Banville is born to Agnes (née Doran) and Martin Banville, a garage clerk, in Wexford. He is the youngest of three siblings. He is educated at CBS Primary, Wexford, a Christian Brothers school, and at St. Peter’s College, Wexford. Despite having intentions of being a painter and an architect, he does not attend university. After school, he works as a clerk at Aer Lingus, which allows him to travel at deeply discounted rates. He takes advantage of these rates to travel to Greece and Italy. He begins working as a sub-editor at The Irish Press in 1969.
Banville publishes his first book, a collection of short stories titled Long Lankin, in 1970. His first novel, Nightspawn, appears in 1971, followed by his second, Birchwood, two years later. His The Revolutions Trilogy, published between 1976 and 1982, comprises works named after renowned scientists: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, has a mathematical theme, and, in combination with the three books from The Revolutions Trilogy, is the fourth book from the “Scientific Tetralogy.” His 1989 novel, The Book of Evidence, begins The Frames Trilogy, dealing with the work of art. It is completed by Ghosts and Athena. His thirteenth novel, The Sea, wins the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black, most of which feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in 1950s Dublin. His alternative history novel, The Secret Guests (2020), is published under the name B. W. Black.
In 1969, Banville marries the American textile artist Janet Dunham, whom he met in San Francisco the previous year while she is a student at the University of California, Berkeley. The couple has two sons together. The marriage breaks down after Banville has an affair with a neighbour, Patricia Quinn, who subsequently becomes director of the Arts Council of Ireland. Banville has two daughters with Quinn, born around 1990 and 1997. Despite separating, Banville and Dunham never divorce and he describes them as remaining “on good terms.” Dunham dies at Blackrock Clinic on November 22, 2021, after which Banville states that he experienced “brain fog” due to grief and is unable to write for six months. In a 2024 interview, he expresses regret over his relationship history, saying, “I caused Janet such anguish. I have caused Patricia Quinn such anguish. I wasn’t good with my children. I was not a good parent. I am not a good person. I am selfish. But I have to have responsibility.”
Trevor wins the 2008 International Nonino Prize in Italy. In 2014, he is bestowed with the title of Saoi within Aosdána. He resides in England from 1954 until his death in 2016, at the age of 88.
Trevor is educated at a succession of schools including St Columba’s College, Dublin (where he is taught by Oisín Kelly) and at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), from which he receives a degree in history. He works as a sculptor under the name Trevor Cox following his graduation from TCD, supplementing his income by teaching.
Trevor marries Jane Ryan in 1952 and emigrates to England, working as a teacher, a sculptor and then as a copywriter for an advertising agency. During this time he and his wife have their first son. In 1952, he becomes an art teacher at Bilton Grange, a prep school near Rugby. He is commissioned to carve reliefs for several churches, including All Saints’ Church, Braunston, Northamptonshire. In 1956, he moves to Somerset to work as a sculptor and carries out commissions for churches. He stops wood carving in 1960.
Trevor’s first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, is published in 1958 by Hutchinson & Co. of London, but receives little critical success. He later disowns this work, and, according to his obituary in The Irish Times, “refused to have it republished.” It is, in fact, republished in 1982 and in 1989.
In 1964, at the age of 36, Trevor is awarded the Hawthornden Prize for The Old Boys. This success encourages him to become a full-time writer.
In 1971, he and his family move from London to Devon in South West England, first to Dunkeswell, then in 1980 to Shobrooke, where he lives until his death. Despite having spent most of his life in England, he considers himself to be “Irish in every vein”.
Trevor dies peacefully in his sleep, at the age of 88, at Crediton, Devon, England, on November 20, 2016.
Mary Esperance (“Nancy”) Wynne-Jones is born on December 10, 1922, in Penmaenucha, Wales, to landowner Charles Llewellyn Wynne-Jones and Sybil Mary Gella Scott. The family spends half the year in Wales and half the year in Thornhill, Stalbridge, Dorset. She has two brothers, Andrew and Ronald (“Polly”), both of whom die in Africa during World War II.
