Ireland's New Elite

Meet the Pope’s Children - the new Irish generation, born either side of the Pope’s visit, who have been squeezed into the middle and lifted up by the Celtic Tiger.

David McWilliams’ brilliant, bestselling survey of Ireland today is a celebration of success. He takes us to Deckland, that suburban state of mind where you’ll find the Kells Angels, those out-of-town commuters who are the cutting edge of the new prosperity. He introduces the HiCos – the Hiberno-Cosmopolitans – the elite whose distance from Deckland is measured in their cool sophistication, their ability to feel at home equally on the Boulevard Saint-Michel and on Hill 16.

The Pope’s Children is an antidote to the endless pessimism of the Commentariat, official Ireland’s gloomy opinion mongers, forever seeing a glass half empty that is in fact three-quarters full. There is a vast surge of ambition, new money, optimism and hope out there. That’s the real story: The Pope’s Children tells it with style.