seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA


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Hume & Trimble Receive 1998 Nobel Peace Prize

hume-trimble-noble-prize-1998

The 1998 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded on October 16, 1998, to John Hume and David Trimble, leaders of the largest Roman Catholic and Protestant political parties in Northern Ireland, for their efforts to bring peace to the long-polarized British province. The two men share the prize money of $960,000.

Hume, 61, the Catholic head of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, is cited by the Nobel Committee in Oslo for having been the “clearest and most consistent of Northern Ireland’s political leaders in his work for a peaceful solution.”

Trimble, 54, the Protestant leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, is honored for having demonstrated “great political courage when, at a critical stage in the process, he advocated solutions which led to the peace agreement.”

The leader of a third prominent party, Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is not named as a prize winner. While it does not honor Adams, the committee says it wishes to “emphasize the importance of the positive contributions to the peace process made by other Northern Irish leaders.” Nor are several other figures mentioned as possibilities, including former Senator George Mitchell, who led the talks, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, United States President Bill Clinton, and Mo Mowlam, the British Government’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

The accord, signed on April 10 and known as the Good Friday Agreement, gives the 1.7 million residents of Northern Ireland a respite from the sectarian violence that has claimed more than 3,200 lives in the previous 30 years. It also opens the possibility of lasting stability for the first time since the establishment of Northern Ireland with partition from Ireland in 1921.

Forging concessions from fiercely antagonistic populations, the accord seeks to balance the Protestant majority’s wish to remain part of Britain with Catholic desires to strengthen ties to the Republic of Ireland to the south. The committee, seeing in Northern Ireland’s two warring groups a dispute with notable similarities to violent tribal confrontations elsewhere, expresses the hope that the accord will serve “to inspire peaceful solutions to other religious, ethnic and national conflicts around the world.”

Adams, in New York on a fund-raising trip for Sinn Féin, welcomes the Oslo announcement and particularly praises Hume, who is widely seen as having helped persuade the IRA to adopt a cease-fire and having eased Sinn Féin’s entry into the talks. “Indeed, there would be no peace process but for his courage and vision,” Adams says, adding, “No one deserves this accolade more.” He also wishes Trimble well and says the prize imposes on everyone the responsibility to “push ahead through the speedy implementation of the agreement.”

In the unforgiving politics of Northern Ireland, the Unionist dissidents and members of other Protestant parties who do not join in the peace talks attack both Trimble and Hume. Ian Paisley Jr., son of the head of the Democratic Unionist Party, calls the Nobel Committee’s decision a “farce” and says of the winners, “These people have not delivered peace, and they are not peacemakers.”

Trimble says he is “slightly uncomfortable” with the award because so many other people have been involved beside him in reaching the settlement and much remains to be done to put it in place. “We know that while we have the makings of peace, it is not wholly secure yet,” he tells the BBC from Denver, where he is on an 11-city North American tour to spur foreign investment in Ulster. “I hope it does not turn out to be premature.”

Hume receives word of the prize at his home in Londonderry and terms it “an expression of the total endorsement of the work of very many people.” He adds, “This isn’t just an award to David Trimble and myself. It is an award to all the people in Northern Ireland.”

In Washington, D.C., President Clinton says “how very pleased” he is, “personally and as President, that the Nobel Prize Committee has rewarded the courage and the people of Northern Ireland by giving the Nobel Peace Prize to John Hume and to David Trimble.” He adds “a special word of thanks” to George Mitchell, who issues a statement praising Hume and Trimble as “fully deserving of this honor.”

The peace talks began in the summer of 1996. They eventually draw the participation of 8 of the 10 Northern Irish parties, with many of the men around the table convicted murderers and bombers who had emerged from prison with a commitment to peaceful resolution to what for nearly a century have been referred to wearily as “the Troubles.” The paramilitary groups had also made the tactical decision that violence would not secure their goals; a shared conviction that gives these talks a chance for success that past fitful attempts at settlement lacked.

