Encompassing the worlds of science, the arts and everything in between, this new instalment of Trinity Tales features actors Dominic West and Mario Rosenstock, writers and journalists Turtle Bunbury, Claire Kilroy and Belinda McKeon, eminent scientists such as Austin Duffy, and sportsman Mark Pollock.

Like its three predecessors, this fourth instalment of Trinity Tales gathers together recollections of a decade at Trinity College Dublin. This time, the story is taken up by 1990s graduates–those who passed through its gates as the twentieth century drew to a close–and, through the forty individual voices assembled here, a vivid portrait emerges of student life during those transformative years.

Trinity students at the decade’s end had email, mobile phones and the vast resources of the Internet at their disposal. In addition, they were relatively debt-free (undergraduate tuition fees having been abolished in 1996) and every bit as likely to stay and find work in Ireland as to get on the first flight to London or New York. Reflecting this sense of rapid growth, new buildings started springing up around campus, most notably the Samuel Beckett Centre and Goldsmith Hall, and as the millennium approached, the college was expanding in all directions.

Those who arrived at Trinity in the nineties are the generation that came of age in an Ireland caught between the grim, recession-ridden 1980s and the brash, moneyed millenials, an almost unfathomable transition eclipsed only by that between the analogue and digital eras. As with previous volumes, royalties from the book go to the Long Room Library fund.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Catherine Heaney (TCD 1991-95, History of Art and English; 1996-97 MSc Multimedia) is a freelance writer and editor. She worked for many years in magazines in Dublin and London, including Image, Red and The Gloss, and has been a regular reviewer for the Books pages of The Irish Times. In more recent years, she has worked in publishing, at Fourth Estate and later at Faber and Faber, where she ran the creative-writing school Faber Academy. She lives in London.