O’Conor is the second of six sons of Denis O’Conor and Catharine O’Conor (neé Browne), who also have six daughters. The O’Conors are Catholic, descendants of a princely family in the west of Ireland. His grandfather is the historian Charles O’Conor, his brother the historian Matthew O’Conor.
O’Conor is educated at the Pontifical Irish College, Rome, from 1779 to 1791 and is appointed parish priest of Kilkeevan, County Roscommon, in 1789. In 1796 he prepares for publication a memoir of his grandfather, the historian Charles O’Connor, which highlights the efforts made by him and other Irish Catholics of substance to obtain the constitutional repeal of the penal laws. The first volume is suppressed as dangerous to the family and the manuscript of the second is burned by O’Conor before reaching the printer. He destroys what he believes to be the whole run of the first volume and ten folios of the second, by casting them into a sewer, which communicates with the River Poddle. However, copies of the first volume survive in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Barrister at Law (BL).
In 1798 O’Conor is invited to become chaplain to Mary Nugent, the Marchioness of Buckingham, and to organize and translate a collection of Gaelic manuscripts at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. With him he brings papers of his grandfather to Stowe, including fifty-nine Gaelic manuscripts. There he writes Columbanus ad Hibernos (1810–13), a series of letters supporting the royal veto on Catholic episcopal appointments in Ireland. These are answered by Francis Plowden and see him suspended from duties of parish priest by John Troy, Archbishop of Dublin. In his duties as librarian, he edits the Annals of the Four Masters, and other chronicles from the Stowe Library as Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres (1814–26), an edition regarded as unreliable.
O’Conor experiences mental illness and by 1827 is suffering from the delusion that he is deliberately being starved by order of the Marquess of Buckingham. He leaves Stowe on July 4, 1827. The Nation (March 26, 1853) claims that he is thereafter a patient at Dr. Harty’s asylum in Finglas, Dublin, apparently along with John Lanigan, whom he knew in the Irish College. His family twice unavailingly demands that the paper’s editor issue a correction.
O’Conor dies on July 29, 1828, in his family’s house at Bellanagare. He is buried in Ballintober Cemetery, Castlerea, County Roscommon.
Shatter is the son of Reuben and Elaine Shatter, an English couple who meet by chance when they are both on holiday in Ireland in 1947. He is educated at The High School, Dublin, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Europa Institute of the University of Amsterdam. In his late teens, he works for two months in Israel on a kibbutz. He is a partner in the Dublin law firm Gallagher Shatter (1977-2011). As a solicitor he acts as advocate in many seminal and leading cases determined both by the Irish High and Supreme Courts. He is the author of one the major academic works on Irish family law which advocates substantial constitutional and family law reform.
Under Shatter’s steerage, a substantial reform agenda is implemented with nearly 30 separate pieces of legislation published, many of which are now enacted including the Personal Insolvency Act 2012, Criminal Justice Act 2011, DNA Database Act, and the Human Rights and Equality Commission Act.
Under Shatter’s guidance, major reforms are introduced in 2011 into Ireland’s citizenship laws and a new Citizenship Ceremony is created. He both devises and pilots Ireland’s first ever citizenship ceremony which takes place in June 2011 and a new inclusive citizenship oath which he includes in his reforming legislation. During his time as Minister, he clears an enormous backlog of citizenship applications, and 69,000 foreign nationals become Irish citizens. Some applications had lain dormant for 3 to 4 years. He introduces a general rule that save where there is some real complication, all properly made citizenship applications should be processed within a six-month period. He also takes steps to facilitate an increased number of political refugees being accepted into Ireland and creates a special scheme to facilitate relations of Syrian families already resident in Ireland who are either caught up in the Syrian civil war, or in refugee camps elsewhere as a result of the Syrian civil war, to join their families in Ireland.
Shatter enacts legislation before the end of July 2011 to facilitate access to financial documentation and records held by third parties in investigations into banking scandals and white-collar crime. The legislation is first used by the Gardaí in September 2011.
During Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2013, Shatter chairs the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA) meetings and, in January 2013, in Dublin Castle, the meeting of EU Defence Ministers. Under his guidance, Ireland plays a more active role than in the past in EU defence matters and in deepening Ireland’s participation in NATO’s partnership for peace. During the Irish Presidency, substantial progress is made at the European Union level in the adoption and development of new legislation and measures across a broad range of Justice and Home Affairs issues.
Shatter implements substantial reform in the Department of Defence and restructures the Irish Defence Forces. He is a strong supporter of the Irish Defence Forces participation in international peacekeeping and humanitarian engagements and is an expert on the Middle East. As a member of the Irish Parliament and as Minister on many occasions, he visits Irish troops participating in United Nations (UN) missions in the Middle East. Under his watch contracts are signed for the acquisition of two new naval vessels with an option to purchase a third. All three naval vessels are now part of the Irish Naval Service and have been actively engaged in recent years in rescuing drowning refugees in the Mediterranean Sea attempting to enter Europe.
