The subject of this book is Dublin, the arc of the city scrutinised through a new lens – its elusive originality, as Niall McCullough says, composed of the city that was made, then the unintended way in which it was used, then how it was destroyed – creation, occupation and destruction. He sets out to document our losses, and by doing this he recovers for our imagination lost spaces, streets and entire quarters, the relationship between people and space. Presented through an introduction and three essays, with almost 400 photographs from the 1840s to the 1980s, the vanished city becomes an operatic actor in the drama of what it is to live in a city – this city – and reminds us what gives it originality. At a time when the swing of cranes and obsessive office development looms over every square inch of our former city of houses, it is more urgent than ever to add weight to contemporary discourse on the city, putting an serious value on what remains to jolt us into recognition of what is still – just about – unique about living in Dublin and not in any other city.