Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)

Clergyman and satirist, born in Dublin. He studied at Dublin, then moved to England, where he became secretary a diplomat.  He was ordained in the Anglican Church (1695).  He wrote several poems, then turned to prose satire, exposing religious and intellectual complacency in A Tale of a Tub (1704), and produced a wide range of political and religious essays and pamphlets.  He was made dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, at the fall of the Tory ministry in 1714, and afterwards visited London only twice. His world-famous satire, Gulliver's Travels, appeared (anonymously, like all his works) in 1726.  In later years he wrote a great deal of light verse, and several essays on such topics as language and manners.  He also progressively identified himself with Irish causes, in such works as The Drapier's Letter (1724) and the savagely ironic A Modest Proposal (1729).

Arthur Guinness (1725 - 1803)

Brewer. Guinness was born in Celbridge, Co Kildare.  His father was land steward to the archbishop of Cashel, Dr Arthur Price, and brewed beer for workers on the estate. When Price died in 1752, he left £100 each to the two Guinnesses, which may have encouraged the young man to lease a brewery in Leixlip, Co Kildare, in 1756.  Three years later, he left this brewery in charge of a younger brother, and took over one at St James' Gate in Dublin.  He began by brewing beer or ale, and within eight years was master of the Dublin Corporation of Brewers. In 1761 he married Olivia Whitmore, a relative of Henry Grattan (leader of the Irish Parliament), and ten of their twenty-one children lived to establish a dynasty which has spread into many activities and countries.  In 1778, Guinness began to brew porter - the darker beer containing roasted barley and first drunk by London porters - and exploited Ireland's new canals to extend his market. In 1799, he brewed ale for the last time. Sales of porter increased threefold during the Napoleonic Wars, and in time St James's Gate became the largest porter and stout brewery in the world, its 'extra stout porter' becoming known simply as stout.

Daniel O’Connell (1775 - 1847)

Politician. O'Connell was born near Cahirciveen, Co Kerry.  He attended English colleges in France (due to the Penal Laws Catholics were not allowed to enter universities).  The O'Connells were prosperous Roman Catholics; it had been illegal to educate the boy abroad, but a 1792 Relief Act changed this and also allowed him to become a successful barrister on the Munster Circuit.  A constitutionalist in politics, O'Connell opposed the violence of the 1798 and 1803 risings.  In 1823, he formed the Catholic Association; membership eventually cost a 'Catholic rent' of a penny a month.  His objective was Catholic emancipation, opening up state and judicial posts and the right to sit in parliament.  A powerful nationwide organisation quickly emerged, with the help of the clergy, and in 1824 the government unsuccessfully prosecuted O'Connell for inciting rebellion. In 1828, he won a by-election in Co Clare, but unwillingness to take the anti-Catholic oath of supremacy kept him out of Westminster.  The following year, the government conceded Catholic emancipation; 'The Liberator', as he was now known, entered parliament after a by-election.  In 1840, O'Connell again marshalled mass support in the National Repeal Association, his public speeches drawing enormous crowds.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Author. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin.  His father was an eminent eye and ear specialist; his mother wrote under the pen-name 'Speranza'.  Wilde defeated Edward Carson (famous politician) for the foundation scholarship in classics at Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1874 won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford.  He became a disciple of aestheticism, pursuing beauty for beauty's sake; his poem Ravenna (1878) won the Newdigate Prize.  His first success was The Happy Prince (1888), but his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) offended Victorian susceptibilities.  The triumph of his play Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) inaugurated his most glorious years. It was followed by A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).  In a libel case, Wilde collapsed under cross-examination by his old rival Carson, and in 1895 was sentenced to two years' hard labour for homosexual offences, which inspired The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898).  Performances of his plays were cancelled.  Wilde's wife changed her surname and with her two young sons, moved abroad to escape the scandal.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Author. Shaw was born in Dublin.  His mother, a fine mezzo-soprano, left her drunkard husband to follow her singing teacher to London.  In 1876, Shaw gave up his job in an estate agency and joined her.  A small legacy enabled him to write five novels over the next few years, but with little success.  He was converted to socialism (and vegetarianism) and joined the Fabian Society, forcing himself to become a public speaker.  In 1885, a fellow Fabian persuaded The Pall Mall Gazette to employ Shaw as a book reviewer; he also became a notable music critic for The Star.  His first play was Widowers' Houses (1892), and thereafter he wrote prolifically. Early plays such as Arms and the Man and Candida displayed intellectual wit, but his first real success was the American run of The Devil's Disciple (1897). In 1898, he married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a rich Anglo-Irish Fabian who had nursed him through illness.  In 1906, they moved to Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire.  In 1904, King Edward VII laughed so much at John Bull's Other Island that he broke his seat at the Royal Court Theatre; other triumphs at that London theatre were Man and Superman (1905), Major Barbara (1905) and The Doctor's Dilemma (1906).  Shaw's Pygmalion (1914) was destined to have a second success as the musical comedy My Fair Lady.  Shaw's popularity suffered when, in a 1914 manifesto, 'Common Sense about the War', he suggested soldiers of every army might be wise to shoot their officers. However, ex-servicemen enjoyed a revival of Arms and the Man in 1919, and he had further successes before receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