As Minister for Defence he enacts legislation to grant a pardon and an amnesty to members of the Irish Defence Forces who deserted during World War II to fight on the allied side against Nazi Germany and gives a state apology for their post-war treatment by the Irish State.
Shatter is the minister responsible for two amendments to the Constitution of Ireland which are passed in referendums: the Twenty-ninth Amendment in 2011 to allow for the reduction of judges’ pay, and the Thirty-third Amendment in 2013 to establish a Court of Appeal. Just prior to his resignation from government, the draft legislation to create the court is published and the court is established and sitting by October 2014.
The jurisdictions of the courts are extended for the first time in 20 years and the maximum civil damages payable for the emotional distress of bereaved relations following a negligent death is increased.
As a politician, Shatter plays a lead role in effecting much of the constitutional and legislative change he advocates. He is a former chairperson of FLAC (the Free Legal Advice Centres), a former chairperson of CARE, an organisation that campaigns for childcare and children’s legislation reform in the 1970s and a former President of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports.
Shatter is a founder member of the Irish Soviet Jewry Committee in 1970 and pioneers a successful all party Dáil motion on the plight of Soviet Jewry (1984) and visits various refuseniks in Moscow in 1985. He is a former chairperson of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee (1996-97) and initiates the creation of an Ireland/Israel Parliamentary Friendship group in 1997, leading a number of visits to Israel by members of the Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann.
Shatter is the author of the satirical book Family Planning Irish Style (1979), and the novel Laura (1989). In 2017 his biography, Life is a Funny Business, is published by Poolbeg Press and in 2019 Frenzy and Betrayal: The Anatomy of a Political Assassination is published by Merrion Press. In 2023, his book Cyril’s Lottery of Life, a comedic book with an English solicitor from a small town as its protagonist, is published.
Byrne is born on March 20, 1780, at Ballylusk, Monaseed, County Wexford, the eldest son of Patrick Byrne, a middling Catholic farmer, and Mary (née Graham). He joins the United Irishmen in the spring of 1797 and, although only seventeen, becomes one of the organisation’s most active agents in north Wexford.
When rebellion engulfs his home district on May 27, 1798, Byrne assumes command of the local Monaseed corps and rallies them at Fr. John Murphy‘s camp on Carrigrew Hill on June 3. They fight at the rebel victory at Tubberneering on June 4 and the unsuccessful attempt to capture Arklow five days later. After the dispersal of the main rebel camp at Vinegar Hill on June 21, he accompanies Murphy to Kilkenny but begins the retreat to Wexford four days later. Heavily attacked at Scollagh Gap, he is one of a minority of survivors who spurn the proffered amnesty and join the rebel forces in the Wicklow Mountains. He is absent when the main force defeats a cavalry column at Ballyellis on June 30 but protects the wounded who are left in Glenmalure when the rebels launch a foray into the midlands the following week. He takes charge of the Wexfordmen who regain the mountains and fight a series of minor actions in the autumn and winter of 1798 under the militant Wicklow leader Joseph Holt. On November 10, he seizes an opportunity to escape into Dublin, where he works as a timber-yard clerk with his half-brother Edward Kennedy.
Byrne is introduced to Robert Emmet in late 1802 and immediately becomes a prominent figure in his insurrection plot. He is intended to command the many Wexford residents of the city during the planned rising of 1803. On July 23, 1803, he assembles a body of rebels at the city quays, which disperse once news is received that the rising has miscarried. At Emmet’s request, he escapes to Bordeaux in August 1803 and makes his way to Paris to inform Thomas Addis Emmet and William James MacNeven of the failed insurrection. In his Paris diary, the older Emmet recalls passing on “the news brought by the messenger” to Napoleon Bonaparte‘s military advisors.
Byrne enlists in the newly formed Irish Legion in December 1803 as a sub-lieutenant and is promoted to lieutenant in 1804 but only sees garrison duty. The regiment eventually moves to the Low Countries, and is renamed the 3rd Foreign Regiment in 1808, the year he is promoted to captain. He campaigns in Spain until 1812, participating in counterinsurgency against Spanish guerillas. He fights in Napoleon’s last battles and is appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur on June 18, 1813. With Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the former Irish Legion, with its undistinguished and somewhat unfortunate history, is disbanded.
Though a supporter of Napoleon during the Hundred Days, Byrne is not involved in his return, yet he is included in an exclusion order from France which he successfully appeals. In November 1816, he swears the oath of loyalty to the now Royal Order of the Legion of Honour and becomes a naturalised French subject by royal decree on August 20, 1817. He becomes a half-pay captain but is recalled for active service in 1828 and serves as a staff officer in the French expeditionary force in Morea in support of Greek independence (1828–1830). His conduct on this campaign leads to his promotion as chef de bataillon (lieutenant-colonel) of the 56th Infantry Regiment in 1830.
