John O’Callaghan, Irish musician and disc jockey who mainly produces trance music, is born in Navan, County Meath, on September 24, 1981. He also produces music under the aliases of Joint Operations Centre, Mannix, Henrik Zuberstein, and Stenna.
O’Callaghan has collaborated with fellow Discover Recordings artists such as Bryan Kearney, Neal Scarborough (as Inertia), Thomas Bronzwaer (as Lost World), and Greg Downey as well as, more recently, trance hero Leon Bolier. His best-known tracks are “Exactly” with Bryan Kearney, “Big Sky”, in collaboration with vocalist Audrey Gallagher of the alternative metal band Scheer, and “Find Yourself” (featuring Sarah Howells). He has received remixes by trance artists such as The Thrillseekers, Sean Tyas, Gareth Emery, Cosmic Gate, Markus Schulz and Indecent Noise. He has also worked with Heatbeat and Aly & Fila.
O’Callaghan formerly has the majority of his work released on Discover Recordings, the British record label set up by John Askew. Later, his work is released by Armada Music and its sublabels — primarily on Armind and Soundpiercing. The remix of his vocal trance production “Big Sky” by Agnelli & Nelson is voted “Tune of The Year” by listeners of Armin van Buuren‘s A State of Trance radio show in 2007.
In 2008, O’Callaghan enters the DJ Magazine 100 at number 60 and picks up two awards at the Irish Dance Music Awards, winning Best Producer and Best DJ. He also becomes the first Irishman to play Trance Energy. In 2009, he rises 36 places to 24th in the DJ Magazine 100.
In addition to numerous single releases, O’Callaghan has released a live album (Discover “Live As” Volume 2) and two artist albums, Something To Live For and Never Fade Away.
Never Fade Away is released in 2009 on the Armada Music label shortly following the single release of “Find Yourself.” “Find Yourself” is tipped a future favorite on A State of Trance. The track receives recognition from many DJs, including Armin van Buuren, Tiësto, Judge Jules, Matt Hardwick and Gareth Emery. The track also receives a remix from Cosmic Gate, which makes a lot of headway in many DJs’ set lists following its release. He also releases another single from the album, “Surreal,” which includes vocals from an artist known as Jaren. In 2010, O’Callaghan starts his very own sublabel on Black Hole Recordings called Subculture.
Katherine Conolly is born Katherine Conyngham around 1662. Her parents are Sir Albert Conyngham and Margaret (née Leslie). She is the eldest of their ten children, with one of her brother’s being Henry Conyngham. Her maternal grandfather is Henry Leslie. She marries William Conolly in 1694, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons (1715-29) and purported to be the wealthiest man in Ireland. The marriage is likely to have been a love match. The couple uses her dowry of £2,300 to purchase their first estates in County Meath. Through her connections, her husband is able to ally himself with the influential Protestant families such as the Gores, Montgomerys and Leslies. She becomes known as a political hostess, gaining a mention in a ballad detailing the 1723 Westmeath by-election.
Upon the death of her husband in 1729, Connolly inherits estates in Wales, as well as in counties Meath, Roscommon, Westmeath and Kildare. She continues to be influential in Irish public affairs, being asked for her opinions and counsel. Living on Capel Street, Dublin, and at Castletown House, County Kildare, she entertains a large circle of friends. She carries on her husband’s plan to build the residential Collegiate School, Celbridge, built from 1733 to 1737, then supports the school with £50 each year. She commissions a monument in her husband’s memory by Thomas Carter, in Kildrought Church, Celbridge. She also commissions Conolly’s Folly in 1740 and The Wonderful Barn in 1743 to generate employment in the area.
Connolly dies in Castletown House on September 23, 1752. A portrait of her by Charles Jervas still hangs there. Upon hearing of her death, Mary Delany notes that her death “is a general loss. Her table was open to all her friends of all ranks and her purse to the poor … she was clever at business, and wrote all her own letters … she was a plain and vulgar woman in her manner but had very valuable qualities.”
(Pictured: Reclining statue of Katherine Conolly by Thomas Carter, at Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare)
The 36th Ryder Cup Matches officially open on September 22, 2006, at the Palmer North Course of the K Club in Straffan, County Kildare, west of Dublin. It is the first time golf’s premier team tournament has come to Ireland and to date it is the biggest sporting event ever staged in the country.