Wynne-Jones is educated at home. Her skill in art leads to her getting lessons in Sherborne from a children’s book illustrator. Her music is encouraged by the family doctor and she begins to compose and study the violin, receiving lessons in Bournemouth with the first violinist of the symphony orchestra. After the start of World War II, she continues in Aberystwyth. She goes on to study the violin and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London (1940–43). While in London she also serves as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse until 1943 and later as a draughtswoman at the Ordnance Survey.
After the war, Wynne-Jones purchases and manages a bookshop on the King’s Road in Chelsea, but it is not a financial success. She returns to painting, studying at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, from 1951 to 1952 and the Chelsea School of Art from 1952 to 1955. She travels extensively through Portugal and Italy painting landscapes. An interest in completing landscapes in an abstract manner leads her to study with Peter Lanyon in St. Ives, Cornwall.
In 1962, Wynne-Jones purchases Trevaylor House near Penzance and provides accommodation for other artists including renowned Irish painter Tony O’Malley, sculptor Conor Fallon and English poet and writer W. S. ‘Sydney’ Graham. In the 1970s she exhibits in Ireland at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin (1970) and at the Emmet Gallery, Dublin (1975 and 1977). During the 1980s she exhibits at the Lincoln and Hendricks galleries in Dublin before joining the Taylor Gallery, run by John and Patrick Taylor. She is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1994 and becomes a member of Aosdána in 1996. Originally an abstract artist, her contact with the Irish countryside slowly transforms her work to that of a landscape artist, albeit with an influence of abstraction attached to it. She becomes well-known in Irish art circles as an eminent Irish landscape artist.
Wynne-Jones is involved with artist Derek Middleton before moving to Cornwall. There she becomes romantically involved with Graham who is in an open marriage, however, it is the death of her mentor Peter Lanyon which devastates her. She meets the sculptor Conor Fallon through their mutual friend, Tony O’Malley. Fallon had arrived in Cornwall ostensibly to meet Lanyon. They marry in 1966. Their honeymoon in Provence is immortalised in expressionist paintings done by her. The couple adopts a boy and a girl, siblings, John and Bridget. In 1972, she moves with her family to Kinsale, County Cork. It is in the area around here that a number of her paintings are created. Later she paints the mountain visible from her Wicklow home after the family moves in the late 1980s. She moves to Ballard House, near Rathdrum, County Wicklow in 1987.
Wynne-Jones dies on November 9, 2006, and is buried in Ballinatone (Church of Ireland), Rathdrum.
Vanston’s time in Paris leaves a lasting impression on her work, including use of primary colours and a strong Cubist influence. She belongs to what critic Brian Fallon calls the “Franco-Irish generation of painters who looked to Paris,” along with Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, and Norah McGuinness. Her time spent living in Costa Rica in the late 1920s and early 1930s imbues her work with tropical and highly toned colours. In Dublin in 1935, she exhibits 17 paintings, largely Costa Rican landscapes, at Daniel Egan’s gallery on St. Stephen’s Green. This is the closest thing to a solo show she would mount, with this show also featuring Grace Henry, Cecil Ffrench Salkeld, and Edward Gribbon.
Meeting the English artist Basil Rakoczi, who is also living in Dublin during World War II, leads Vanston to become associated with The White Stag group. In November 1941, she exhibits for the first time at a group show with 24 other artists, including Patrick Scott. One work that is shown at this exhibition is the painting Keel dance hall, which demonstrates that she spends time in the west of Ireland. The most important event staged by the group is the Exhibition of subjective art, which takes place at 6 Lower Baggot St. in January 1944. The Dublin Magazine notes her work at this show as the most effective of the experimental vanguard. This work, Dying animal, is a Cubist work with semi-representation forms rendered in bold colours. In 1945, her work is featured in a White Stag exhibition in London of young Irish painters at the Arcade gallery, Old Bond Street.
In 1947, Vanston spends almost a year in Costa Rica where she paints primarily in watercolours. Apart from this period, she lives and works in Dublin, living at 3 Mount Street Crescent near St. Stephen’s Church. At the inaugural Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943, she exhibits five works. At the first Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1960, of which she is a founder, she exhibits three landscapes and a work entitled War. She largely exhibits with the Independent Artists, the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, and the Oireachtas na Gaeilge, and does not exhibit with the Royal Hibernian Academy. Later in life, she exhibits with the Figurative Image exhibitions in Dublin, and is amongst the first painters chosen for Aosdána. A number of her works are featured in the 1987 exhibition, Irish women artists, from the eighteenth century to the present arranged by the National Gallery of Ireland and The Douglas Hyde Gallery.