The peace talks move in a desultory manner until Blair takes office in May 1997 and highlights the cause of peace in Northern Ireland as an early commitment. At his and Ahern’s urging, the IRA declares a cease-fire in July, and by September Sinn Féin is permitted to join the talks.

Blair also gives Trimble and Adams unprecedented access to 10 Downing Street, and the Ulster Protestants report that they obtained from Clinton the most sympathetic hearing they ever had from an American President, allaying their longtime suspicions of Washington’s bias in favor of the Catholic minority.

(From: “2 Ulster Peacemakers Win the Nobel Prize,” The New York Times, Warren Hoge, October 17, 1998)


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First Issue of “The Nation” Published

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The first issue of The Nation, an Irish nationalist weekly newspaper, is published on October 15, 1842. It is printed at 12 Trinity Street, Dublin until January 6, 1844. The paper is later published at 4 D’Olier Street from July 13, 1844, until July 28, 1848, when the issue for the following day is seized and the paper suppressed. It is published again in Middle Abbey Street on its revival in September 1849.

The founders of The Nation are three young men, Charles Gavan Duffy, its first editor, Thomas Davis and John Blake Dillon. All three are members of Daniel O’Connell‘s Repeal Association, which seeks repeal of the disastrous Acts of Union 1800 between Ireland and Britain. This association later becomes known as Young Ireland.

John Mitchel joins the staff of The Nation in the autumn of 1845. On Mitchel’s frequent trips from Banbridge, County Down to Dublin, he had come in contact with the Repeal members who gathered about The Nation office and in the spring of 1843, he becomes a member of the Repeal Association. For the next two years he writes political and historical articles and reviews for The Nation. He covers a wide range of subjects, including the Irish Potato Famine, on which he contributes some influential articles which attract significant attention.

Mitchel resigns his position as lead writer for The Nation in 1847 because he comes to regard as “absolutely necessary a more vigorous policy against the English Government than that which William Smith O’Brien, Charles Gavan Duffy and other Young Ireland leaders were willing to pursue.” Upon his resignation he starts his own paper, The United Irishman.

Women also write for The Nation and publish under pseudonyms such as Speranza (Jane Elgee, Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde‘s mother), Eithne (Marie Thompson) and Eva (Mary Eva Kelly, who would marry Kevin Izod O’Doherty.

The role played by some of its key figures in the paper in the ill-fated Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848 cement the paper’s reputation as the voice of Irish radicalism. Dillon is a central figure in the revolt and is sentenced to death, the sentence later commuted. He flees Ireland, escaping first to France and, eventually, to the United States, where he serves the New York Bar.

Its triumvirate of founders follow differing paths. Davis dies at age 30 in 1845. Both Dillon and Duffy become MPs in the British House of Commons. Duffy emigrates to Australia where he becomes premier of the state of Victoria, later being knighted as a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG). Dillon dies in 1866. His son, John Dillon, becomes leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and his grandson, James Dillon, leader of Fine Gael.

The Nation continues to be published until 1900, when it merges with the Irish Weekly Independent. Later political figures associated with the paper included Timothy Daniel Sullivan and J.J. Clancy.


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The Battle of Friedlingen

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The Irish Brigade of France fights in the Battle of Friedlingen on October 14, 1702.

The battle is fought between France and the Holy Roman Empire. The Imperial forces are led by Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden, while the French are led by Claude Louis Hector de Villars. The French are victorious.

The French are seeking to expand their influence on the eastern bank of the river Rhine. In the autumn of 1702, Villars receives orders from Louis XIV to attack Swabia. The French forces need to join their Bavarian allies and defeat the Imperial troops that stand between them.

The French cross the Rhine at Weil am Rhein, just north of Basel on October 14. Villars attacks the Imperial army at Friedlingen. The future field marshal Louis William entrenches his army and manages to hold the French for some time. He then retreats in good order to the North.

It is a Pyrrhic victory for Villars with losses of 1,703 dead and 2,601 wounded. The Imperial forces loses are 3,000 dead and 742 wounded. Villars is also prevented from joining the Bavarians.

