On Licensed Premises: Galloping Green Revisited

Abstract

This note engages with Anthony Cronin's mentioning, in No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien, that Brian O'Nolan was barred 'in writing' from drinking in Byrne's of Galloping Green, a pub within walking distance of O'Nolan's home in Stillorgan. While the letter barring O'Nolan seems not to be extant, this note offers a first-person remembering of both the physical pub that O'Nolan would have known in the early 1960s and the drinking climate there that he took exception to in a letter addressed to the proprietor, Gerry Byrne, that may have prompted Byrne's own letter barring him.

Keywords

• Brian O'Nolan
• Gerry Byrne
• Galloping Green
• Stillorgan
• Letters