It was an unusually warm evening for a night in March, which is to say that it was not horrendously cold and you could tarry a while outside without fear of frostbite. Given the nature of his job, Nicholas is not frequently free to socialise, as he has to be doing certain things in certain places at certain times, which sometimes involves being in Greece or a sudden trip to Anguilla (“I’m not doing any more Caribbean islands — I’m fucking tired of them.”). But when he does manage to free himself from indentured servitude, we often find ourselves at the Phoenix on Smith Street.

All sensible right-minded people love the Phoenix and hate the Phoenix. It is a wonderful place, comfortable and delightful, yet somehow attracts the very worst and most tiresome lot of humanity. “Look at these estate agents,” Nicholas moans in the put-on snobbery which has become one of his traits. “They all live in Fulham I’m sure.” (Which is rich, as I live even beyond Fulham). Kit and H. were dining there with Ivo & la B a week or two earlier (or later) and such was the tiresomeness of the crowd that Kit texted Ivo “What a bunch of overgrown yuppies” (or something along those lines).

It’s delightful during the day, and there was one afternoon not long ago when, sauntering down the King’s Road, I ran into Prof. Pink on his way to John Lewis and managed to waylay him into an enjoyable conversation at the Phoenix over two large glasses of the house white. But during the evening the crowd gets so horrendously up-itself that it almost becomes an attraction in itself. “It’s ten o’clock on a Friday night. Shall we drop in to Smith Street and see how awful everyone is?” The experience ends up infecting one with a reverse snobbery almost as snobbish and pretentious as the pretentious snobbery one is reacting against in the first place.

As I was saying, it was a warm evening and Nicholas managed to find an ideal parking spot within sight just round the corner on Woodfall Street. I think it was a Friday or a Saturday so naturally the place was packed inside and I’m partial to the occasional Dunhill so enjoying an exceptionally refreshing cider outdoors with a cigarette was the obvious way forward. I lit up and Nikolai — very generously, as I’m sure it was my round — went inside to brave the crowds in search of drink. Now the curious thing about the smoking ban is that it has turned previously insular cells of humanity — smokers, that is — into a sort-of fraternité universelle. People who have absolutely nothing in common but for being at the same drinking establishment now, for better or worse, through the medium of tobacco, enjoy a recognisable commonality which can frequently turn conversational.

A little Spanish man with a moustache had a party inside celebrating his birthday — 31st, I think — and he ventured outdoors for a smoke and somehow or other conversation was initiated. A pleasant enough fellow but his chat was unexceptional and was suddenly interrupted by the arrival by cab of two tall-ish and rather fashionable Azeri girls, who may have been friends of friends of his or may have had nothing to do with him at all. Being a chatty Spaniard (and perhaps a bit ambitious) he engaged them in conversation almost as soon as they alighted their cab.

After the innocuous pleasantries of introduction all round he eventually asked the Azeri duette, “So where do you girls live?” “Knightsbridge” they replied. “Ah, cool, I’m in Knightsbridge a lot,” our Spanish friend replied as Nicholas, turning away, launched upon a severe, disapproving rolling of the eyes. “Why?” I interjected, somewhat mischievously pricking the balloon of his pretentiousness. After all: what possible excuse could anyone who neither works nor lives there reasonably have for being in Knightsbridge a lot? He turned towards me and with an irritated smile said “My friend, you are too curious; you ask too many questions.”

The Azeri girls remained unconvinced of him, and the birthday boy, having finished his cigarette (which I think came from my pack), sheepishly returned inside where his presumed friends had doubtless continued the celebration of his birth in his brief absence.

But we still all love the Phoenix.

(Only interesting, I’m afraid, to those reasonably acquainted with the situation of France in May 1958)

German university buildings are an (admittedly unusual) obsession of mine, and I’ve often thought that No. 6 Burlington Gardens is London’s closest answer to your typical nineteenth-century Teutonic academy’s Hauptgebäude. And the connection is appropriate enough, as No. 6 was built in 1867-1870 for the University of London in what had once been the back garden of Burlington House (which at the same time became home to the Royal Academy of Arts). Despite the building’s Germanic form, the architect Sir James Pennethorne decorated the structure in Italianate detail, providing the University with a lecture theatre, examination halls, and a head office. Pennethorne died just a year after drafting this design, and his fellow architects described it as his “most complete and most successful design”.

