Actually, Mr. Kevin Kelleher, St. Conleth’s esteemed (and dearly missed) former headmaster and principal, is famous on a national and international level: surely, the man himself told you about the day a certain All Black was issued his walking papers?

But Mr. Kelleher is also a local legend, and though he may hail originally from the banks of a different, more northerly canal, he made Ballsbridge and the surrounds his personal fiefdom over the course of his long tenureship on Clyde Road and at Lansdowne Road. A local historian, Dr. Beatrice Doran, attests to this fact in her new book From the Grand Canal to the Dodder and Mr. K. takes his rightful place alongside other such local luminaries as Seamus Heaney, Jack Yeats and Brendan Behan. You can purchase the book here or through your local bookshop website.