"Ah," said an American relative on a first visit to Ireland recently, as he looked skywards from streets of Dublin, "now I know what the national Irish bird is - the crane." In the past few years, the national bird has been building several nests around the city, some considerably larger than others, in the form of new hotels.
Not very long ago, you could rattle off the names of the main Dublin hotels without pausing for breath: these days, you'd need something like a lecture-long slot to incant the names of all the new places in town where you can lay your head for the night.
Some of the new hotels, such as the Merrion, and the Morrison, have already sunk the stylish talons of their names quite a way into the public's consciousness. However, undisputedly elegant and expensive as these newcomers are, they lack one thing that all the velvet drapes and specially commissioned furniture can't instantly give to a hotel - a past.
The Shelbourne Hotel celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, marking it with a big party there earlier this week, at which Michael O'Sullivan and Bernardine O'Neill's book, The Shelbourne and its People, was launched. Invitations showed a happily unapologetic lack of regard to the timetable of most people's day, requiring guests to turn up in black tie and posh frocks on a weekday for a 6 p.m. start to the festivities.
The hotel was set up in 1824 by Martin Burke. He didn't think his own name was grand enough for the sort of hotel he wanted to establish, so he gave to it a name which had a historical connection with the hotel's site, adding a vowel in the process, from Shelburne to Shelbourne. So people now meet for a scoop in the Shelbourne Bar, rather than Burke's Bar.
When the hotel was sold in 1863, it was developed at that stage to look more or less like the building it is now. The Egyptian princesses which hold lamps aloft outside the entrance were in place by 1867, among the most exotic of Dublin's watchful statue eyes.
Guests come and go, but history lodges forever under a hotel roof. During the 1916 Rising, the Shelbourne was garrisoned by the British army. In the early months of 1922, the wording for the Constitution for the Irish Free State was drafted there.
In the preface to The Shelbourne and its People, there are intimations that the hotel has been - and probably still is - a venue for talks contributing to the working out of the Peace Process. "In recent times important sideline meetings which were of great consequence to the progress of the peace process were held secretly at the hotel."
Although all hotels are coy about revealing the names of the rich, famous, and influential who dwell from time to time under their roofs, they clearly get a huge kick out of said folk choosing to unpack suitcases on their particular premises.
Among those who have done so are opera singer Margaret Burke Sheridan, tenor John McCormack, Princess Grace, John and Jackie Kennedy, Harold Wilson and actors Peter O'Toole, Rock Hudson, Stan Laurel, James Cagney, John Hurt, Maureen O'Hara, Julia Roberts, Pierce Brosnan and legions of others.
In 1951, Elizabeth Bowen wrote a book entitled The Shelbourne Hotel. The best rooms overlook St Stephen's Green: the views, the service, the atmosphere is what attracts those who can afford the starting room rate of £180, which rises and rises after that.
Hotels, of course, aren't just for those who are staying there. Any punter knows that the true measure of a hotel's success with its local clientele resides not within its restaurant, but in its bar. The Horseshoe Bar, which is virtually unchanged from its original 1958 design, is a byword for - well, fill in the blank yourself, depending on who you are. No one word here would suffice.
The Horseshoe Bar, with its shifting population of politicians, journalists, babes, businessmen, celebs, writers, actors, and chancers, has hunkered its way into posterity in a city which - until lately - has long preferred its bars to be less plush and more hardcore. A pint of Guinness there these days is £2.85, a G & T is £3.65, and a snipe of Champagne is £8.50.
Across the hallway, the lofty Shelbourne Bar, with its large windows overlooking Kildare Street, opened in 1991 to relieve some of the pressure in the Horseshoe, which remains the intimate size it has always been. It's the Horseshoe Bar, though, which seems to hold the retainer on the source of the stories and gossip which continue to emerge from time to time.
Given the length of time the Shelbourne has been around, it has to be true to state that many Irish people will have had some personal connection with it. Afternoon Tea, pre-dinner drinks, weddings, or any other assorted special occasions which merit meetings with family or friends in foyer or bar.
For me, the Shelbourne will always be associated with my beloved teetotal aunt, who refuses to enter any public bar, but who feels - and looks - completely at home in the Lord Mayor's Lounge off the foyer, with a pot of hot chocolate in front of her. She likes to sit with her back to the wall, with one eye on the foyer and the other on the lounge, so she can watch everyone who's coming and going. And long may there be plenty to watch in the Shelbourne Hotel.
The Shelbourne and its People, by Michael O'Sullivan and Bernardine O'Sullivan, is published by Blackwater Press at £12.99