The University of London was founded as a federal entity in 1836 to grant degrees to the students of the secularist, free-thinking University College and its rival, the Anglican royalist King’s College. It now is composed of eighteen colleges, ten institutes, and a number of other ‘central bodies’, with over 135,000 students.

Since its founding, the University had been dependent upon the government’s purse for funding, as well as for housing. Accomodation was provided in Somerset House, then Marlborough House, before evacuating to temporary quarters in Burlington House and elsewhere. It was not until the 1860s that Parliament approved the appropriate grant for a purpose-built home for the University to be erected in the rear garden of Burlington House.

The relative simplicity of the design was contrasted by a healthy dose of sculptural accompaniment. Statues of Newton, Bentham, Milton, and Harvey adorn the portico, representing (respectively) Science, Law, Arts, and Medicine, while the Galen, Cicero, Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, and Justinian stand atop the main balustrade. The east wing of the façade houses statues of ‘illustrious foreigners’: Galileo, Goethe, and Laplace atop the balustrade with Leibnitz, Cuvier, and Linnaeus in the niches. The ‘English worthies’ grace the west wing: William Hunter, David Hume, and Sir Humphry Davy on the balustrade and Adam Smith, Locke, and Bacon in the niches. Hume replaced the original choice of Shakespeare, with Davy replacing John Dalton. It was decided that, as “the genius of Shakespeare was independent of academic influence”, he would be honoured with a sculptural monument inside the building.

Queen Victoria ceremonially opened the building upon its completion in 1870 — “in pouring rain”, the Survey of London tells us.

The University decided to move out to the Imperial Institute in South Kensington in 1899, and No. 6 was temporarily home to the British National Antarctic Expedition before being allocated to the Civil Service Commission in 1902, which partly shared the building with the British Academy. The Commission significantly rearranged the structure of the building, dividing the triple-height lecture theatre into three new floors of offices and making other utilitarian alterations. It left in the 1960s, and in 1970 the Ethnology Department of the British Museum opened its collections for viewing as the Museum of Mankind. The M.o.M. remained here until 1997, when the departure of the British Library for its new building freed up space at the British Museum in Bloomsbury. The neighbouring Royal Academy then wisely purchased the vacated building, commissioning Michael Hopkins & Partners to integrate it with Burlington House, but the Heritage Lottery Fund was not persuaded by the high cost of the conversion.

In 2008, the Royal Academy held a competition to design a new integration of the two buildings, which was won by David Chipperfield. In order to fund the transformation, the RA have leased No. 6 out to two galleries: Haunch of Venison from 2009 to 2011, and now the Pace Gallery. The Royal Academy hopes Chipperfield’s scheme will be implemented by the RA’s two-hundredth anniversary in 2018.

“The project will effectively double the area of public space available in the RA,” Building Design reports. “The upper-level galleries alone are two and a half times the size of the Sackler galleries. The question of how all this space will be programmed in the long term remains the subject of much debate within the RA and is no doubt being monitored closely by other institutions such as the ICA and Somerset House, for whom the emergence of such a venue may represent a considerable challenge. However, after more than a decade of frustrations, it now looks increasingly certain that 6 Burlington Gardens is set to form an integral part of the Royal Academy.”

The New York Times Company, owners of the Paris-based International Herald-Tribune, announced recently that they are going to kill off the 126-year-old newspaper. I had predicted back in 2009 that this was precisely what would happen because of the aimless direction the IHT had taken since the New York Times became the sole owners of the title in 2002, after a long period of joint ownership with the Washington Post. The IHT will be merged into the worldwide operations of the Times this autumn and be rebranded as the International New York Times

Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker bids adieu to the Trib, remembering the first time he left the U.S. in 1960. Crain’s New York Business provides a brief overview of NYTCo’s decision. Margaret Sullivan, the Times’s ‘Public Editor’, reduces any appreciation for the Herald-Tribune as mere emotive romantic nostalgia. Nikki Usher mourns the IHT’s tendency to broaden the Times’s typically American editorial lens. Meanwhile, Ken Layne of The Awl is a bit frank about the decision to drop the Herald-Tribune for The International New York Times: “That’s an incredibly shitty name that makes no sense at all!”