After five years of service in garrisons around France, including counterinsurgency duty in Brittany, Byrne retires from the army in 1835. On December 24, 1835, he marries a Scottish woman, Frances “Fanny” Horner, at the British Embassy Chapel in Paris. They live in modest circumstances in various parts of Paris and remain childless. Though it is unclear when he is awarded the Chevalier de St Louis, having initially applied for it unsuccessfully in 1821, this distinction is mentioned in his tomb inscription, under his Legion of Honour. John Mitchel, who visits him regularly in Paris in the late 1850s, recalls Byrne sporting the rosette of the Médaille de Sainte Hélène, awarded in 1857 to surviving veterans of Napoleon’s campaigns.
An early list of Irish Legion officers describes Byrne as an upright and disciplined man, with little formal instruction but aspiring to improve himself. He becomes fully fluent in French but also learns Spanish and his language skills are a useful asset in various campaigns. Because of his suspected Bonapartist leanings, he is under police surveillance for some time after the Bourbon Restoration. He does, however, cultivate a wide social circle in Paris over the years. Various references throughout his writings testify to an inquisitive and cultured mind. He intended publishing a lengthy criticism of Gustave de Beaumont‘s Irlande, sociale, politique et religieuse (1840), claiming that it misrepresented the 1798 rebellion, but he withdraws it after meeting the author, not wishing to prejudice the reception of such an important French work on “the sufferings of Ireland.”
A lifelong nationalist, Byrne acts as Paris correspondent of The Nation in the 1840s and is a well-known figure in the Irish community there. He works in the 1850s on his notably unapologetic and candid Memoirs, an early and significant contribution to the Irish literature of exile. This autobiography is acclaimed by nationalists when published posthumously by his wife in 1863, with a French translation swiftly following in 1864. His detailed testimony of key battles of the 1798 rebellion in the southeast and Emmet’s conspiracy are written with the immediacy of an eyewitness and make them an invaluable contribution to that period of Irish history.
Byrne dies on January 24, 1862, in Paris, and is buried in Montmartre Cemetery. On November 25, 1865, John Martin writes of him: “In truth he was a beautiful example of those natures that never grow old. A finer, nobler, gentler, kindlier, gayer, sunnier nature never was than his, and to the last he had the brightness and quickness and cheeriness of youth”.
Byrne’s engaging and dispassionate Memoirs have ensured his special status among Irish nationalists. Because of his longevity he is the only United Irishman to have been photographed. His wife had sketched him in profile in middle age, and the photograph taken almost three decades later shows the same, strong features though those of a frail, but dignified man of 79 years.
(From: “Byrne, Miles” by Ruan O’Donnell and Sylvie Kleinman, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, last revised August 2024 | Pictured: Photograph of Miles Byrne taken in Paris in 1859)
Blackham is born in London, England, on December 16, 1891. His father, William George Blackham, is an Ulster Protestant from Newry, while his mother is an Englishwoman named Evison Elizabeth Saunders. An uncle is Robert J. Blackham who is the Surgeon-General to the British Army in Ireland. The family are evangelical Protestants, against which he rebels. Having been brought up to take the Bible literally, he suffers a religious crisis upon the realisation his teachers at school do not. He finds the transition to adulthood difficult, particularly due to the early death of his father.
For a time, Blackham moves in socialist circles, under the influence of Ulster socialist Robert Wilson Lynd. However, upon the discovery that his father had been a Protestant who had been in favour of Irish home rule and also had some republican sympathies, he turns toward Irish nationalism.
Blackham becomes involved in the Gaelic League while in London. he Gaelicizes his name to Aodh Sandrach de Blácam or Hugh de Blácam, despite his non-Gaelic ethnic origin. He learns the Irish language from the essayist Robert Wilson Lynd. During this time, he seeks to synthesize his urge to reclaim his sense of Irish nationality with the works and thoughts of hardline Catholic author G. K. Chesterton. It is partially because of Chesterton’s influence that he converts to Catholicism, although the conversion of Protestant Irish Nationalists to Catholicism is common throughout the early 20th century. Another influence upon his decision to convert is his desire to marry Catholic Mary McCarville of County Monaghan.
In May 1914 de Blácam returns to Ireland and begins working as a freelance journalist. He joins the Enniscorthy Echo as a journalist in 1915.
