Trinity Tales : Trinity College Dublin in the Seventies

These fascinating recollections, impressions and musings by Trinity College students in the seventies includes such luminaries as music impresario Paul McGuinness, theatre director Michael Colgan, writer James Ryan, historian Robert O'Byrne, publisher Antony Farrell, Judge Fidelma Macken and a host of others who have all, in their different ways, shaped the Ireland of today.

The seventies was a particularly tumultuous decade in Trinity; Catholic students were allowed into College while British grants opened Front Gate to a welcome invasion by the Northern Irish.

West Brits, Irish nationals and Irish expats together created a unique mix of cultures, sensibilities and nascent ideas. As a decade of political and social upheaval unfolded - from the availability of the Pill and the illegal sale of condoms to the horrors of Bloody Sunday and the Dublin bombings - Irish youth began to embrace a future free from the tribal rituals and posturings of their forefathers: this was the generation that saw it all. Buoyed by idealism, alcohol and gentler substances, contributors to Trinity Tales delve back into a kinder time when everything felt possible, and growing up occurred beyond the College walls. Kathy Gilfillan (TCD 1968 - 72) has curated an extraordinary collection of evocative personal narratives, some hilarious, others tinged with melancholy.

Whether you went to Trinity or not, these deeply human testimonies to idealism, innocence and ambition will find an echo in anyone interested in Ireland's future past.