Well, so much for my deductive powers, (and Rafal is a secret wannabe-German anyhow) but the arms and flag of the Baltic city — once German, now Polish — combine the usual strong characteristics of any design: simplicity and beauty.

Danzig has a very complicated history, torn between Germany and Poland. It first gained independence as a Napoleonic client state from 1807 til 1814. After the First World War, it was again granted autonomy as a free city under the protection of the League of Nations. Despite being overwhelmingly German in population, the Poles desired access to the city for its port facilities, which the somewhat awkward autonomous status provided them. The Free City of Danzig was taken over by the Nazis in 1933, but the Third Reich waited until the Invasion of Poland in 1939 to formally incorporate it into Germany.

At the Yalta conference, the Allies awarded the city to Poland, and the overwhelming majority of its German population either fled or faced expulsion, to be replaced by Poles from the parts of Eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union.

You can read more about the arms of Danzig/Gdańsk here.

Above, the arms of the Free City of Danzig, below those of today’s Gdańsk.

Much to my regret now, I never particularly learned nor pursued artistic skills, but this painting of St Patrick’s Church in Monaghan Town is one of the few fruits of art class from school days we’ve bothered preserving.

I think I was about 15 when this was done; the architecture was from a photo just to have something to stand out against the sunset. Our teacher was very good, but I was a poor student, and inattentive.

In addition to my post on Charles Street & Tully Alley, here are another two houses designed by Andrew Gould. Like the other project, they are an urban infill project, built at the back of a lot on Ashley Avenue in Charleston, and the first house shown here is the architect’s own house.

Charleston, the finest city of the American South, boasts two new alleyways designed by the architectural-urbanist partnership of George Holt and Andrew Gould. Holt began buying and restoring old Charleston houses two decades ago, and later expanded his work to building new houses in the traditional style of the town. Recently he’s combined with Andrew Gould, a specialist in the design of Orthodox churches, to craft an “urban infill project” plotting two short alleyways of modern houses built in an eclectic traditional vernacular: Charles Street and Tully Alley.

The previous structures on the four adjacent lots were in a semi-ruined state. Holt decided to consolidate the lots into two alleyways of ten houses, paved with the bricks of the collapsed buildings.

Despite their traditional appearance and compact layout, the houses are built with all the modern requirements and are completely up to the strict building code required in this hurricane-prone region.

No. 6, Charles Street is perhaps the jewel of the two alleyways (pictured at the very top of this post). The primary rooms of an elevated town house wrap around a quite Mediterranean terrace, which overlooks the street through a classical colonnade.

The terrace also conveniently conceals a carport beneath, where automobiles can cool in the shade, away from the treacherous Carolinian sun.

No. 1, Tulley Alley is another gem, incorporating a Spanish-arabesque porch with sculpted moulds created from a single cast of concrete.

Charles Street and Tully Alley are models of wise urban development. They incorporate the best modern features in a compact footprint and are designed to harmonise with their surroundings and in accord with the long architectural tradition of Charleston. One hopes Holt and Gould have more opportunities to employ their urbanist skills with the panache they have shown here.

The commemoration of the 1916 rebellion takes place at Arbour Hill prison, where the earthly remains of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising were laid in a pit by the British military authorities. Some of the rebellion’s leaders who did not face the firing squad, most prominently Éamon de Valera and Countess Markievicz, founded Fianna Fáil ten years later in 1926.

Micheál Martin’s address is presented here without comment.

Every state should take time to commemorate and celebrate the people and events of their founding. This commemoration is organised by Fianna Fáil the Republican Party, but we come here as Irish men and women to fulfil our responsibilities to the great generation of 1916.

After 97 years their deeds resonate even more than ever. They saw an Ireland which should not accept limits on its future. They committed everything to the vision of a country with the right to shape its own destiny.

As we quickly approach the centenary of the Rising no one can doubt that the Irish people see the men and women of 1916 as noble and courageous. No one can question their central place in our history.

It is right that we take the time to come to this place as a mark of our gratitude for their vision and sacrifice.