During the Irish War of Independence de Blácam writes nationalist propaganda alongside Arthur Griffith and Herbert Moore Pim. He is interned by the British in 1919. During this time period he writes two political manifestoes: Towards the Republic; a study of new Ireland’s social and political aims (1918) and What Sinn Féin Stands For (1921). The two books argue that at their root, Catholic social teaching (CST) and Bolshevism are essentially identical and that Ireland, having only experienced feudalism and capitalism because of external forces, can skip many of the phrases normally described in the Marxist Trajectory of historical development and go straight to a soviet-type society, an idea not dissimilar to the two-stage theory. He imagines this soviet-type society to be an Irish-speaking decentralised rural cooperative commonwealth. Critics of Sinn Féin frequently cite his works as proof of the infeasibility of Sinn Féin’s aims.
De Blácam opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and subsequently aids the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish Civil War. For this he is interned by the newly created Irish Free State in 1922. Following his release, he continues to pin his flag to the mast of Éamon de Valera and his newly formed Fianna Fáil party. He believes De Valera fully embodies his own political ideas.
During the 1920s de Blácam joins The Irish Times, which he later leaves to become editor of The Catholic Standard. For seventeen years he writes a feature in the Fianna Fáil aligned The Irish Press called “Roddy the Rover.”
It was also during the 1920s that de Blácam moves to Dublin, where he begins to move in the same circles as George Bernard Shaw, George Russell, and W. B. Yeats. He hopes all three men might one day convert to Catholicism as he did and is sorely disappointed when each do not. Upon the death of Yeats, he goes so far as to refer to Yeats’ poem as “Demonic.” He has similar hopes for Peadar O’Donnell but is similarly disappointed in his lack of interest in conversion.
In 1938 de Blácam publishes The Black North, a book which carries an introduction by de Valera. In the book he argues that Ulster Protestants are in actuality both Irish and Catholic, but they simply do not realise it. Among his arguments to support this idea are the suggestions that the presbyterian emphasis on self-government is derived from the Gaelic clan tradition, that presbyterian “kailyard” writers of rural nostalgia such as Lydia Mary Foster exemplify the naturally Irish piety and purity of her co-religionists, and that the fact that some workers commute from the Armagh borderland to work in Dundalk factories prove that the south is better off economically than the north.
It is suggested de Blácam is an influence upon de Valera’s 1943 broadcast “The Ireland That We Dreamed Of.” Politically he is highly considered about rural depopulation and is involved in a number of organisations seeking to end it. He advocates more economic autarky and cultural protectionism to combat rural depopulation and lamented urbanisation and industrialisation. He also tries to convince the Fianna Fáil executive that they should ban women from emigration as well as ban women from factories in order to force women to remain in rural Ireland. His ideas fail to impress the executive, with Seán MacEntee in particular standing in strong disagreement.
De Blácam is a member of the Fianna Fáil executive until 1947, when he defects to the upstart Irish Republican party Clann na Poblachta. For this move he is immediately fired from The Irish Press. He stands for Clann na Poblachta in the Louth constituency at the 1948 Irish general election but is not elected.
During the brief period in which Clann na Poblachta is in government, de Blácam serves as an official spokesman for the Department of Health and as a speechwriter to Noël Browne, the embattled Minister for Health.
De Blácam dies while working in the Custom House on January 16, 1951. His funeral is attended by many dignitaries including TaoiseachJohn A. Costello and former Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. He is buried in New Mellifont Abbey, County Louth.
Mac Thomáis comes from a staunch Republican family. His father, a fire-brigade officer, dies when he is five years old and his family moves to Goldenbridge, Inchicore, Dublin. He leaves school at thirteen to work as delivery boy for White Heather Laundry, learning Dublin neighbourhoods with great thoroughness. He says he found work to help his mother pay the rent. He later works as a clerk and is appointed credit controller for an engineering firm.
At the November 1959 Ardfheis Mac Thomáis is elected to the Ardchomhairle of Sinn Féin and edits and contributes to the Sinn Féin newspaper United Irishman. He is a close friend of Tomás Mac Giolla and is deeply affected by the 1970 split in Sinn Féin. He takes the Provisional side, opposing Mac Giolla.
Mac Thomáis takes over as editor of An Phoblacht in 1972. In July 1973, he is arrested and charged with IRA membership at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin. He refuses to recognise the court, but he gives a lengthy address from the dock. The following month he is sentenced to 15-months imprisonment. Within two months of completing his sentence he is again before the court on the same charge and again receives a 15-month sentence. Editors of six left-wing and Irish-language journals call for his release, as do a number of writers, and hundreds attend protest meetings – to no avail. He serves his full sentence.
Tim Pat Coogan, editor of The Irish Press, claims the charges against Mac Thomáis are politically motivated to a large degree as his activities are confined strictly to the newspaper An Phoblacht. Under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, due to his membership in Sinn Féin in the 1970s he is removed from his position in making some of the RTÉ historical programmes. As a historian he makes numerous contributions to various historical publications such as the Dublin Historical Review.
From 1974 Mac Thomáis writes a number of books on old Dublin. They sell well and remain in print for over 20 years. He also starts a number of walking tours of Dublin, which prove very popular.