Vanston dies on July 12, 1988, in a nursing home in Enniskerry, County Wicklow. Her work is greatly admired, but has received little by way of critical attention, which may have been to do with her slow rate of output. A number of her works have proved difficult to trace. She was a private person, even refusing to cooperate with the Taylor Galleries in the 1980s when they wanted to mount a retrospective of her work. The National Self-Portrait Collection in Limerick holds a work by Vanston.
(Pictured: Dairine Vanston with Guillermo Padilla in Paris)
O’Connor is a well-known intellectual figure in contemporary Irish affairs and expresses strong opinions against censorship and the war on drugs. He contributes a regular poetry column to the Irish daily, the Evening Herald, also writes a column for the Sunday Mirror and a sporting column for TheSunday Times, as well as broadcasting on RTÉ.
O’Connor is also known for the autobiographical The Ulick O’Connor Diaries 1970-1981: A Cavalier Irishman (2001), which details his encounters with well-known Irish and international figures, ranging from political (Jack Lynch and Paddy Devlin) to the artistic (Christy Brown and Peter Sellers). It also documents the progress of the Northern Ireland peace process during the same time, and the progress of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Although he travels extensively, he lives in his parental home in Dublin’s Rathgar. He is a member of Aosdána.
O’Connor is the eldest of five children and brother of singer Sinéad O’Connor. He is from the Glenageary area of south Dublin. His parents are Sean O’Connor, a structural engineer who later turns barrister, and Marie O’Connor.
O’Connor’s novel Cowboys and Indians (1991) is on the shortlist for the Whitbread Book Award.
On February 10, 1985, O’Connor’s mother is killed in a car accident. The mother of his character Sweeney in The Salesman (1998) dies in the same manner.
In 2002, O’Connor writes the novel Star of the Sea, which The Economist lists as one of the top books of 2003. His 2010 novel Ghost Light is loosely based on the life of the actress Maire O’Neill, born Mary “Molly” Allgood, and her relationship with the Irish playwrightJohn Millington Synge. It is published by Harvill Secker of London in 2010.
In 2014, O’Connor is announced as the inaugural Frank McCourt Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick, where he teaches on the MA in Creative Writing.
O’Connor is a regular contributor to Drivetime, an evening news and current affairs programme on RTÉ Radio 1.
O’Connor’s Shadowplay, published in 2019, is shortlisted for the2019 Costa Book Award in the Novel category.
O’Connor is married to television and film writer Anne-Marie Casey. They have two sons. He and his family have lived in London and Dublin, and occasionally reside in New York City.
Dermot Healy, Irish novelist, playwright, poet and short story writer, dies at his home in Ballyconnell, Sligo, County Sligo, on June 29, 2014. A member of Aosdána, he is also part of its governing body, the Toscaireacht. He is described variously as a “master,” a “Celtic Hemingway” and as “Ireland’s finest living novelist.”
Healy is born in Finnea, County Westmeath, on November 9, 1947, the son of a Guard. As a child the family moves to Cavan, County Cavan, where he attends the local secondary school. In his late teens he moves to London and works in a succession of jobs, including barman, security man and as a labourer. He later returns to Ireland, settling in Ballyconnell, County Sligo, a small settlement on the Atlantic coast.
Often overlooked due to his relatively low public profile, Healy’s work is admired by his Irish literary predecessors, peers and successors alike, many of whom idolise him. Among the writers to have spoken highly of him are Seamus Heaney, Eugene McCabe, Roddy Doyle, Patrick McCabe and Anne Enright.
Healy dies at his home in Ballyconnell on June 29, 2014, while awaiting an ambulance after suddenly being taken ill. He is laid to rest at Carrigans Cemetery following funeral mass by Fr. Michael Donnelly at St. Patrick’s Church in Maugherow, County Sligo.
