<p>The pub has been at the centre of Irish life for centuries. It has played many roles: funeral home, restaurant, grocery shop, music venue, job centre and meeting place for everyone from poets to revolutionaries. Often plain and unpretentious, it is a neutral ground, a leveller ? a home away from home. From the feasts of high kings, through the heady gang-ruled pubs of nineteenth-century New York, right up to the gay bars and superpubs of today...