Bloomsday connection

Davy Byrnes on Duke Street is the pub most closely associated with Leopold Bloom's lunchtime in Ulysses. On Bloomsday, the sixteenth of June, the place fills with readers in period costume who come to eat the gorgonzola sandwich and drink the burgundy Bloom consumed. On any other day, Davy Byrnes is a quieter establishment, beloved by writers and readers who do not need the excuse of a festival to visit.

The pub has been careful with its reputation. It is neither too famous nor too quiet. The bartenders know the literary history of the place, and they are gracious about the occasional visitor who arrives clutching a copy of Ulysses and wanting to talk about Molly Bloom's soliloquy. For Australian readers of Joyce, and there are more of them than one might suppose, Davy Byrnes is a small pilgrimage.

The food is better than it needs to be. The pints are properly poured. The atmosphere rewards those who come to read as well as drink. A writer with a notebook can sit here for an afternoon and feel that the room is in conversation with the book he carries.

A few pints for the literary traveller

These recommendations are offered in the spirit of a writer sending a postcard back home. They are not a checklist, and they are not in any particular order of merit. They are simply places where the literary history of Dublin is still alive, still drinkable, still worth the visit.

• Doheny and Nesbitt's, for the snug, the cabinet, and the sense that the room is paying attention
• Toner's, for Beckett, mahogany, and the quiet drink that asks nothing of the visitor
• The Palace Bar, for journalists, snugs, and the dignity of a pub that has refused to perform
• McDaids, for Behan, melancholy, and the weight of writing that has consequences
• Mulligan's, for Joyce, plain pints, and a useful first lesson in Dublin geography
• The Long Hall, for Victorian timber, patient regulars, and pints poured with a quiet ceremony
• Davy Byrnes, for Bloom, gorgonzola, and the small pilgrimage of the dedicated reader

For the traveller with a notebook and a little patience, the literary pubs of Dublin remain worth the long flight from Sydney or Melbourne, or wherever in Australia the journey begins. Reflections on Dublin, on memory, and on the writers who passed through these rooms are kept at the writer's online archive, where a quieter record of these visits continues, and where the conversation begun in these pubs has not yet been allowed to end.