Forty Foot

This guide to the Forty Foot in Dublin opens on the twentieth of July, 1974, when a woman stepped out of a currach onto the rocks below and men on the ledges started shouting, ending roughly two hundred and fifty years in which this sea-bathing cove had belonged to men only. It follows the dozen women who came that morning, among them poet Mary D'Arcy and journalist Nell McCafferty, and the jeers and abuse that met them. It also reaches back to a young James Joyce, who once lodged in the Martello tower behind you.