Thompson is the youngest child of the social historians and peace activists E. P. Thompson and Dorothy Towers. She has lived in Ireland since 1981 and many of her books are set there. She trains racehorses in the UK and United States and travels extensively in India before settling in 1984 in Inagh, County Clare, in the west of Ireland with her partner Conor Minogue. They have two daughters, Cliodhna and Dearbhla. She is an accomplished fiddler with an interest in Irish traditional music, which is reflected in The New Policeman (2005).
Dunphy grows up in Drumcondra, Dublin, in what he describes as “a one-room tenement flat [with] no electricity, no hot water.” He attends Saint Patrick’s National School, Drumcondra. In 1958, he gets a one-year government scholarship to Sandymount High School but has to work as a messenger at the tweed clothing shop Kevin and Howlin.
A promising footballer, Dunphy leaves Dublin while still a teenager to join Manchester United as an apprentice. He does not break into the first team at United, and subsequently leaves to play for York City, Millwall, Charlton Athletic, Reading and Shamrock Rovers. It is at Millwall that he makes the most impact. He is considered an intelligent and skillful player in the side’s midfield. He is a member of “The Class of ’71,” the Millwall side that fails by just one point to gain promotion to the Football League First Division.
Dunphy accompanies Johnny Giles back to Ireland to join Shamrock Rovers in 1977. Giles wants to make the club Ireland’s first full-time professional club and hopes to make Rovers into a force in European football by developing talented young players at home who would otherwise go to clubs in England. Dunphy is originally intended to be in charge of youth development. However, despite an FAI Cup winners medal in 1978, his only medal in senior football, and two appearances in the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, he becomes disillusioned with the Irish game and drops out of football altogether to concentrate on a career in journalism.
Since the 1980s, Dunphy has written a number of books. His first and most widely praised book is Only a Game? The Diary of a Professional Footballer, which is an autobiographical account of his days playing for Millwall. Written in diary form, it records events from the dressing room of his 1973–74 season, which begins well for him at Millwall but subsequently ends in disillusionment: after being substituted in an October 27, 1973, home loss to eventual league winners Middlesbrough, he does not play another game all season, the club finishing mid-table.
In 1985, rock band U2 and manager Paul McGuinness commission Dunphy to write the story of their origins, formation, early years and the time leading up to their highly successful album The Joshua Tree. His book Unforgettable Fire – Past, Present, and Future – The Definitive Biography of U2 is published in 1988. It receives some favourable reviews, but critics close to the band speak of many inaccuracies. A verbal war erupts in the press during which he calls lead singer Bono a “pompous git.”
Dunphy also writes a biography of long-serving Manchester United manager Matt Busby and in 2002 ghost writes the autobiography of Republic of Ireland and Manchester United player Roy Keane.
Since the mid-1980s, Dunphy has regularly appeared as an analyst during football coverage on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). Since RTÉ acquired the rights to show English football, he has been a regular contributor to Premier Soccer Saturday. He also contributes to analysis of UEFA Champions League games and, in international football, RTÉ’s coverage of FIFA World Cups, UEFA European Football Championships and qualifying matches involving the Republic of Ireland national football team.
In 2001, Dunphy becomes the first male host of the quiz show The Weakest Link, which airs on TV3, for just one series. In 2003, he is hired again by TV3 to host their new Friday night chat show, entitled The Dunphy Show. Pitted head-to-head with RTÉ’s long-running flagship programme, The Late Late Show, Dunphy’s show loses what is a highly publicised “ratings war,” and is cancelled before its original run concludes.
Dunphy is the first presenter of a made-for-mobile television show on the 3 mobile network in Ireland. His rants and “Spoofer of the Week” are watched by thousands of 3 Mobile customers. The shows are awarded “Best Entertainment Show” at Ireland’s Digital Media Awards. He admits he never uses a mobile himself but enjoys filming for a mobile audience from his living room in Ranelagh.
In July 2018, Dunphy announces that he is leaving RTÉ after 40 years with the broadcaster, and that he intends to focus on his podcastThe Stand with Eamon Dunphy.
Dunphy has also has a prominent radio career with several stations, including Today FM, Newstalk and RTÉ Radio 1. He is the original host in 1997 of the popular current affairs show The Last Word on Today FM. In September 2004, he takes over The Breakfast Show slot on the Dublin radio station Newstalk 106 from David McWilliams. The show tries to court controversy and listeners in equal measure. He fails to attract the large listenership predicted, with only a few additional thousand tuning in. He announces in June 2006 his intention to leave Newstalk 106, citing an inability to sustain the demands of an early morning schedule. After his departure from Newstalk 106, he confirms he is suffering from a viral illness from which he later recovers.
In July 2006, RTÉ announces that Dunphy will present a new weekly programme as part of the new RTÉ Radio 1 autumn schedule.
