Living it up in lively Liverpool

As a new Dublin-Liverpool route opens for business, Tony Clayton-Lea takes a trip to the city that skips to the same beat as Ireland    

Above us only sky’ is a line from the John Lennon song Imagine, and as you walk into the arrivals hall of the Liverpool John Lennon Airport, you might just feel as if you’re treading on holy ground.

The legacy of The Beatles is sacrosanct, you understand, and it weighs heavy around the city’s collective neck. Ireland is to blame, of course, for if it wasn’t for the Famine in the mid-1800s – and its accompanying mass immigration to the UK and far beyond – you can be certain that Liverpool would be a different place with a different accent.