Europe wins by 18-1⁄2 to 9-1⁄2 points, equalling their record winning margin of two years earlier for their third consecutive win, a first for Europe. Swedish rookie Henrik Stenson makes the winning putt, just moments after Luke Donald sinks a putt to ensure Europe retains the trophy.
The K Club has two Arnold Palmer-designed championship courses and the 36th Ryder Cup is held on the Palmer North Course (also known as the Old Course). The course is a parkland course located on the banks of the River Liffey, threaded through mature woodlands on the Straffan country estate.
Domestically, Sky Sports provides live coverage of all sessions. In the United States, coverage of the first day is recorded live, but presented on tape-delay by USA Network. Bill Macatee hosts from the 18th tower. On Saturday, NBC Sports presents coverage on tape, but recorded live. NBC then airs the singles live on Sunday morning. Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller host from the 18th tower, Gary Koch and Bob Murphy call holes, while on-course reporters are Mark Rolfing, Roger Maltbie, and Dottie Pepper. To provide a European perspective, NBC uses former European team player Nick Faldo as a guest analyst on the Saturday afternoon session. Faldo had worked in the same role for NBC at the 2002 Ryder Cup, and at the time of the 2006 edition is in between jobs, having worked as an analyst for ABC Sports from 2004 to 2006, but having signed with CBS Sports for 2007 and beyond.
The Ryder Cup is a match play event, with each match worth one point. The competition format used in 2004 and 2006 is as follows:
Day 1 (Friday) – 4 four-ball (better ball) matches in a morning session and 4 foursome (alternate shot) matches in an afternoon session
Day 2 (Saturday) – 4 fourball matches in a morning session and 4 foursome matches in an afternoon session
Day 3 (Sunday) – 12 singles matches
With a total of 28 points, 14-1⁄2 points are required to win the Cup, and 14 points are required for the defending champion to retain the Cup. All matches are played to a maximum of 18 holes.
Born in Newry, County Down, on February 24, 1921, Hall receives little more than a primary education as he leaves school at the age of twelve to work in a local shop. He later works as a waiter in London before moving to Dublin. On his return he joins the art department of the Irish Independent. He subsequently works with the Evening Herald where he writes a column on dance bands.
After that, Hall moves to RTÉ where he works in the newsroom. From 1964 to 1971 he presents Newsbeat, a regional news programme. He also presents The Late Late Show for the opening of the 1964 season, but his lack of success in that seat leads to the return of the previous presenter, Gay Byrne. When Newsbeat ends, he starts writing and presenting Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, a political satire show that runs for over 250 episodes until 1980. A successor show, Hall and Company, runs from 1980 until his retirement from television in 1986. He serves as spokesperson for the Irish jury in the Eurovision Song Contest 1965 and 1966.
Hall wins two Jacob’s Awards, in 1966 and 1975, for his work on Newsbeat and Hall’s Pictorial Weekly respectively.
In 1978, Hall is appointed Ireland’s national film censor. During his period as censor, he is known for his strict application of Irish censorship and his defence of family values. Among the films banned by him is Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which he describes as “offensive to Christians and to Jews as well, because it made them appear a terrible load of gobshites.”
Hall has a long running affair with a young colleague from RTÉ, though married to Aideen Kearney at the time. It is also widely accepted that he has a daughter in 1956 with RTÉ presenter Frankie Byrne, although this is disputed at the time by his family members. His relationship with Frankie Byrne is placed in the public domain in a Mint Productions programme, Dear Frankie, screened on RTÉ in January 2006. In 2010, a play written by Niamh Gleeson, also entitled Dear Frankie, opens in the Liberty Hall theatre. Later in 2012, it opens again in the Gaiety Theatre, going on to play in theatres across the country.
Hall dies of a heart attack in Dublin on September 21, 1995. He is buried in Dardistown Cemetery in Northside, Dublin.