Dunphy rejoins Newstalk but leaves again in 2011 “due to interference from management and a push to put a more positive spin on the news.” On his last show he accuses his boss, Denis O’Brien, of “hating journalism.” He quits after Sam Smyth is sacked from Today FM (also owned by O’Brien) and says management at Newstalk is trying to remove “dissenting voices” like Constantin Gurdgiev from the airwaves.
Dunphy is a daily Mass-goer until he is preparing for marriage to his first wife, Sandra from Salford, when he is 21. He is Catholic and she is Protestant. The priest instructing them for marriage disapproves strongly of the mixed couple, saying that he should not marry her because she is “not a proper person.” Dunphy’s observance is already weakening but he quits his daily Mass-going at this point. He and Sandra have two children, a boy and a girl, and he is now a grandfather. His first marriage ends, and he moves to Castletownshend in County Cork for two years in the early 1990s. He lives with another partner, Inge, before meeting his second wife, RTÉ commissioning editor Jane Gogan, in the Horseshoe Bar in Dublin in 1992. They marry at the Unitarian Church on St. Stephen’s Green on September 24, 2009.
In an interview with An Phoblacht, Dunphy, who had previously written highly critical articles on the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, states that he is now a Sinn Féin supporter and declares he had voted for them in the 2011 Irish general election. He describes their representatives as “incredibly hard-working and incredibly intelligent.”
Dunphy publishes his autobiography entitled The Rocky Road in October 2013.
Today, Dunphy generally resides at his home near Ranelagh in Dublin. He also owns a holiday home in Deauville, France.
(Pictured: Éamon Dunphy at the Sinn Féin Summer School, 2013)
Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which is to shape his later view of Ireland. He attends Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.
After graduating, Gwynn spends ten years from 1886 tutoring as a schoolmaster, for a time in France, which creates a lifelong interest in French culture, as expressed in his Praise of France (1927). By 1896 he has developed an interest in writing, becoming a writer and journalist in London focused on English themes, until he comes into contact with the emerging Irish literary revival, when he serves as secretary of the Irish Literary Society.
This is the beginning of a long and prolific career as a writer covering a wide range of literary genres, from poetry and biographical subjects to general historical works. The eighteenth century is Gwynn’s particular specialism. He writes numerous books on travel and on the topography of his own homeland, as well as on his other interests: wine, eighteenth-century painting and fishing.
Gwynn returns to Ireland in 1904 when he enters politics. In the 1906 Galway Borough by-election he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this period, he is active in the Gaelic League and is one of the few Irish MPs to have close links to the Irish literary revival. Along with Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts he founds the Dublin publishing house of Maunsel and Company. He is opposed to the demand for the Irish language to be a compulsory subject for matriculation. He supports the campaign which wins the establishment of a Catholic university when he serves on the Irish University Royal Commission in 1908. During the debate on the third Home Rule Bill, and at the request of his party leader John Redmond, he writes The case for Home Rule (1911) and is in charge of much of the party’s official publicity and its replies to criticism from Sinn Féin.
On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gwynn strongly supports Redmond’s encouragement of Irish nationalists and the Irish National Volunteers to support the Allied and British war effort by enlisting in Irish regiments of the Irish Divisions, especially as a means to ensure the implementation of the suspended Home Rule Act at the end of an expectedly short war. Now over fifty, he enlists in January 1915 with the 7th Leinster Regiment in the 16th (Irish) Division. In July he is commissioned as a captain in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Connaught Rangers and serves with them on the Western Front at Messines, the Somme and elsewhere.
Gwynn is one of five Irish Nationalist MPs who enlist and serve in the army, the others being John L. Esmonde, Willie Redmond, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan, as well as former MP Tom Kettle. Together with Kettle and William Redmond, he undertakes a recruitment drive for the Irish divisions, co-operating with Kettle on a collection of ballads called Battle Songs for the Irish Brigade (1915). He is made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in July 1915. In 1916, he is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission.
Recalled to Ireland in late 1917 to participate in the Irish Convention chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett, Gwynn sides with the Redmondite faction of the Irish Party in supporting a compromise with the southern unionists in an attempt to reach consensus on a Home Rule settlement which would avoid partition. On the death of Redmond in March 1918, he takes over as leader of the moderate nationalists in the Convention. He opposes the threat of compulsory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1918, though as a member of the Irish Recruiting Council he continues to support voluntary recruitment, encountering intense opposition led by Sinn Féin.
Gwynn forms the Irish Centre Party in 1919 and stands unsuccessfully as an Independent Nationalist for Dublin University in the 1918 Irish general election. The party merges with Plunkett’s Irish Dominion League to press for a settlement by consent on the basis of dominion status, but Gwynn subsequently breaks with Plunkett due to his willingness to accept partition as a temporary compromise. The polarities which divide Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War increasingly sideline his brand of moderate cultural nationalism. Although he supports the newly emergent nation, he equally condemns some of the excesses, such as the burning of houses belonging to Free State senators.
