The family lived in a newish housing estate, “lined by largely identical two-storey working-class dwellings,” in a suburb southwest of Dublin.
The modernity of the housing stock was important: the O’Tooles had electricity, running water, and an indoor lavatory. In a book rippling with extraordinary facts, here are some of the starkest: at the end of the Second World War, two-thirds of Irish homes had no electricity.
