Gunboat titles give me a sinking feeling

ON MY cycle home, I passed two of Samuel Beckett’s namesakes: the beautiful bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava and, just east of that, along Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, the LE Samuel Beckett, the Naval Service’s new patrol vessel.

When the naming of the bridge was mooted, my reaction was “how fitting”. But looking at this ship, I could only think, “How dare we.” How dare we put Beckett’s name on the side of a patrol vessel, to be followed early next year by a sister ship, the LE James Joyce. We also have a bridge named after him, but we should draw the line at gunboats.

A bridge is a civic symbol. It is integral to a place, and so are writers. Beckett and Joyce have ennobled their own city like none other of its sons. Beckett, a Nobel laureate, is one of the supreme and most influential artists of the 20th century; Joyce remade Dublin forever in writing about it. Dublin can never be non-Joycean. It is fitting that the writers have bridges named for them.