Mhac an tSaoi is influenced by her stays in the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry with her uncle, Monsignor De Brún, at his parish of Dún Chaoin. Monsignor de Brún, similarly to his sister, is a distinguished linguist and Celticist, the literary translator of Homer, Dante Alighieri, Sophocles, and Jean Racine into Modern Irish, “and one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time.”
Mhac an tSaoi studies Modern Languages and Celtic Studies at UCD, before going to further research at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and at the University of Paris. She writes the famous work of Christian poetry in Munster Irish, Oíche Nollag (“Christmas Eve”), when she is only 15-years of age.
Mhac an tSaoi spends two years studying in post-war Paris (1945–47) before joining the Irish diplomatic service and is working at the Irish embassy in Madrid when she commits herself to writing poetry in Irish following her discovery of the works of Federico García Lorca.
She remains a prolific poet and is credited, along with Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máirtín Ó Direáin, with reintroducing literary modernism into Irish literature in the Irish language, where it had been dormant since the 1916 execution of Patrick Pearse, in the years and decades following World War II. Her poetry draws on the vernacular spoken by the native Irish speakers of the Munster Gaeltacht of West Kerry during the first half of the twentieth century. Formally, she draws on the song metres of the oral tradition and on older models from the earlier literary tradition. In later work, she explores looser verse forms but continues to draw on the remembered dialect of Dún Chaoin and on a scholarly knowledge of the older literature.
Mhac an tSaoi is elected to Aosdána in 1996 but resigns in 1997 after Francis Stuart is elevated to the position of Saoi. She had voted against Stuart because of his role as an Abwehr spy and in radio propaganda broadcasts from Nazi Germany aimed at neutral Ireland during World War II.
In 2001, she publishes an award-winning novel A Bhean Óg Ón… about the relationship between the 17th-century County Kerry poet and Irish clan chief Piaras Feiritéar and Meg Russell, the woman for whom he composed some of the greatest works of love poetry ever written in the Irish language.
Her poems Jack and An Bhean Óg Ón are both featured on the Leaving Certificate Irish course, at both Higher and Ordinary Levels, from 2006 to 2010. Her literary translation of Rainer Maria Rilke‘s Duino Elegies from Austrian German into the Irish language is published in 2013.
Mhac an tSaoi marries Irish politician, writer, and historian Conor Cruise O’Brien in a Roman Catholic wedding Mass in Dublin in 1962. This makes her the stepmother to O’Brien’s children from his 1939 civil marriage. Her mother is deeply embarrassed by the exposure of the relationship and staunchly opposes the match, as she has long been a close friend of O’Brien’s Presbyterian first wife. Despite their subsequent marriage, the exposure of their extramarital relationship ends Mhac an tSaoi’s diplomatic and civil service career. They later adopted two children, Patrick and Margaret.
She then lives with her husband in New York City, where he becomes a professor at New York University (NYU) after the Congo Crisis destroys O’Brien’s diplomatic career. He is long blamed by the United Nations for the escalation of the Congo Crisis.
Hutchinson is born in Glasgow, Scotland, on February 16, 1927. His father, Harry Hutchinson, a Scottish printer whose own father had left Dublin to find work in Scotland, is Sinn Féin treasurer in Glasgow and is interned in Frongoch internment camp in 1919–21. His mother, Cathleen Sara, is born in Cowcaddens, Glasgow, of emigrant parents from County Donegal. She is a friend of Constance Markievicz. In response to a letter from Cathleen, Éamon de Valera finds work in Dublin for Harry as a clerk in the Labour Exchange, and later he holds a post in Stationery Office.
Hutchinson is five years old when the family moves to Dublin and is the last to be enrolled in St. Enda’s School before it closes. He then goes to school at Synge Street CBS where he learns Irish and Latin. One of his close friends there is the poet and literary critic John Jordan. In 1948 he attends University College Dublin (UCD) where he spends a year and a half, learning Spanish and Italian.
Having published some poems in The Bell in 1945, Hutchinson’s poetic development is greatly influenced by a 1950 holiday in Spain and Portugal. A short stop en route at Vigo brings him into contact for the first time with the culture of Galicia. Later, in Andalusia, he is entranced by the landscape and by the works of the Spanish poets Federico García Lorca, Emilio Prados and Luis Cernuda.
