It shows how Roddy Doyle's return to the repressed gives articulation to those left behind by globalisation. The book also focuses on the reconfigurations of identity, and the complex intersections of nationality, gender and race in contemporary Ireland. It traces the significance of the home in the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Vona Groarke.

The book discusses some of the most topical issues which have emerged in Irish theatre since 1990. It also reflects upon related forms of creative work in this period, including film and the visual and performing arts. This book focuses on the drama and poetry published since 1990. The book also demonstrates the ways in which the Shows engaged with the changing socio-economic scene of London and with court and city politics. From 1585 onwards the Lord Mayor's Show was with increasing frequency transmitted from event to text in the form of short pamphlets produced in print runs ranging from 200 to 800 copies. Pageant writers and artificers took advantage of the space available to them just as dramatists did on the professional stage. The book discusses, inter alia, the actors' roles, the props, music and costumes used during the Show and looks at how important emblems and imagery were to these productions. The Show was the concern of the Great Twelve livery companies from the ranks of one of which the Lord Mayor was elected. It highlights the often-overlooked roles of the artificer and those other craftsmen who contributed so valuably to the day's entertainment. This book focuses on the social, cultural and economic contexts, in which the Shows were designed, presented and experienced, and explores the Shows in textual, historical, bibliographical, and archival and other contexts. Pageantry was a feature of the day's entertainment. The London mayoralty was not simply an entity of civic power, but always had its ritual and ceremonial dimensions.

The Show was staged annually to celebrate the inauguration of the new Lord Mayor. The London Lord Mayors' Shows were high-profile and lavish entertainments that were at the centre of the cultural life of the City of London in the early modern period.

Bliss by Peter Carey