The essays in Colm Toibin’s latest book comprise three miniature biographies of the fathers of famous sons.  When I started Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know, I expected it to add up to a prolonged reflection on fatherhood or at least on how the fathers influenced their more celebrated sons, but on completing the book I doubted whether that was ever Toibin’s intention.

On the evidence presented here, Sir William had little impact on Oscar Wilde, though their remarkably similar legal difficulties illustrated how alike they were in their conviction that their social standing and abilities gave them license to flout convention with impunity.  How wrong they were.  Sir William’s hubris led to some minor social embarrassment and financial damage, while Oscar’s led to tragedy, disgrace, and early death.  John B. Yeats, a charming but impecunious and indecisive painter, could not have been more different, working hard to influence the poetry and philosophy of his celebrated son, William, from his self-imposed exile in New York.  John Joyce, in spite of being a feckless drunkard, appears to have been a lifelong presence in James’s mind and imagination and is commemorated in Ulysses and elsewhere.

I wrote here recently about how history makes itself felt so intensely in some cities.  That’s something I always sense strongly in London.  Colm Toibin, in his introduction to Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know, writes beautifully – as he does about everything – of how the buildings and streets of Dublin speak to him of celebrated Irish writers long past.