In 1951 Hutchinson leaves Ireland again, determined to live in Spain. Unable to get work in Madrid, as he had hoped, he travels instead to Geneva, where he gets a job as a translator with the International Labour Organization, which brings him into contact with Catalan exiles, speaking a language then largely suppressed in Spain. An invitation by a Dutch friend leads to a visit to the Netherlands, in preparation for which he teaches himself the Dutch language.
Hutchinson returns to Ireland in 1953 and becomes interested in the Irish language poetry of writers such as Piaras Feiritéar and Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh and publishes a number of poems in Irish in the magazine Comhar in 1954. The same year he travels again to Spain, this time to Barcelona, where he learns the Catalan and Galician languages, and gets to know Catalan poets such as Salvador Espriu and Carles Riba. With the British poet P. J. Kavanagh, he organises a reading of Catalan poetry in the British Institute.
Hutchinson goes home to Ireland in 1957 but returns to Barcelona in 1961 and continues to support Catalan poets. An invitation by the publisher Joan Gili to translate some poems by Josep Carner leads to the publication of his first book, a collection of thirty of Carner’s poems in Catalan and English, in 1962. A project to publish his translation of Espriu’s La Pell de brau (The Bull-skin), falls through some years later. Some of the poems from this project are included in the collection Done into English.
In 1963, Hutchinson’s first collection of original poems in English, Tongue Without Hands, is published by Dolmen Press in Ireland. In 1967, having spent nearly ten years altogether in Spain, he returns to Ireland, making a living as a poet and journalist writing in both Irish and English. In 1968, a collection of poems in Irish, Faoistin Bhacach (A Lame Confession), is published. Expansions, a collection in English, follows in 1969. Friend Songs (1970) is a new collection of translations, this time of medieval poems originally written in Galician-Portuguese. In 1972 Watching the Morning Grow, a new collection of original poems in English, comes out, followed in 1975 by another, The Frost Is All Over.
In October 1971, Hutchinson takes up the Gregory Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Leeds, on the recommendation of Professor A. Norman Jeffares. There is some controversy around the appointment following accusations, later retracted, that Jeffares had been guilty of bias in the selection because of their joint Irish heritage. He holds tenure at the University for three years, and during that time contributes to the University’s influential poetry magazine Poetry & Audience.
From 1977 to 1978 Hutchinsonn compiles and presents Oró Domhnaigh, a weekly radio programme of Irish poetry, music and folklore for Ireland’s national network, RTÉ. He also contributes a weekly column on the Irish language to the station’s magazine RTÉ Guide for over ten years. A collaboration with Melita Cataldi of Old Irish lyrics into Italian is published in 1981. Another collection in English, Climbing the Light (1985), which also includes translations from Irish, Italian and Galician, is followed in 1989 by his last Irish collection, Le Cead na Gréine (By Leave of the Sun). The Soul that Kissed the Body (1990) is a selection of his Irish poems translated into English. His most recent English collection is Barnsley Main Seam (1995). His Collected Poems is published in 2002 to mark his 75th birthday. This is followed in 2003 by Done into English, a selection of many of the translated works he produced over the years.
A co-editor and founder of the literary journal Cyphers, Hutchinson receives the Butler Award for Irish writing in 1969. He is a member of Aosdána, the state-supported association of artists, from which he receives a cnuas (stipend) to allow him to continue writing. He describes this as “a miracle and a godsend” as he is fifty-four when invited to become a member and is at the end of his tether. A two-day symposium of events is held at Trinity College Dublin, to celebrate his 80th birthday in 2007, with readings from his works by writers including Macdara Woods, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan and Sujata Bhatt. His most recent collection, At Least for a While (2008), is shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award.
Hutchinson lives in Rathgar, Dublin, and dies of pneumonia in Dublin on January 14, 2012. His extensive archive is in the library of Maynooth University. Its opening on May 24, 2015, is accompanied by the inauguration of an annual Pearse Hutchinson seminar and the launch of a collection of unpublished Hutchinson poems, Listening to Bach.
Some critics argue that Hutchinson’s concern with simplicity and Ireland’s place in the comparative history of human oppression too often deteriorates into banality, didacticism, and regurgitation of sentimental revivalist tropes. Even these, however, acknowledge his occasional greatness, while his champions argue that his achievement has not yet been fully recognised and absorbed.