McCourt is the son of Irish parents Angela (née Sheehan) and Malachy McCourt. He is the last survivor of their seven offspring, following the death of his younger brother Alphonsus in 2016. He is raised in Limerick, County Limerick, and returns to the United States in 1952. He has four children: Siobhán, Malachy III, Conor, and Cormac, the latter two by his second wife, Diana. He also has a stepdaughter, Nina. He is portrayed by Peter Halpin in the film version of his brother’s memoir Angela’s Ashes. He is also one of the four founding members of the Manhattan Rugby Football Club in 1960. He appears in Frank McCourt’s memoirs.
In 1970, McCourt releases an album, And the Children Toll the Passing of the Day. Also, in the 1970s he hosts a talk show on WMCA.
In recent years McCourt occasionally appears on various programs on New York City’s political radio station, WBAI. Among the shows on which he appears is Radio Free Éireann. He is also a regular guest artist at the Scranton Public Theatre in Pennsylvania, having performed in Inherit the Wind, Love Letters and A Couple of Blaguards, which he co-wrote with brother Frank McCourt. Currently, he has been hosting a call-in radio forum on WBAI, airing on Sunday mornings at 11:00 a.m. He also has a short-lived role as a Catholic priest on the HBO prison drama Oz. He is the owner of Malachy’s, a bar on Third Avenue in New York City. One of his frequent patrons was actor, and friend, the late Richard Harris, who although famous works for a short time behind the bar for McCourt. He plays Francis Preston Blair in Gods and Generals (2003).
McCourt has written two memoirs titled, respectively, A Monk Swimming and Singing My Him Song, detailing his life in Ireland and his later return to the United States. He has also authored a book on the history of the ballad Danny Boy, and put together a collection of Irish writings, called Voices of Ireland.
On April 18, 2006, McCourt announces that he will run as a Green Party candidate to become governor of New York in the November 2006 election. Running under the slogan “Don’t waste your vote, give it to me,” he promises to recall the New York National Guard from Iraq, to make public education free through college, and to institute a statewide comprehensive “sickness care” system. He polls at 5% in an October 10 Zogby poll, versus 25% for RepublicanJohn Faso and 63% for Democrat Eliot Spitzer. He is endorsed by Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier in the Iraq War. The League of Women Voters exclude him from the gubernatorial debate. He comes in a distant third in the general election, receiving 40,729 votes (or just under 1%), 9,271 votes short of what is required to gain automatic access in the 2010 election.
Shiels is born on June 24, 1881, in Milltown, Ballybrakes, near Ballymoney, County Antrim, one of seven sons of Robert Shiels, a railway worker, and Eliza Shiels (née Sweeney), who also has one daughter. The family soon moves to Castle Street, Ballymoney, where he attends the local Roman Catholicnational school. His elder brothers emigrate to the United States when young. With there being no chance of further schooling even if he wanted it, he leaves Ireland when he is 19 years old. He works as a casual labourer in many places in western North America: as a farmworker and miner in Idaho and Montana, and as a lumber camp worker in British Columbia, Canada. In 1904 he is employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway to supervise a gang of workers who are building a stretch of railway in Saskatchewan. In a serious accident, he is badly injured. Despite surgery on his back, he is never able to walk again, and he receives a disability pension from the railway company.
After a long convalescence in Canada, Shiels returns to his mother’s house in Ballymoney around 1908. He sets up in business in Main Street as a shipping agent and as an agent for the Canadian Pacific Railway, taking bookings from intending emigrants. He is encouraged by his parish priest, Fr. John Hasson, by a local solicitor, Jack Pinkerton, and by James Pettigrew, a teacher, to write short stories. To try to preserve anonymity in a small community, he at first uses the pseudonym “George Morshiel,” and is successful with Western stories and other short fiction. His friends urge him to try writing dramas, and in 1918 Away from the Moss is produced by the Ulster Literary Theatre in Belfast.
After further success there with two short plays in which Shiels is learning his craft, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin accepts a one-act play, Bedmates, which is performed in January 1921. With great regularity for the next twenty years, he writes twenty-two plays for the Abbey Theatre. His work forms the basis of the repertoire in the 1920s and 1930s and attracts large audiences. Plays such as The New Gossoon (1930) provide Dublin theatregoers with entertainment, but also help form the style of acting and production which for many years characterises the Abbey and its actors. Three of his plays, Paul Twyning (1922), Professor Tim (1925) and The New Gossoon, are later performed in theatres in London and are also published in a 1945 volume, which is twice reprinted. Professor Tim, produced by the touring Abbey Theatre, receives enthusiastic reviews in Philadelphia, and The New Gossoon appears successfully on Broadway in New York City in 1932, 1934, and 1937.
