A man of great energies and many enthusiasms, to say that Dubliner Leslie Daiken was a Renaissance man is no exaggeration. The range of his energy, interests and enthusiasm is perhaps best summed up in one obituary where Leslie Daiken was described with affection as a Dublin Jewish Pickwickian character. Daiken was part of the company in the famous Alan Reeve 1941 cartoon Dublin Culture ( also featured academic and scholar A.J.Leventhal and artist Harry Kernoff) which depicted cultural and literary luminaries in the Palace Bar, communing with R.M.Smyllie the editor of the Irish Times. This lecture will focus on Daiken’s cultural and literary contribution in a broader cultural and intellectual history, his portrait of Jewish Dublin in the play The Circular Road and also look at his vivid pen portraits and rich character sketches during his time in Israel in the early 1950s.