Life, love and death

David Norris – academic, Joycean scholar, campaigner for Georgian Dublin, senator, bon viveur, and, perhaps most famously, the man who forced 20th-century Ireland to recognise its gay citizens and legislate for them

David Norris outside his home on Dublin’s North Great George’s Street Picture: Marc O’Sullivan

W hen David Norris dies, his friends, family, and admirers will – according to his plan – assemble in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin for his funeral.

There, they will participate in his final Haydn Mass – he has been attending services in St Patrick’s since he was three – “with two “wonderful, weepy Victorian hymns”, as he describes them.

There will be more than just the traditional rites, however. As his body ...