The villages on the eastern bank of the Rhine suffer much damage, especially Weil am Rhein.

(Pictured: The Battle of Friedlingen, oil on canvas, Franz Paul Findenigg)


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First Production by the Gate Theatre Company

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The Gate Theatre Company of Dublin produces its first play, Henrik Ibsen‘s Peer Gynt, in the Peacock Theatre on October 13, 1928.

The Gate Theatre is founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir. During their first season, the company presents seven plays, including Eugene O’Neill‘s The Hairy Ape and Oscar Wilde‘s Salome. Their productions are innovative and experimental, and they offer Dublin audiences an introduction to the world of European and American theatre as well as classics from the modern and Irish repertoire. It is at the Gate that Orson Welles, James Mason, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Michael Gambon begin their prodigious acting careers.

The company plays for two seasons at the Peacock Theatre and then on Christmas Eve 1929, in Groome’s Hotel, a lease is signed for the 18th Century Rotunda Annex, the “Upper Concert Hall,” the Gate’s present home, with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s Faust opening on February 17, 1930.

In 1931, the newly established Gate Theatre runs into financial difficulties and Edward Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford and Christine Longford, Countess of Longford provide financial support. The Longfords work with Edwards and MacLiammóir at the Gate until 1936, then a split develops, and two separate companies are formed and play at the Gate Theatre for six months each. The companies also tour for six months until the death of Lord Longford in 1961.

During this period Edwards and MacLiammóir (Gate Theatre Productions) run shows in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre and tour productions to Europe, Egypt and North America.

From the 1980s onwards the Gate Theatre, under the directorship of Michael Colgan, cements its international relationship, touring plays around the world for audiences from Beijing to New York. The theatre establishes unique relationships with leading contemporary playwrights including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Brian Friel. The first ever Beckett Festival is produced, presenting all 19 of the stage plays over a three-week period. The first ever festival of Pinter’s plays follows, along with many premieres and productions of Friel’s work including the acclaimed production of Faith Healer with Ralph Fiennes which wins a Tony Award on Broadway.

With the generous support of funders, the fabric of the building is restored and renovated under the guidance of Ronnie Tallon and Scott, Tallon Walker Architects. This includes the provision of a new wing, which incorporates a studio space, The Gate Studio, for rehearsals and workshops, offering practitioners an opportunity to develop and nurture creativity.

On April 3, 2017, Selina Cartmell becomes Director of the Gate Theatre. As a freelance artist, she has directed a diverse range of work from Greek tragedy and Shakespeare to international work and contemporary Irish drama. In 2004, she establishes Dublin-based Siren Productions, a multi-award-winning company conceived to innovate the classics and create relevant and dynamic new work, integrating theatre, dance, visual arts, architecture, film and music. Her productions have been nominated for thirty-five theatre awards, winning ten, including three for best director.


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Irish Celtic Rock Band Horslips Disbands

horslips

Horslips, the Irish Celtic rock band regarded as the “founding fathers of Celtic rock,” disbands on October 12, 1980. The name originates from a spoonerism on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which becomes “The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse.”

Barry Devlin, Eamon Carr and Charles O’Connor meet when they work at the Ark advertising company in Dublin. They are cajoled into pretending to be a band for a Harp Lager commercial but need a keyboard player. Devlin says he knows a Jim Lockhart who would fit the bill. The four enjoy the act so much that they decide to try being proper rock performers. They join guitarist Declan Sinnott, a colleague of Eamon Carr’s from Tara Telephone and, briefly, Gene Mulvaney to form Horslips (originally Horslypse) in 1970.

The band goes professional on St. Patrick’s Day 1972 having shed Mulvaney and released a single, “Johnny’s Wedding”, on their own record label, Oats. Declan Sinnott leaves soon after, primarily due to his annoyance at the group appearing in an advert for Mirinda orange drink. He is replaced by Gus Guest briefly, then Johnny Fean.