Shiels’s earlier work is perhaps easiest for audiences to enjoy. Comedies such as Moodie in Manitoba (1918) portray characters so realistic that north Antrim people believe with some alarm that it might be possible to identify who Shiels had in mind when he created them, and he is at first somewhat less than popular in Ballymoney. He superbly reproduces local language and thoroughly understands the local way of life. Plays he writes late in his career are first performed by the Group Theatre in Belfast, and in these productions (and in the radio versions broadcast by the BBC) his work becomes widely known, almost beloved, in the north of Ireland. During the first half of the twentieth century amateur drama groups throughout Ireland are much more important in local life than they have been since the advent of television. Probably all such societies have at some time staged a Shiels play, and this tradition continues. His plays contain amusing dialogue, carefully crafted plots, and usually more or less happy endings.
However, Shiels’s later works, notably The Passing Day (1936), first broadcast as a radio play, and The Rugged Path (1940), which breaks all records at the Abbey Theatre in a run of three months, tackle darker subject matter and feature characters still less sympathetic even than the rogues and hypocrites of the earlier work. In The Rugged Path and its sequel, The Summit (1941), he explores the moral crisis facing Ireland after the political changes of the 1920s. One critic sees in it an allegory for the contemporary struggle against Adolf Hitler. His view of life in the small towns and farms of Ireland is never in the slightest rosy-tinted, but in the symbolism of The Passing Day, he achieves “bitter intensity” (The Irish Times review, quoted by Casey).
Shiels’s modesty leads him to refuse an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), in 1931. He is reticent about his experiences and beliefs and does little to foster his own reputation. In one early interview he expresses the belief that Ulster theatre needs dramatic material that reflects the psychology and setting of the region. His own work, at its best, achieves this and more. The very qualities which make his work popular in the north of Ireland permit some metropolitan literary critics to dismiss his plays as “kitchen comedies.” However, with the passage of time, his importance as a chronicler of a vanishing way of life can be set alongside the recognition due to him as a prolific and gifted dramatist.
Shiels suffers from a lengthy illness, and though he undergoes an operation in Ballymoney in 1949, dies soon afterwards at his house, New Lodge, in Carnlough, County Antrim, on September 19, 1949. He is buried in the graveyard of Our Lady and St. Patrick in Ballymoney. In the month that he dies, the Group Theatre and Garvagh Young Farmers’ Club are both rehearsing Shiels plays, and there have since been many productions of his plays in the north and elsewhere. Ballymoney Drama Festival presents a portrait of Shiels to the Abbey Theatre, and a new production of The Passing Day is staged there to celebrate his centenary in 1981.
O’Grady’s father is the Reverend Thomas O’Grady, the scholarly Church of Ireland minister of Castletown Berehaven, County Cork, and his mother Susanna Doe (or Dowe). The Glebe, his childhood home, lies a mile west of Castletownbere near a famine mass grave and ruined Roman Catholic chapel. He is a cousin of Standish Hayes O’Grady, another noted figure in Celtic literature, and of Standish O’Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore. After a rather severe education at Tipperary Grammar School, he follows his father to Trinity College, Dublin, where he wins several prize medals and distinguishes himself in several sports.
O’Grady is a paradox for his times, proud of his Gaelic heritage, he is also a member of the Church of Ireland, a champion of aristocratic virtues (particularly decrying bourgeois values and the uprooting cosmopolitanism of modernity) and at one point advocates a revitalised Irish people taking over the British Empire and renaming it the Anglo-Irish Empire.