On the 24th of April members of the Irish Volunteers, the Citizens Army and Cumann na mBan came out to take a stand for a people who had suffered much and been denied the right to their own state.

They were from all parts of Irish society but were united by the strength of their commitment to their country.

What is still so deeply impressive about them is how they understood and were part of the international spirit of their time. They were leaders of a rising people, long downtrodden but reclaiming the right to their country and their culture. They represented not just a movement towards national self-determination but a movement to genuine republicanism.

Even though they had amongst them many people who had taken the lead in working for the revival of our language they also both respected the role of the Anglo-Irish tradition. For example, Thomas MacDonagh’s most important academic work, which is still taught in our universities, was a passionate argument for how works in English produced in Ireland had a uniquely Irish voice which should be recognised and valued as a national treasure.

The men and women of 1916 were at the vanguard of patriots who helped preserve our national language in the face of the ravages of official policy and depopulation. Many people have quite wrongly said that they used the language as a divisive force – that they saw this island as divided between Gaels and foreigners. This is completely untrue.

They formed part of a long and inclusive tradition which saw a shared gaelic heritage as something which should unite everyone on this island. The first printed book in Irish was the Book of Common Prayer. Time and again over two centuries it was scholars of non-nationalist traditions that had the biggest impact in helping preserve folk memories and to turn Irish into an accessible written language.

The men and women of 1916 were inspired by the Gaelic League and the prospects of reviving the language – equally they were inspired by the potential of the language as something which could reach across class and traditions.

I believe we need to be true to this in our support for the language today. More children than ever are being taught through Irish and for the first time there is a proper long-term strategy, published three years ago, for its permanent development.

This party will always be true to the vision of a country where our cultural history is open to all and can unify all.

In a travesty of analysis some people try to point to 1916 as a narrow and sectarian affair. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Proclamation provides a statement of values which are profoundly generous and reflect enlightened European thought. There is much there that any modern liberal democracy would be proud to have in its founding document.

At a time when Europe was engaged in the largest war the world had ever seen and extreme ideologies were on the rise, Pearse and his comrades set out a different vision. They took up arms for the rights of all citizens, not just those they shared an allegiance with.

The Republic they founded did not seek the mastery of one group but guaranteed “religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all”. This was a guarantee for “the whole nation and all of its parts” and sought to overcome the division “of the minority from the majority”. Radically, for that time, they also said that the right to vote should be held equally by men and women.

These are generous and timeless values which are as relevant today as they have always been. They are values which can be shared by all Irish people no matter what their background. They are values which we, as republicans, must have at the core of our response to citizens who continue to seek full equality.

Unfortunately there have been groups who have claimed allegiance to the Proclamation but have continually undermined its values. They have been deaf to the demand that none who claim to serve the Republic “shall dishonour it”.

There is not the slightest connection between the Republic declared in 1916 and the Provisional movement. Their campaign was waged against the constantly reaffirmed and overwhelming opposition of the Irish people. The inhumanity of many of their actions, the lasting damage they caused and their sectarian behaviour disqualifies them from claiming to be part of an unbroken chain.

Through their sacrifices the men buried here and their comrades radically transformed the opportunities for this country. There is no greater insult to them than claiming that nothing changed, that the same methods they used continued to be required up to recently or even to today.

If we want to know where the men and women of 1916 would have stood in later years all we have to do is to look at what most of those who lived did – and this shows that they took the route of constitutional republicanism.

I always find it amusing that another party names cumainn after Constance Markiewicz but fails to acknowledge that she chaired the founding meeting of Fianna Fáil and was elected as a Fianna Fáil TD.

The Irish republican tradition is one which has constantly developed over more than 200 years. Its great strength is that it does not stand still, it always responds to the needs of today. Constitutional republicanism has had the allegiance of the Irish people for many decades and I believe it will continue to because it is as relevant as ever.

The Good Friday Agreement marked a triumph for constitutional republicanism. A framework was agreed for the shared development of this island and it was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of the people.

This government has taken a more partisan approach to commemoration than any predecessor for at least 30 years. It has constantly failed to properly acknowledge national milestones when they are linked to other parties and traditions. This is narrow-minded and petty.