Following the release of six studio albums between 1972 and 1977, the ever-ambitious band tries to make it in the United States. In 1977 they produce Aliens, about the experience of the Irish in nineteenth-century America, which includes very little folk music. The Man Who Built America (1978), produced by Steve Katz of Blood, Sweat & Tears and The Blues Project fame, concerns Irish emigration to the United States and is commercially their most successful album. The heavier sound does bring some acceptance in America, but they lose their folk base and their freshness. Short Stories, Tall Tales (1979) is their last studio album and is panned by the record company and critics alike.

At a time when The Troubles are at its peak, Horslips plays gigs in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland without prejudice and are accepted everywhere. Their last recordings are from live performances at the Whitla Hall at Queen’s University Belfast in April and May 1980. A few months later, on October 12, 1980, they play their final gig in the Ulster Hall. They make no public announcement. They simply give an encore, The Rolling Stones‘ song “The Last Time,” and the final act is Charles O’Connor throwing his mangled fiddle into the audience. Ten years after they formed, they disband.

Although Horslips has limited commercial success when the band is playing in the 1970s, there is a revival of interest in their music in the late 1990s and they come to be regarded as one of the defining bands of the Celtic rock genre. There have since been small scale reunions including appearances on The Late Late Show and RTÉ‘s Other Voices. The band reforms for two Irish shows in the Odyssey Arena in Belfast and the 3Arena in Dublin at the end of 2009 and have continued to play shows since then.


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The Funeral of Charles Stewart Parnell

parnell-grave-stoneThe funeral and burial of Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist politician who serves from 1875 as Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, takes place in Dublin on October 11, 1891.

Parnell dies of pneumonia at half-past eleven on the night of October 6 at his residence at 10 Walsingham Terrace, Aldrington, near Brighton, England. He dies in the arms of his wife Katherine whom he had married just five months earlier.

Prior to the funeral, Parnell’s body lay in state for several hours and his death is the primary topic of conversation around Dublin. The belief that his demise would close the chasm in the Irish ranks is no longer tenable. His death makes it too wide even to be bridged. His old opponents may have felt inclined to forget and forgive, but this spirit is crushed almost before it is born, and his old adherents are simply ferocious in their enmity.

The city is astir at an unusually early hour, and there is a crowd of thousands in and around the Westland Row Station before seven o’clock. In front, as a guard of honor, stands a body of the Gaelic Athletic Association, armed with camans, around which are bound crape and green ribbon. It is nearly eight o’clock when Parnell’s body is placed in a hearse drawn by four black horses. The Gaels march in front. Thousands join the cortège, which includes several bands and fife corps.

Though an Anglican, Parnell’s funeral at the Irish National nondenominational Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin is attended by more than 200,000 people. His notability is such that his gravestone of unhewn Wicklow granite, erected in 1940, reads only “Parnell.”

Parnell is buried amid warring elements and in the presence of an immense assemblage. As a scene of great but suppressed excitement, and of still greater impressiveness, the funeral and its surroundings will never be forgotten by those who witness it, and it will long furnish a landmark in history for Ireland.


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Magee College Opens in Derry, County Londonderry

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Magee College opens on October 10, 1865, as a Presbyterian Christian arts and theological college in Derry, County Londonderry, in what is now Northern Ireland. Since 1953, it has had no religious affiliation and provides a broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate academic degree programmes in disciplines ranging from business, law, social work, creative arts & technologies, cinematic arts, design, computer science and computer games to psychology and nursing.

The Magee Campus gains its name from Martha Magee, the widow of a Presbyterian minister, who, in 1845, bequeathed £20,000 to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to found a college for theology and the arts. It opens in 1865 primarily as a theological college but accepts students from all denominations to study a variety of subjects. It is a college of the Royal University of Ireland from 1880 and later becomes associated with Trinity College, Dublin when the Royal University is dissolved in 1909 and replaced by the National University of Ireland.

During World War II, the college is taken over by the Admiralty for Royal NavyRoyal Navy operational use, becoming with Ebrington Barracks (HMS Ferret), a major facility in the Battle of the Atlantic. A 2013 BBC report describes a secret major control bunker, later buried beneath the lawns of the college. From 1941 this bunker, part of Base One Europe, together with similar bunkers in Derby House, Liverpool and Whitehall is used to control one million Allied personnel and fight the Nazi U-boat threat.

