The Book of Kells is an Irish tourism staple, and over one million people flock to Trinity College to see the manuscript every year. With adult tickets to the attraction costing visitors an eye-watering €19 each, the history department at UCD has set about devising a new attraction which they hope will take a share of the money being generated by their rival university. Brace yourselves for the ‘Book of Navan’- an avant-garde manuscript which captures the unique aspects of the town, which like Kells, is situated in the heart of County Meath.
The book is set to be unveiled in the coming weeks, with the team behind its creation stating that: “We have spotted a gap in the tourism market for a contemporary manuscript, which features intricate illustrations of Navan and James Bond legend Pierce Brosnan as well as the inner workings of the coveted shopping centre.”
There certainly is a rich vein of history to take inspiration from when forming a text which rivals the grandeur of the Book of Kells, with Navan’s TK Maxx dating back to almost a decade ago, during what experts have dubbed the ‘pre-nonsense’ age, which ended in 2020.
The six-hundred-page manuscript will be available for the public to view at a price of €18.95, slightly undercutting Trinity, with student tickets being available for €25, which aligns with UCD’s ‘unnecessarily expensive’ policy in relation to students.
Indeed, the potential success of an attraction of this nature will rely solely on the number of people who visit it, and various marketing campaigns are set to commence shortly to drum up interest from the public
TIT (Turbine Investigations Team) has come into possession of one such campaign, which centres around the phrases ‘A palindrome steeped in history’ and the targeted yet polite ‘don’t visit the Book of Kells please.’
As the news of the attraction’s launch has filtered through the University, the SU has already made plans to blockade it to protest about the buttering of sandwiches on campus, in the hopes that they will raise awareness regarding the two graduate workers being affected by butter churning malpractice in Ireland every fortnight.
Jack Nolnod – Lives outside the pale… ew
Image by Dugh Hooley