The failure to mark the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in any meaningful way stands in contrast to the wider civil society which has used it as a moment to reflect on what has been achieved and what is not working.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing today is a clear and dangerous lack of commitment on the part of both the Irish and British governments to making sure that the institutions established under the Agreement are working properly and that there is no backsliding.

The flag protests, increased dissident activity and growing public discontent at a dysfunctional Executive and Assembly have coincided with two years of a hands-off strategy from the Irish and British Governments.

Northern Ireland’s political establishment, in the form of Sinn Fein and the DUP are too deeply invested in their own party self-interest to be left to get on with things by themselves. Sinn Fein in particular seem content to allow the Northern Executive cruise along on autopilot while they focus all their energy on trying to pull together some sort of coherent plan in Dublin. Of course, for a party like the DUP, whose raison d’être is maintenance of the status quo, this suits just fine.

Peace has been too hard won and is too fragile to be taken for granted, yet this is exactly what we are getting from the two governments.

No one expects there to be the same type of intensive contacts that there were when the agreements were being negotiated and regular roadblocks to implementation were being confronted. But what no one should accept is the relegation of the peace process to set-piece meetings and empty communiques.

The Taoiseach recently told the Dáil that everything is fine because there are lots of meetings. The government has many important things on its agenda, and I respect that, but there is no excuse for the failure to shown any serious engagement with the North.

When I first pointed to the increasing dysfunction of the Executive I was loudly criticised by Sinn Féin in particular. They claimed everything was fine and they were achieving great things. However, over the last year public dissatisfaction has become clearer by the week – so much so that even the DUP and Sinn Féin now acknowledge it. In the last week they have each put out statements admitting that the Executive isn’t working, but have of course said that the old bogey man – “the other side” is to blame.

They continue to prioritise manoeuvres which make short-term gains over each other and over their direct competitors.

In a recent exposé, The Irish News reported that in the Assembly only 11 pieces of legislation have been passed in the two years since the last election. The majority of these have been essential pieces of financial legislation required to keep the lights on at Stormont. Parties elected on platforms of “delivering” for people have signally failed to use the Assembly to do this.

In the Executive, Sinn Féin and DUP ministers show no interest in using their strength to bridge differences – in fact they do the exact opposite. More than at any stage since they took control of the Executive from the SDLP and UUP, they are adopting a strategy of playing to their own section of the community, even if this means attacking the very institutions they are supposed to oversee.

As recently as last weekend for example, Sinn Féin’s Justice Spokesperson and member of the Policing Board Gerry Kelly led the party’s condemnation of the PSNI, demanding the removal of the Chief Constable. His crime? He had the temerity to follow through an investigation and arrest a Sinn Fein party member in a murder investigation.

The DUP are little better. As we approach another marching season with trepidation; as residents in enclaves like Belfast’s Short Strand continue to deal with the effects of regular sectarian attacks, it is worth remembering the intervention of DUP Leader Peter Robinson last August. Instead of insisting the loyalist bands comply with legally binding decisions, he co-signed an open letter condemning the Parades Commission – the statutory body established to deal with parading.

What we are getting from these parties is what has rightly been termed all politics and no governance.

But what they don’t seem to understand is that if the Assembly and Executive are not focused on the issues of concern to people every day like jobs and living standards – if all they do is reinforce suspicion, division and confrontation – then they are promoting disillusionment and failing to fulfil the promise of peace and reconciliation. As a party that claims to promote a Republican ethos, Sinn Fein is also letting down nationalist and republican voters in a very profound way. No number of half baked border poll gimmicks should be allowed to distract from this basic fact.

The DUP and Sinn Féin are creating a dangerous vacuum. We watched this year as the flags protests exploded onto the streets. All of us who care about the North should worry about what will move next to fill that vacuum.

Fianna Fáil will never back away from its commitment to active and constructive engagement between all parts of this island. We will never accept that the new dispensation so eagerly grasped by the people should be allowed to be undermined through a combination of neglect and partisan self-interest.

Next weekend we will have our Árd Fheis. Thousands of members will come from every part of the country to participate in debates on the full range of issues and In my speeches I will address what I believe are the key challenges which must be overcome if our country is to recover strongly and do so in a way which is fair.