In 1953, Magee Theological College separates from the remainder of the college, eventually moving to Belfast in a 1978 merger that forms Union Theological College. Also in 1953, Magee College breaks its ties with Dublin and becomes Magee University College. It is hoped by groups led by the University for Derry Committee that this university college would become Northern Ireland’s second university after Queen’s University Belfast. However, in the 1960s, following the recommendations in The Lockwood Report by Sir John Lockwood, Master of Birkbeck College, London and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, the Parliament of Northern Ireland makes a controversial decision to pass it over in favour of a new university in Coleraine. Instead it is incorporated into the two-campus New University of Ulster in 1969. The next fourteen years see the college halve in size, while development focuses on the main Coleraine campus.

In 1984, the New University merges with the Ulster Polytechnic, and Magee becomes the early focus of development of a new four-campus university, the University of Ulster. Student and faculty numbers recover and grow rapidly over the next ten to fifteen years, accompanied by numerous construction projects. Magee grows from just 273 students in 1984 to over 4,000 undergraduates in 2012. In 2012, the University continues to lobby the Northern Ireland Executive for an additional 1,000 full-time undergraduate places, leading to 6,000 students at Magee in 2017.

On September 14, 2013, Magee hosts, for the first time on the island of Ireland, the 23rd International Loebner Prize Contest in Artificial Intelligence based on the Turing test proposed by the renowned British computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. Turing also works on cracking the Enigma machine code at Bletchley Park which is instrumental in the Battle of the Atlantic.

In October 2014 the University of Ulster is rebranded as Ulster University.

(Pictured: Magee College, c. 1870)


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Death of Padraic Fallon, Poet & Playwright

padraic-fallon

Padraic Fallon, Irish poet and playwright, dies on October 9, 1974, in Aylesford, England.

Fallon is born in Athenry, County Galway on January 3, 1905. His upbringing and his early impressions of the town and the surrounding landscape are intimately described in his poetry. After passing the civil service exams in 1923 he moves to Dublin to work in the Customs House. In Dublin he becomes part of the circle of George William Russell (Æ) who encourages his literary ambitions and arranges for the publication of his early poetry. He forms close friendships with Seumas O’Sullivan, editor of The Dublin Magazine, the poets Austin Clarke, Robert Farren, F.R. Higgins and Patrick McDonagh, and later the novelist James Plunkett.

In 1939, Fallon leaves Dublin to serve as a Customs official in County Wexford, living in Prospect House, near Wexford with his wife, Dorothea (née Maher) and his six sons. During this time, he becomes a close friend of the painter Tony O’Malley.

Fallon’s early poetry, short stories and literary criticism are published in The Dublin Magazine and The Bell. He is a regular contributor to Raidió Éireann in the 1940s and 1950s, serving variously as a journalist, scriptwriter and literary critic. A number of his short stories and early dramatic pieces are broadcast by the station during the 1940s. The first of his verse plays for radio, Diarmuid and Gráinne, is broadcast by Raidió Éireann in November 1950. This is followed by The Vision of Mac Conglinne (1953), Two Men with a Face (1953), The Poplar (1953), Steeple Jerkin (1954), The Wooing of Étain (1954), A Man in the Window (1955), Outpost (1955), Deirdre’s King (1956), The Five Stations (1957), The Hags of Clough (1957), The Third Bachelor (1958), At the Bridge Inn (1960) and Lighting up Time (1961).

