"… The hotels of the city offer a valuable insight into the people who lived and worked in Dublin, as well as those who travelled there. The Shelbourne Hotel on Stephen’s Green was perhaps the most prestigious in the city, a place where many moneyed visitors stayed and wined and dined in considerable style. The staff was truly cosmopolitan: the cooks and chambermaids were Irish, while the waiting staff comprised eight Germans, three Austrians, and one each from Bohemia and England. They all lived together in a house near the hotel until, at the outbreak of the , the German contingent was interned. In the area around the Shelbourne Hotel the fashionable elite clubs of London were replicated, most obviously in the prestigious ."