Gwynn’s personal life also becomes complicated at this stage and around 1920. He has a romantic association with married artist Grace Henry who is perhaps the best-known female artist in Ireland at the time. During this period, he and Grace travel in France and Italy and at various stages in his life she painted portraits of him including a very distinguished looking one of him in his late 60s or early 70s. Their relationship contributes significantly to the separation of Henry from her artist husband Paul Henry in 1930.
During the 1920s, Gwynn also devotes himself to writing, covering political events as Irish correspondent to The Observer and The Times. Later in his career, he writes some substantial works, and together with his son Denis Gwynn (The Life of John Redmond, 1932) does much to shape the retrospective image and self-justification of John Redmond. In the mid-1930s he authors three books with a connecting theme of fishing with the artist Roy Beddington serving as illustrator: The Happy Fisherman (1936), From River to River (1937), and Two in a Valley (1938).
Gwynn is awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1940, and a Litt.D. by the University of Dublin in 1945. The Irish Academy of Letters awards him the Gregory Medal in April 1950. In his literary writings he stands for a humanism and tolerance, which qualities, due to political upheavals, were relatively rare in the Ireland of his day.
Gwynn dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin, and is buried at Tallaght Cemetery, south County Dublin.
Gwynn marries his cousin Mary Louisa (d. 1941), daughter of Rev. James Gwynn. She later converts to Catholicism. They have three sons and two daughters who are brought up in her religion, of whom Aubrey (1892–1983) becomes a Jesuit priest and professor of medieval history at University College Dublin (UCD). Their second son, Denis Rolleston (1893–1971), is professor of modern Irish history at University College Cork (UCC).
Gwynn’s brother Edward John (1868–1941) becomes provost of Trinity College and another brother Robert Malcolm becomes its senior dean. His sister Lucy Gwynn is the first woman registrar of Trinity. A third brother, Charles, has a successful career in the British Army and retires as a Major General. Younger brothers Lucius and Jack are noted cricketers.
Pat Falvey, Irish high-altitude mountaineer, expedition leader, polar explorer, entrepreneur, author, corporate/personal trainer/coach, and motivational speaker, is born in Cork, County Cork, on June 2, 1957. He is the first person to complete the Seven Summits twice, with the summiting of Mount Everest reached from both the Tibetan (1996) and Nepalese sides (2004). He is expedition leader of the team that sees Clare O’Leary become the first Irish woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2004. Other extreme expeditions that he makes include walking to the South Pole, crossing South Georgia island, and traversing the Greenland ice sheet. He starts his first business at 15 years of age and has since had businesses in property development, finance, construction, insurance, tourism, and film production. He has been a motivational speaker since the 1990s.
Raised on the north side of Cork city, Falvey starts mountain climbing in his late twenties, having worked as a builder and property developer from his late teens onward. Following the economic recession of the mid-1980s in Ireland, he loses most of his wealth and discovers mountaineering in his late 20s.
Falvey begins his climbing career with hill walking and climbing on the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks in County Kerry. He then devotes himself to training to become a high-altitude mountaineer. He trains initially with the Cork Mountaineering Club, at Tiglin in County Wicklow and becomes a member of Kerry Mountain Rescue, climbing very frequently in Ireland, Scotland, France and the Himalayas.
In June 1994, Falvey climbs Denali, also known as Mount McKinley, in Alaska, reaching the first summit in his Seven Summits attempt. This is followed by Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (January 1995), Mount Everest via the Northeast Ridge (June 1995), Aconcagua in Argentina (December 1995), Mount Elbrus in Russia (March 1996), Vinson Massif in Antarctica (January 1997) and Mount Kosciusko in Australia (February 1997). He is the first Irish man (and the 32nd person in the world) to complete the Seven Summits.
Falvey is the expedition leader of the first Irish team to reach the summit of Cho Oyu in China and Nepal without oxygen, on May 20, 1998. He reaches the summit of Ama Dablam in Nepal on November 3, 1999. In 2003, he is the expedition leader of the first Irish team to reach the summit of Mount Everest via the South-Southeast Ridge, with team members Ger McDonnell and Mick Murphy reaching the summit. On May 18, 2004, he reaches the summit of Everest via the South-Southeast Ridge, and leads the expedition that sees the first Irish woman, Dr. Clare O’Leary, reach the top of Everest.
Falvey and O’Leary complete the Seven Summits on December 16, 2005, when he becomes the first person to complete the Seven Summits twice by climbing Mount Everest from both the Tibetan and Nepalese sides.
