What a delight it is to toy with a wooden newspaper-holder rather than a smartphone, tucked away in the cosy corner by the tall sunlit windows of a Victorian hotel. My companion sips her Baileys coffee, while I hide behind my broadsheet earwigging as a novelist is interviewed — possibly for the newspaper I’m reading.
Dublin is still sponsored by Guinness and after I’ve drunk a second pint in the charming Library Bar of the Central Hotel, we head across to the great bookshop Hodges Figgis. En route, we pass Davy Byrnes, where you can still get a gorgonzola sandwich and glass of wine as Leopold Bloom did in 1904. Hodges Figgis is set on the charming Dawson Street, which links St Stephen’s Green to Trinity College.
