Dubliners are learning that the front entrance to Trinity, and many other architectural landmarks, were built with money from tobacco and other slave-related revenues. There have been calls to replace a statue of John Mitchel, a nationalist hero who supported US slavery, and a plaque to Major Richard Dowling, a Galway-born officer in the Confederate army. Dublin’s Shelbourne hotel removed four statues believed to depict slaves, only to reinstate them when the figures were revealed to not be slaves. It is all part of a wider reckoning sparked by Ireland’s increasingly diverse population, the BLM movement and new books – academic and fiction – about historical figures.