Frederick May, Irish composer and arranger, dies in Dublin on September 8, 1985. His musical career is seriously hindered by a lifelong hearing problem, and he produces relatively few compositions.
May is born on June 9, 1911, into a Dublin Protestant family who lives in the suburb of Donnybrook. His father, also named Frederick, is employed at the Guinness Brewery. He pursues his musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he is taught composition by John Larchet. In 1930, McCullough Pigott and Co. publishes his Irish Love Song. That same year he is awarded the Esposito Cup at the Feis Ceoil and as a result of this he is nominated as the first recipient of a new scholarship prize worth £100 to be spent on the further study of piano. In July 1930, he takes his preliminary examination for the Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) before departing Dublin to utilise his scholarship in London. In September he enrolls at the Royal College of Music (RCM) where his teachers include Charles Kitson, Ralph Vaughan Williams, R. O. Morris and Gordon Jacob. He takes his final TCD examination in December 1931 submitting a string quartet and on December 10 his degree is conferred. During 1932 his study is funded by the RCM’s Foli Scholarship and in October he is awarded the Octavia Travelling Scholarship.
May’s compositions are few in number and he produces most of his small output in the 1930s and early 1940s. His first significant work is the Scherzo for Orchestra, written while he is still a student in London. The first orchestral run through of Scherzo for Orchestra takes place on March 17, 1933, and it receives its first public performance on December 1 when it is heard as part of the Patron’s Concert. Between the months of May and October he composes his Four Romantic Songs, which receive their premiere in London at a Macnaghten-Lemare concert on January 22, 1934. At some point, probably in the second half of 1933, he follows in the footsteps of other Octavia Scholarship winners and travels to Vienna to study with Egon Wellesz.
On January 1, 1936, May takes up the position of Director of Music at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, a position he retains until he is fired in 1948. His duties mainly consist of leading the piano trio which bears the title “The Abbey Orchestra” in music during the intervals of productions. In 1936, he composes what is today his best-known composition, the String Quartet in C Minor, described in the Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians as “one of the most individual statements from an Irish composer in the first half of the 20th century.” He composes the quartet as his hearing is beginning to deteriorate and he later describes it as “an appeal for release.” String Quartet in C Minor is not premiered until 1948 when it is performed by the Martin Quartet in the Wigmore Hall, London. This is followed by Symphonic Ballad (1937), Suite of Irish Airs (1937), Spring Nocturne (1938), Songs from Prison (1941) and Lyric Movement for Strings (1942). He effectively ceases original composition at this point.
Following a long break from composition, May produces what is to be his valedictory work in 1955, the nine-minute orchestral piece Sunlight and Shadows. It is given its first performance on January 22, 1956, by the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. Although this is his last original work, he does not abandon music completely. He produces arrangements of Irish music for Radio Éireann, which while not perhaps rewarding artistically, does help to alleviate his always precarious financial situation. He also composes a number of songs for voice and piano and a short piece entitled Idyll for violin and piano. The latter is chosen as a set work for the junior violin competition at the Feis Ceoil in 2017.
Throughout his life May suffers from significant mental health issues which result in hospitalisation. He also experiences otosclerosis, as a result of which he gradually becomes increasingly deaf. In addition, he suffers from severe tinnitus with constant ringing noises in his head. In later life he becomes homeless for a time due to alcoholism and sleeps at night in Grangegorman Asylum, Dublin. He is rescued by some friends led by Garech Browne whose record company, Claddagh Records, records the String Quartet in 1974.
Throughout his career May is an advocate of better musical education in Ireland and expresses his views on this and other musical matters through the medium of The Bell, a monthly journal dealing with the arts. He is a co-founder, along with Brian Boydell and Aloys Fleischmann, of the Music Association of Ireland (now “Friends of Classical Music”), set up in 1948 to promote art music as an integral part of the cultural life of Ireland. Later he becomes a member of Aosdána. He lives the last years of his life at Orthopaedic Hospital of Ireland, Clontarf, Dublin. He dies on September 8, 1985, at the age of 74 and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.
seamus dubhghaill 