I will leave these issues until then but it is important to refer to the fact that this week trade unionists rejected a national agreement for the first time in over a quarter of a century.

A modernised and motivated public service is an absolutely essential foundation for the success of our country. In recent years our public servants have made a significant contribution to helping bring the public finances under control. This contribution deserves to be acknowledged and they should be respected as partners in helping Ireland to recover.

Instead of this, a government always obsessed with public relations over substance has treated them as if they are to be faced down and fought. It has briefed against public servants, disrespected their work and introduced a policy of trying to divide and conquer. Worst of all have been the threats which caused so much damage in recent weeks.

This is a crisis of the government’s own making. The only way to begin to undo this damage is to go back to negotiations, to treat all public servants equally and respect their good will towards the process.

Fianna Fáil is absolutely committed to being a strong, effective and constructive opposition. We know that the people want every party and every representative to focus on getting Ireland through this crisis and building a fairer future.

We have rejected the destructive opposition policies followed by Fine Gael and Labour before the last election and this is one of the reasons why we have been able to reengage with people.

Our membership is rising, our organisation is reformed and we are absolutely committed to renewing ourselves in the spirit of our great founding generation.

In doing this we will always remember and work to be true to the inspirational words and actions of the men and women of 1916.

Afterwards, our little party decided to have a little wander down Holyrood Road towards the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the epicentre of the Scottish monarchy.

Nestled between Calton Hill and Salisbury Crags, the Palace sits at the end of the Royal Mile that runs between it and Edinburgh Castle. With the Old Town to its west, the expanse of Holyrood Park flows off to the south and east of it.

An Augustinian abbey dedicated to the Holy Cross was founded on the site in 1128 on the command of King David I. A relic of the True Cross is believed to have been in the possession of David’s mother Saint Margaret, and was probably kept in the abbey church. As the monastery was a royal foundation, it was highly favoured by Scotland’s monarchs and Robert the Bruce held a parliament at Holyrood in 1326. It was probably around this time that its function as a royal residence began. With the interment of the remains of David II in 1370, Holyrood became a royal burying ground, and several later kings of Scotland were born, married, and buried at the place.

When the Reformation reared its ugly head in Scotland, the Abbey was abolished and its church fell into neglect and ruin, with only the nave being kept in good condition as the local (Presbyterian) parish kirk. When James VI of Scotland inherited the throne of England and moved to London, Holyrood Palace lost its role as an active royal residence and the secularised buildings began to be neglected as well.

The Palace fared better under the Charleses. Charlie the First held a Scottish coronation at Holyrood, which necessitated certain repairs and restorations, and appointed the (1st) Duke of Hamilton as Keeper of Holyroodhouse, an office which his descendants have maintained to this day. It was Charles II who really made Holyroodhouse the royal palace it is today. He employed Sir William Bruce, the Surveyor of the King’s Works, to build a classical quadrangle in the middle of the palace and complete ranges of apartments around it, balancing the west façade with a replica tower house to match the ancient one.

But Holyrood’s history — like Scotland’s — is a continual series of ups and downs. With the Act of Union in 1707, Scotland lost even its status as a kingdom with an absentee king: it was now part of a single United Kingdom with the capital at London. From the on the Palace’s fortunes waxed and waned until George V insisted it be properly renovated and maintained so that it could function once more as the official Edinburgh royal residence of the King of Great Britain.

One of the few governmental functions that continued to take place at Holyroodhouse was the election of Scotland’s representative peers (above). When Scotland and England joined together in 1707, the English aristocracy feared their House of Lords would be swamped by the addition of Scotland’s titled nobility. Hence, they negotiated that Scotland’s peers would elect a proportionate number of themselves to sit in the House of Lords at Westminster. This system continued until 1963, when it was decided to allow all Scottish peers to take their seats at Westminster.

I was disturbed to see that the Scottish standard now flies from Holyrood every day, in defiance of tradition. The previous custom had been that it would only fly when the monarch was in residence, or when the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland — a sort of royal envoy to the annual Presbyterian pow-wow — was exercising his functions at Assemblytide. It is always a shame when the special becomes quotidian.