O’Grady proves too unconventional of mind to settle into a career in the church, and takes a job as a schoolmaster at Midleton College, then in a period of expansion. He also qualifies as a barrister, while earning much of his living by writing for the Irish newspapers. Reading Sylvester O’Halloran’s A general history of Ireland (1778) sparks an interest in early Irish history. After an initial lukewarm response to his writing on the legendary past in History of Ireland: The Heroic Period (1878) and Early Bardic Literature of Ireland (1879), he realises that the public wants romance, and so follows the example of James Macpherson in recasting Irish legends in literary form, producing historical novels including Finn and his Companions (1891), The Coming of Cuculain (1894), The Chain of Gold (1895), Ulrick the Ready (1896) and The Flight of the Eagle (1897), and The Departure of Dermot (1913).
O’Grady also studies Irish history of the Elizabethan period, presenting in his edition of Sir Thomas Stafford‘s Pacata Hibernia (1896) the view that the Irish people had made the Tudors into kings of Ireland to overthrow their unpopular landlords, the Irish chieftains. His The Story of Ireland (1894) is not well received, as it sheds too positive a light on the rule of Oliver Cromwell for the taste of many Irish readers. He is also active in social and political campaigns in connection with such issues as unemployment and taxation.
Until 1898, O’Grady works as a journalist for the Daily Express of Dublin, but in that year, finding Dublin journalism in decline, he moves to Kilkenny to become editor of the Kilkenny Moderator, which is printed at 28 High Street. It is here he becomes involved with Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart, and Captain Otway Cuffe. He engages in the revival of the local woolen and woodworking industries. In 1900 he founds the All-Ireland Review and returns to Dublin to manage it until it ceases publication in 1908. He also contributes to James Larkins‘ The Irish Worker paper.
O’Grady’s influence crosses the divide of the Anglo-Irish and Irish-Ireland traditions in literature. His influence is explicitly stated by the Abbey Theatre set with Lady Gregory, W. B. Yeats and George William Russell attributing their interest in the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic tradition in part to him. This leads to him being known as the “Father of the Celtic Revival.” Some of the figures associated with the political party Sinn Féin, including its founder Arthur Griffith, have positive things to say about his efforts in helping to retrieve from the past the Gaelic heroic outlook.
O’Grady marries Margaret Allen Fisher, daughter of William Allen Fisher, and they have three sons. Advised to move away from Ireland for the sake of his health, they leave Ireland in 1918. After living in the north of France and Northamptonshire, they move to the Isle of Wight. He is working on a final exposition of his ideas when he dies suddenly on May 18, 1928.
Colley is born in the Dublin suburb of Fairview on October 18, 1925, the son of Harry and Christina Colley. His father is a veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising and a former adjutant in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who is elected to Dáil Éireann in 1944, as a Fianna Fáil candidate. He is educated at St. Joseph’s Secondary C.B.S. in Fairview, where one of his classmates and closest friends is Charles Haughey, who later becomes his political archrival. He studies law at University College Dublin (UCD) and qualifies as a solicitor in the mid-1940s. He remains friends with Haughey after leaving school and, ironically, encourages him to become a member of Fianna Fáil in 1951. Haughey is elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1957 Irish general election, ousting Colley’s father in the process. This puts some strain on the relationship between the two young men.
Colley is elected to the Dáil at the 1961 Irish general election, reclaiming his father’s old seat in the Dublin North-East constituency. Furthermore, he is elected in the same constituency as Haughey, thereby accentuating the rivalry. Thereafter, he progresses rapidly through the ranks of Fianna Fáil. He becomes a member of the Dáil at a time when a change from the older to the younger generation is taking place, a change facilitated by TaoiseachSeán Lemass.
Colley is active in the Oireachtas as chairman of some of the Joint Labour Committees, which are set up under the Labour Court, to fix legally enforceable wages for groups of workers who have not been effectively organised in trade unions. He is also leader of the Irish parliamentary delegation to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe. His work as a backbencher is rewarded by his appointment as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Lands in October 1964.
Following the return of Lemass’s government at the 1965 Irish general election, Colley joins the cabinet as Minister for Education. He introduces a plan to establish comprehensive schools, set up an advisory council on post-primary school accommodation in Dublin, and introduces a school psychological service.
Colley is promoted as Minister for Industry and Commerce in a cabinet reshuffle in July 1966, and he continues the government policy of economic expansion that had prevailed since the late 1950s.
