Phoenix Park is the largest walled city park in Europe, a mighty 1,750 acres, larger than many a town. Dubliners take it entirely for granted, this giant green lung of theirs; but for visitors getting to know the fair city it comes as a shock, a delightful one, to have so much open space on the doorstep for sport and play.
I started my stroll in muted light. Soon the low sun broke through the mist to illuminate the great stone obelisk that honours the Dublin-born Duke of Wellington. Violet-eyed and hawk-beaked, the victor of Waterloo remained into old age the shrewdest cookie in Queen Victoria’s basket of advisers. In 1851 sparrows resident in the treetops inside London’s Crystal Palace threatened to ruin the clothes
