Paul Hogarths Irish Sketchbook

Last summer Paul Hogarth spent two months travelling around Eire, collaborating with Brendan Behan on a book about the Irish which is to appear later this year. We asked him to contribute a selection of the drawings.

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(Above) The Fates at Slatterys. Dublin is crowded with worn, heroic-faced women, the shawlies who assemble like a tattered amazon legion of long ago in the snugs of the Liffey pubs and the nostalgic caverns of the Daisy Market. (Opposite left) In the heart of OCaseys Dublin, children in St. Georges Place off Mountjoy Square.

The only thing he would have against an artist, Brendan Behan (right) would say, would not be whether he was abstract or fughing realist but if he was fughing illiterate or teetotal.

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In tense dour Belfast, the slogans of years gone were still a living legend. Remember the Battle of the Boyne stood out starkly on gable-ends of grim but prosperous working-class homes in Orange Sandy Row. Honour Irelands Dead: Remember 1916 replied the equally grim but not so prosperous walls in republican catholic Falls Road where our friend on page 1, Tommy Kelly works as barman at the Bee Hive.

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