James Joyce (Augustine Aloysius) (1882 - 1941)

Writer. Born in Dublin. He studied in Dublin, went in 1902 to Paris to study medicine, then took up voice training for a concert career. Back in Dublin, he published a few stories but, unable to make a living by his pen, he had to tutor in English.  He started the short-lived Volta Cinema Theatre in 1909, and left Dublin in 1910.  He later went to Zürich (1915), where he formed a company of English players, settled in Paris (1920-40), then returned to Zürich, where he died.  His early work includes the short stories, Dubliners (1914), and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914-15). His best-known book, Ulysses, based on one day in Dublin (16 Jun 1904), appeared in Paris in 1922, but was banned in the UK and USA until 1936. Work in progress began to appear in 1927, and finally emerged as Finnegans Wake (1939). Hailed as the father of literary modernism, his work revolutionized the novel form, partly through the abandonment of ordinary plot for "stream of consciousness', but more fundamentally through his unprecedented exploration of language.

Michael Collins (1890 - 1922)

Revolutionary. Collins was born near Sam's Cross, Clonakilty, Co Cork.  He became a post office clerk in 1906. Sent to London, he learned Irish at Gaelic League classes and joined Sinn Féin. During the Easter Rising, Collins fought in the General Post Office.  When Eamon de Valera and other republicans were arrested in 1918, Collins eluded the police and began to build up a remarkable secret intelligence system.  Elected MP for South Cork in 1918, 'the Big Fellow' became home minister in the First Dáil, but missed its opening preparing de Valera's escape from Lincoln jail.  He later became president of the IRB's supreme council.  In the ensuing guerrilla warfare, Collins' special squad systematically assassinated members of the 'G' division of the Dublin police, Dublin Castle's (the British headquarters in Dublin) main source of intelligence; he had his own informants at detective headquarters.  On 'Bloody Sunday', 21 November 1920, his men shot dead eleven British intelligence officers.  In retaliation, British Black and Tans killed fourteen people at a football game.  Collins' family home in Cork was burned out in April 1921.  A reluctant negotiator and signatory of the 1921 Anglo Irish Treaty, Collins wrote 'early this morning I signed my death warrant'. He became chairman of the provisional government which preceded the Irish Free State, and Dublin Castle was surrendered to him.  On the outbreak of the Civil War in June 1922, he took command of the forces loyal to the government.  On 22 August 1922, he was ambushed and shot dead by anti-Treaty IRA men (who possibly had been under orders by Eamon de Valera).

Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)

Writer and playwright, born in Dublin, Ireland.  He became a lecturer in English at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and later in French at Trinity College, Dublin. From 1932 he lived mostly in France and was, for a time, an associate of James Joyce. His early poetry and first two novels, Murphy (1938) and Watt (1943, published 1953), were written in English, but not the trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Meurt (1951, Malone Dies), and L'Innommable (1953, The Unnamable), or the plays En attendant Godot (1954, Waiting for Godot), which took London by storm, and Fin de partie (1956, End Game), all of which first appeared in French. His later works include Happy Days (1961), Not I (1973), and Ill Seen Ill Said (1981).  He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Pierce Brosnan (1953 - )

Actor. Born in the small town of Navan, County Meath.  Brosnan's father, Thomas, left the family when Pierce was one year old and his mother, May, fled to London shortly after, leaving the young boy with his grandmother in Ireland.  After an unsettled childhood, Brosnan reunited with his mother in London when he was 11.  In 1973, he enrolled at the Drama Centre in London, where he studied for three years. Brosnan played on the London stage for several years. Impressed with Brosnan’s dark good looks and polished charm, Broccoli (producer of the James Bond films) immediately promised him the much-coveted role of Bond as soon as Roger Moore retired.  His first Bond film, Golden Eye was a smash hit, becoming the most successful Bond film ever when it grossed over $350 million. More success followed with 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies and 1999’s The World is Not Enough.  In 2002, he starred with Halle Berry in Die Another Day.