they had the red paint ready. I would urge anybody who has seen or heard it to get in touch with the gardaí at Pearse Street Station.”

Maurice Manning, the chair of the expert advisory group on the decade of cenentaries, said the vandalism was in marked contrast to the respectful way armistice commemorations were carried out across the country.

“It does not reflect the feelings of the vast majority of the people who have been so generous in their acknowledgement of all the armistice ceremonies,” he said.

The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan said: “This installation honours all those who died in the terrible suffering of World War I. It is incredibly moving and has been proved immensely popular.

“There is no bravery in throwing paint atwho compounds anger and amusement." and "His dialogue is deft and more restrained than his characterization, which sometimes is mere caricature ..." Ashley also quotes reviews and comments by many critics, and cites 21 published reviews or critical comments on Sharpe's work, with brief summaries or quotations from each.

Influence
Martin Levin, in a review of Porterhouse Blue, wrote that "Sharpe is one of England's funniest writers. He's in the tradition of the 19th-century satirist Thomas Love Peacock, who wrote novels of ideas laced with physical, slapstick farce." Adrian Mourby wrote that "Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and Vintage Stuff are books that hark back to a golden age of academic dottiness, of the kind that has all but disappeared since the 1940s when Sharpe himself was a student." Caroline Moorehead