In November 1966, Seán Lemass resigns suddenly as party leader. Colley contests the subsequent leadership election. He is the favoured candidate of party elders such as Seán MacEntee and Frank Aiken, the latter managing Colley’s campaign. Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney also declare their interest in the leadership; however, both withdraw when the Minister for Finance, Jack Lynch, announces his candidacy. Colley does not back down, and the leadership issue goes to a vote for the first time in the history of the Fianna Fáil party. The leadership election takes place on November 9, 1966, and Lynch beats Colley by 59 votes to 19. When the new Taoiseach announces his cabinet, Colley retains the Industry and Commerce portfolio.
In the wake of the Arms Crisis in 1970, a major reshuffle of the cabinet takes place, with four Ministers either removed, or resigned, or simply retired from the government due to the scandal. Colley remains loyal to the party leader and is rewarded by his appointment as Minister for Finance, the second most important position in government.
In 1973, Fianna Fáil are ousted after sixteen years in government when the national coalition of Fine Gael and the Labour Party come to power. Colley is appointed opposition Spokesman on Finance, in the new Fianna Fáil front bench. As the 1977 Irish general election approaches, Colley and Martin O’Donoghue are the main architects of Fianna Fáil’s election manifesto.
Fianna Fáil sweeps to power at the 1977 Irish general election, with a 20-seat Dáil majority, contrary to opinion polls and political commentators. Colley is re-appointed as Minister for Finance and Minister for the Public Service, and is also appointed as Tánaiste, establishing him firmly as the heir apparent to Taoiseach Jack Lynch.
In December 1979, Jack Lynch resigns unexpectedly as Taoiseach and as Fianna Fáil leader. Colley and Charles Haughey seek the leadership position and are evenly matched. A secret ballot is taken on December 7, 1979. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Michael O’Kennedy, announces his support for Haughey on the eve of the election. This apparently swings the vote, and Haughey beats Colley by 44 votes to 38. Colley remains as Tánaiste but demands and receives a veto on Haughey’s ministerial appointments to the departments of Justice and Defence.
Fianna Fáil loses power at the 1981 Irish general election. Haughey delays naming a new opposition front bench, but Colley remains a key member of the Fianna Fáil hierarchy. The party regains office at the February 1982 Irish general election. He demands the same veto as before on Haughey’s Defence and Justice appointments but is refused. When it is revealed that Ray MacSharry is to be appointed Tánaiste in his stead, he declines another ministerial position. This effectively brings his front bench political career to an end, but he remains a vocal critic of the party leadership from the backbenches.
When the Fianna Fáil government collapses and are replaced by another coalition government after the November 1982 Irish general election, a number of TDs and Senators express lack of confidence in Haughey’s leadership once again. Several unsuccessful leadership challenges take place in late 1982 and early 1983, with Colley now supporting Desmond O’Malley and the Gang of 22 who oppose Haughey.
Colley dies suddenly on September 17, 1983, aged 57, while receiving treatment for a heart condition at Guy’s Hospital, Southwark, London. He is survived by his wife, three sons, and four daughters, one of whom, Anne Colley, becomes a TD as a member of the Progressive Democrats party.
James Green Douglas, Irish businessman and politician dies on September 16, 1954. In 1922 he serves as the first-ever Leas-Chathaoirleach (deputy chairperson) of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the newly independent Irish parliament. He goes on to serve in the Seanad for 30 years.
Douglas is born July 11, 1887, at 19 Brighton Square, Dublin, the eldest of nine children of John Douglas, proprietor of John Douglas & Sons Ltd, drapers and outfitters of Wexford St. and originally of Grange, County Tyrone, and his wife, Emily, daughter of John and Mary Mitton of Gortin, Coalisland, County Tyrone. The genealogy of the Douglas family to which he belongs can be traced to Samuel Douglas of Coolhill, Killyman, County Tyrone.
Douglas attends (1895–98) a small school for Quaker children and is a boarder (1898–1902) in the Friends’ School, Lisburn. In 1902 he begins a three-year apprenticeship in his father’s business.
On February 14, 1911, Douglas marries Georgina (Ena) Culley (1883–1959), originally of Tirsogue, Lurgan, County Armagh, whom he meets during his apprenticeship. Their children are John Harold Douglas, who succeeds to the family busines and replaces his father as senator, and James Arthur Douglas, who becomes a well-known architect.
