Trinity Tales: Trinity College Dublin in the Nineties

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. Contributors encompass the worlds of science, the arts and everything in between, and include 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. 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.