Three plays adapted from Irish mythology, Diarmuid and Gráinne, The Vision of Mac Conglinne and Deirdre’s King, receive particular contemporary critical acclaim. The landscape, mythology and history of Ireland, interwoven with classical themes and religious symbolism, are frequent themes in his poetry and dramatic works. A number of Fallon’s radio plays are later broadcast on BBC Third Programme and, in translation, in Germany, the Netherlands, and Hungary. The play The Seventh Step is staged at The Globe Theatre in Dublin in 1954. A second one, Sweet Love ’till Morn, is staged at the Abbey Theatre in 1971. He also writes dramatic pieces for television such as A Sword of Steel (1966) and The Fenians (1967), the latter produced by James Plunkett. In a number of his plays and radio dramas he cooperates with contemporary composers providing incidental music, an example being The Wooing of Étain (1954) with music by Brian Boydell.

Fallon retires from the Civil Service in 1963, returning to Dublin before moving to Cornwall in 1967 to live with his son, the sculptor Conor Fallon and his daughter-in-law, the artist Nancy Wynne-Jones. He and his wife return to Ireland in 1971. He spends his last years in Kinsale. He is visiting his son Ivan Fallon in Kent at the time of his death.

While Fallon’s poetry had previously appeared in The Dublin Magazine, The Bell, The Irish Times and a number of anthologies, his first volume of collected poetry, Poems, incorporating a number of previously unpublished poems, is not produced until 1974, months before his death. Three volumes of his poetry, edited by his son, the journalist and critic Brian Fallon, are published after his death: Poems and Versions in 1983, Collected Poems in 1990, and A Look in the Mirror and Other Poems in 2003. In 2005, three of his verse plays, The Vision of Mac Conglinne, The Poplar, and The Hags of Clough, are published in a single volume. A selection of his prose writings and criticism edited by Brian Fallon, A Poet’s Journal, is published in the same year.


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Birth of Ardal O’Hanlon, Comedian & Actor

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Ardal O’Hanlon, comedian and actor, is born in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan on October 8, 1965. He plays Father Dougal McGuire in Father Ted, George Sunday/Thermoman in My Hero, and DI Jack Mooney in Death in Paradise.

O’Hanlon is the son of politician and doctor Rory O’Hanlon and Teresa Ward. The episode of Who Do You Think You Are? which airs on October 6, 2008, reveals that his paternal grandfather, Michael O’Hanlon, was a medical student at University College Dublin (UCD) who joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence and was a member of Michael Collins‘s squad which assassinated British secret service agents on the morning of Bloody Sunday. Details of his grandfather’s activities survive in UCD Archives, as well as Blackrock College. It also transpires that, on his mother’s side, he is a close relative of Peter Fenelon Collier.

O’Hanlon is schooled in Blackrock College in Dublin and graduates in 1987 from the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin (now Dublin City University) with a degree in Communications Studies.

Together with Kevin Gildea and Barry Murphy, O’Hanlon founds the International Comedy Cellar, upstairs in the International Bar on Dublin’s South Wicklow Street. Dublin has no comedy scene at the time. As a stand up, he wins the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition in 1994. For a time, he is the presenter of The Stand Up Show.

O’Hanlon is spotted by Graham Linehan, who casts him as Father Dougal McGuire in Father Ted (1995–98). In 1995 he receives the Top TV Comedy Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards for this role. In 1995, he appears as Father Dougal in a Channel 4 ident and during Comic Relief on BBC One. This is followed by the award-winning short comedy film Flying Saucer Rock ‘n’ Roll.

O’Hanlon moves into straight acting alongside Emma Fielding and Beth Goddard in the ITV comedy-drama Big Bad World, which airs for two series in summer 1999 and winter 2001. He also plays a minor role in The Butcher Boy and appears in an episode of the original Whose Line is it Anyway?.

In 2000, O’Hanlon stars in the comedy series My Hero, in which he plays a very naive superhero from the planet Ultron. His character juggles world-saving heroics with life in suburbia. He stays in the role until the first episode of series 6 in July 2006 where he is replaced by James Dreyfus during the same episode.

O’Hanlon also provides the voice of the lead character in the three Christmas television cartoon specials of Robbie the Reindeer. He appears in the 2005 BBC One sitcom Blessed, written by Ben Elton. Towards the end of 2005, he plays an eccentric Scottish character, Coconut Tam, in the family-based film, The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby. Although more commonly on television, he also appears on radio. In 2015 he appears as incompetent angel Smallbone in the sitcom The Best Laid Plans, also on BBC Radio 4.