In 2006, Falvey leads a group of 32 across the South Georgia Traverse on South Georgia island in honour of Polar explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Kerryman Tom Crean, in the Beyond Endurance Antarctic expedition. He leads the first Irish traverse of Greenland in 2006. In January 2008, he leads a four-person Irish expedition to the South Pole. In April 2009, he and O’Leary do a “symbolic” walk to the North Pole, completing the final four-day trek to the Pole.
Falvey joins the Kerry county football team as a “sports performance coach” in 2021. Manager Peter Keane says, “You take us in this country with five million people and we have had some unbelievable adventurers like Shackleton and Crean; you look at someone like Pat who has climbed Everest twice from two different sides, managed to climb the Seven Summits twice, and I am looking to see if he can bring something different in here.”
Falvey’s publications include Reach for the Sky (The Collins Press, 1997), A Journey to Adventure: Stories I never thought I’d tell (The Collins Press, 2007), The Summit: How Triumph Turned to Tragedy on K2’s Deadliest Days (Beyond Endurance Publishing with The O’Brien Press, 2013), You Have the Power: Explore the Mindset You Need to Realise Your Dreams (Beyond Endurance Publishing, 2016) and Accidental Rebel (Beyond Endurance Publishing, 2018).
Brenan is born in Cork, County Cork, on November 17, 1828. He begins to write verse at an early age and is one of the genuine poets of the Young Ireland movement. His earlier poems are published under the initials “J. B., Cork,” or “J. B—n,” and some of his American verses under the pseudonym “Gondalez.” He is also an able prose writer.
Brenan is an active member of the Cork Historical Society, and is one of the editors of the Cork Magazine, which appears in November 1847, and continues to be published until the end of 1848, when the journal ceases publication. Some of its contributors, who include Frazer, Martin MacDermott, Fitz James O’Brien, Mulchinock and Mary Savage, later either end up in jail or in exile.
In January 1848, John Mitchel visits Cork and, according to Michael Cavanagh, who publishes a sketch of Brenan’s life in Young Ireland, Dublin, in June and July 1885, Brenan for the first time “beheld the man he most admired on earth, and with whose future destiny, whether for weal or woe, he felt his own was bound up. Never had the archenemy of England a more faithful or earnest follower.”
Brenan contributes to the Mitchel’s United Irishman and sells his rifle to obtain train fare so he can take up his residence in Dublin, the headquarters of the revolutionary movement. He later publishes articles in John Martin‘s The Irish Felon urging the Confederate Clubs members, many of whom have arms, to be in readiness for action. “The sooner you realise the fact,” he writes in a letter addressed to the Members of the Provincial Confederate Clubs, “that the Confederation was got up for the purpose of doing something, the better for us all. Just think what it undertook to do. It undertook to defeat the strongest Government and to liberate the most degraded country that ever existed. It undertook to give – to a province—to strike the chains off millions of slaves and, if necessary, to wash out the iron moulds in blood.”
In another letter to “the Young Men of Ireland” on July 22, 1848, he writes, “On you I principally rely. You realise that you are very ‘rash,’ rather inclined to be ‘violent,’ and have exceedingly little prudence to spare. Brothers, let your watchword be ‘Now or never—now and forever’ rashly.”
Brenan is associated with John Savage and John O’Mahony while Savage is operating on the slopes of the Comeragh Mountains. He is arrested and kept in prison for seven months alternately in Newgate Prison, Carrickfergus and Kilmainham Gaols. During his confinement he writes some fine poems, according to T. F. O’Sullivan, one, entitled Yearnings, evidently addressed to Mary Savage, sister of John.
After his release without trial in March 1849, Brenan becomes editor of the Irishman which had been started in Dublin by Bernard Fulham, and for six months attempts to rekindle the insurrectionary flame in the country. He is implicated in the attack on the Cappoquin police barracks on September 16, 1848, and in October escapes to the United States.
In America Brenan becomes associated with a number of journals, including Horace Greeley‘s New-York Tribune, Devin Reilly’s People, The Enquirer of Newark, New Jersey, and the New Orleans Delta in which he writes a series of papers under the pen-name Ben Fox. On August 27, 1851, he marries Mary Savage, in her parents’ house, on Thirteenth Street, New York.
Brenan writes some articles and poems for John Mitchel’s Irish Citizen in 1854. He is an enthusiastic supporter of the Southern cause and founds the New Orleans Times.
Brenan dies on May 27, 1857, at the early age of twenty-nine and is buried in the old French cemetery of New Orleans. During the last year of his life, he is almost totally blind. He is attended in his last illness by Dr. Dalton Williams. There are seven children of his and Mary’s marriage, only one of whom, Florence, survives their parents. She possesses her father’s literary ability but devotes her life to religion as a member of the Mercy Order.
Brenan’s best-known poem, “Come to Me, Dearest,” is addressed to Mary Savage before their marriage. The love story of Brenan and Mary is told in the sketch by Ellen Mary Patrick Downing, afterwards Sister Mary Alphonsus.
seamus dubhghaill 