From an early age Douglas is fascinated by politics and influenced by the newspapers edited by Arthur Griffith. He becomes a member of the Dublin Liberal Association, whose members for the most part are Protestanthome rulers. After the 1916 Easter Rising, with George Russell and others, who also regard themselves as neither unionists nor nationalists, he sets out to promote what they term “full dominion status” for Ireland. This paves the way for the Irish Convention (1917–18), which, however, fails to reconcile the polarised political attitudes of the time.
Douglas goes on to become a very active member of Seanad Éireann between 1922 and 1936 under the constitution he had helped to prepare. In 1922, he is elected as the first vice-chairman of the Senate. The Senate is abolished in 1936 and re-established under the terms of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. He is again an active Senator between 1938 and 1943, and from 1944 to 1954. The topics most associated with him during his work as Senator are international refugees and the League of Nations.
For some thirty years he runs the family business, and is also a director of Aspro (Ireland) Ltd, Nugent & Cooper Ltd, Philips Lamps (Ireland) Ltd, and the Greenmount & Boyne Linen Co. Ltd. In addition, he serves as president of the Linen and Cotton Textile Manufacturers Association and as a member of the council of the Federated Union of Employers.
Warfield is a singer, songwriter, mandolin player and a founding member of The Wolfe Tones, performing with the band for nearly thirty-seven years, writing and recording over 60 songs. As a founding member, he is featured on every album recorded by the band from 1965’s debut album The Foggy Dew through to 1989’s 25th Anniversary.
In 1989, a contract is signed by Warfield, signing rights to an American distributor, Shanachie Records. The contents of this contract are apparently misrepresented to the other members of The Wolfe Tones, resulting in a clause that prevents them from recording any new material. Unable to reverse this agreement, they continue to tour, albeit without any new material. As of July 2017, Warfield has not spoken to his brother and former bandmate Brian Warfield since he left The Wolfe Tones in 2001.
A solo album, Legacy, is released in 1995 as he is still eligible to record under his own name. With Warfield on vocals and mandolin, the music on this album is performed by a new band, although he is still touring with The Wolfe Tones. Legacy is followed by Liberte’ ’98, Sons of Erin, Take Me Home To Mayo and Clear The Way. He also has a video Legacy and two books, The Songs and Ballads of 1798 and The Irish Songster of the American Civil War.
In 2001, after a show played in Limerick, Warfield leaves The Wolfe Tones to concentrate on his own career. Calling themselves “Brian Warfield, Tommy Byrne and Noel Nagle, formerly of The Wolfe Tones,” the remaining three go on to release You’ll Never Beat the Irish (2001) and the subsequent album Child of Destiny (2011).
Warfield has performed his music and songs at American Civil War events and commemorations at such sites as Gettysburg, Sharpsburg and Harrisburg with his band, The Sons of Erin. His 2002 release, Clear the Way, is the second in his Irish Songs in the Civil War series.
The ballad “Take Me Home to Mayo,” written by Belfastman Seamus Robinson as a tribute to Michael Gaughan, is recorded as a duet with Irish American Andy Cooney and is the title track of another 2002 Warfield release.
In 2003, following a complaint by an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician, Roy Beggs, Jr., a radio channel dedicated to the music of Derek Warfield is removed from the in-flight entertainment of Aer Lingus. Beggs complains of the “Blatant promotion of militant, armed republicanism” by the playing of this music, saying it is the same as “the speeches of Osama bin Laden being played on a trans-Atlantic Arabian airline.” Aer Lingus removes the material from their flights stating: “It is something that should not have been on board and we removed it immediately we became aware of it.”
In March 2006, Warfield releases his ninth solo album, a 36-song double CD of Irish songs. On March 1, 2006, his wife Nuala dies, followed by the death of his eldest daughter on September 28, 2007.
Warfield now tours with his new band, Derek Warfield and The Young Wolfe Tones.
A biography of Robert Emmet in two volumes, although not written by Warfield, has been published by him, and a collaboration with Raymond Daly of Tullamore has resulted in the publishing of a critically acclaimed book of lyrics and histories of Irish songs called Celtic and Ireland in Song and Story.
seamus dubhghaill 