In 2006, O’Hanlon writes and presents an RTÉ television series called Leagues Apart, which sees him investigate the biggest and most passionate football rivalries in a number of European countries. He follows this with another RTÉ show, So You Want To Be Taoiseach? in 2007. It is a political series where he gives tongue-in-cheek advice on how to go about becoming Taoiseach of Ireland.

O’Hanlon appears in the Doctor Who episode “Gridlock“, broadcast on April 14, 2007, in which he plays a cat-like creature named Thomas Kincade Brannigan. He appears in Series 3 of the TV show Skins, playing Naomi Campbell’s Politics teacher named Kieran. He then goes on to form a relationship with Naomi’s mother, played by Olivia Colman. He plays the lead role in Irish comedy television programme Val Falvey, TD on RTÉ One.

In February 2011, O’Hanlon returns to the Gate Theatre, Dublin starring in the Irish premiere of Christopher Hampton‘s translation of Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, alongside Maura Tierney. In 2011, he appears in the comedy panel show Argumental.

O’Hanlon has written a novel, The Talk of the Town, which is published in 1998. The novel is about a teenage boy, Patrick Scully, and his friends.

In February 2015 O’Hanlon officially launches the 2015 Sky Cat Laughs Comedy Festival which takes place in Kilkenny from May 28–June 1. In 2015 he plays the role of Peter the Milkman in the Sky One sitcom After Hours.

On February 2, 2017, it is announced O’Hanlon will play the lead role in the BBC crime drama Death in Paradise taking the role of DI Jack Mooney following Kris Marshall‘s departure the same day.


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Proclamation Banning O’Connell’s Repeal Meeting Issued

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On the night of Saturday, October 7, 1843, a proclamation is issued from Dublin Castle banning a Repeal Association meeting called by Daniel O’Connell north of the city at Clontarf on the following day.

The proclamation is written by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Sir Robert Peel, who calls the proposed meeting for the restoration of the Parliament of Ireland, abolished in 1801, “an attempt to overthrow the constitution of the British Empire as by law established.”

Two warships, the Rhathemus and the Dee, steam into Dublin Harbour, carrying around 3,000 British troops to ensure the mass rally in favour of Repeal of the Union does not take place. The nationalist newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, alleges that the troops have been summoned to “cut the people down” and “run riot in the blood of the innocent.”

O’Connell, the charismatic leader of the Repeal Association, has always insisted that his movement is non-violent. On the banning of the meeting and the arrival of troops, he frantically moves to call it off and to prevent “the slaughter of the people.”

Handbills are posted around the streets of Dublin advising his supporters of the meeting’s cancellation. A prominent Dublin builder and O’Connell supporter, Peter Martin, is sent to Clontarf to dismantle the platform erected there. Other activists are sent on horseback to the roads leading into the city to send back the thousands converging on Clontarf for the meeting.

The following day passes without incident. The Freeman’s Journal rages against the “corrupt and impotent Government that has perverted the form of law for the purpose of robbing the people.”

The Warder, a Dublin unionist newspaper, had been urging the suppression of the “plainly illegal under common law” O’Connellite mass meetings for months. The newspaper stops short of calling for civil war in the run–up to the meeting. Now it declares itself satisfied. It congratulates the Conservative government for belatedly seeing sense.

By contrast, the Repeal camp is deeply split. Many, particularly those Young Irelanders grouped around The Nation, blame O’Connell for capitulation to the threat of force and for his unwillingness to confront the British government. They break from him acrimoniously the following year.

With the cancellation of the Clontarf meeting, O’Connell’s strategy of mass mobilisation in pursuit of Irish self government is over. He himself is arrested on charges of “seditious conspiracy” three days later.

(From: “Today in Irish History, The Repeal Meeting at Clontarf is Banned, 8 October 1843, John Dorney, The Irish Story (theirishstory.com), October 8, 2011)