of an important battle during the Easter Rising. The O'Rahilly, one of the leaders of the Rising, lived at 40 Herbert Park. Another resistance leader, Eoin MacNeill, who refused to participate in the Rising, lived down the road at 19 Herbert Park. During the Irish war of independence, Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish National Army and later a government minister, had a study in the house of Miss Hoey at 5 Mespil Road, from where he carried out intelligence work. Popular culture The date of 16 June 1904, now commemorated as Bloomsday, was chosen by the writer James Joyce for the setting of his novel Ulysses because it was the date on which he lost his virginity to his girlfriend Nora Barnacle - Joyce was renting a room at the time in a house at 60 Shelbourne Road. In the 1940s and 50s, the writer Brendan Behan lived in Ballsbridge, as did the poet Patrick Kavanagh, who lived at 62 Pembroke Road. Busts of Behan and Kavanagh are on display at two pubs along Pembroke Road, Searson's and the Wellington. Kavanagh wrote his famous poem On Raglan Road about a girl he met on that street in 1944. Buildings, structures and parks The bridge itself forms the heart of the Ballsbridge suburb which extends northwards towards the Grand Canal along Northumberland Road up to Haddington Road and Shelbourne Road, southwards along the Merrion Road towards Merrion and along Anglesea Road towards Donnybrook, and westwards to encompass the area around Pembroke Road, Clyde Road, Elgin Road and Herbert Park. Herbert Park, a public park, is thirty-two acres in size and is divided by a road, also called Herbert Park, and forms part of Ballsbridge's nebulous border with Donnybrook. The Royal Dublin Society (RDS) has its grounds here, and the Lansdowne Road headquarters of the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) is on the boundary between Ballsbridge and Irishtown. The corporate headquarters of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) are also located in Ballsbridge. Ailesbury Road, along with adjacent Shrewsbury Road, contains the most expensive properties in Dublin, and the roads are featured in the Irish edition of the board game Monopoly. Shrewsbury Road was the sixth most expensive street in the world in 2007. Many of Dublin's embassies and diplomatic residences are located in the southern part of Ballsbridge on and around Ailesbury Road. The British, American, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Israeli embassies