O’Shannon is awarded lifetime membership of the Irish Film & Television Academy in 2010, to which he says it is “particularly gratifying that it occurs before I pop my clogs”.
The Irish radio and television broadcaster Terry Wogan describes O’Shannon as possibly the greatest Irish television journalist of the 20th century.
O’Shannon first becomes a journalist with The Irish Times on leaving the Royal Air Force in 1947. Later he joins the Irish state broadcasting service Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ).
In July 1972, O’Shannon records a notable television interview with 31-year-old Muhammad Ali, when Ali is in Dublin to compete at Croke Park in a bout with Alvin Lewis.
O’Shannon receives a Jacob’s Award for his 1976 TV documentary, Even the Olives are Bleeding, which details with the activities of the “Connolly Column” in the Spanish Civil War. Two years later he is honoured with a second Jacob’s Award for his television biography Emmet Dalton Remembers (1978).
In 1978, O’Shannon leaves RTÉ to join Canadian company Alcan which is setting up an aluminum plant at Aughinish, County Limerick, in 1978. He is head-hunted to become its Director of Public Affairs, an important post at a time when there are environmental concerns about the effects of aluminum production. He admits that he is attracted by the salary, “five times what RTÉ were paying me,” but he also later says that one reason for the move is that he had become unhappy with working at RTÉ, stating in an interview that: “The real reason I got out of RTÉ was that they wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do journalistically.” He had submitted proposals to the station’s editors for television documentary series on the Irish Civil War, and also one on the wartime Emergency period, but they had been rejected. While he enjoys the social life with lavish expenses which his public relations duties involve, his friends believe that he misses the varied life and travel of journalism. He retires early from Aughinish in 1992, and returns to making television documentaries with RTÉ.
O’Shannon’s wife, Patsy, whom he met while they were working at The Irish Times office in London, dies in 2006. They had been married for more than 50 years.
On January 12, 2007, O’Shannon announces his retirement at the age of 80. In a 2008 television documentary, he admits that throughout his marriage he had been a serial womaniser and had repeatedly engaged in extra-marital affairs unbeknownst to his wife.
After weakening health for two years, and spending his last days in a hospice at Blackrock, O’Shannon dies at the Beacon Hospital in Dublin on October 22, 2011, in his 84th year. His body is reposed at Fanagans Funeral Home in Dublin on October 25, followed by a funeral the following day at Glasnevin Cemetery Chapel, where his remains are cremated afterward.
Director General of RTÉNoel Curran says O’Shannon had brought into being “some of the great moments in the RTÉ documentary and factual schedule over the past five decades.” In tribute, RTÉ One shows the documentary Cathal O’Shannon: Telling Tales on November 10, 2011. It had originally aired in 2008 to mark his 80th birthday
Kickham’s father, John Kickham, is the proprietor of the principal drapery in the locality and is held in high esteem for his patriotic spirit. His mother, Anne O’Mahony, is related to the Fenian leader John O’Mahony. He grows up largely deaf and almost blind, the result of an explosion with a powder flask when he is thirteen. He is educated locally, where it is intended that he study for the medical profession. During his boyhood the campaign for a repeal of the Acts of Union 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland is at its height, and he soon becomes versed in its arguments and is inspired by its principles. He often hears the issues discussed in his father’s shop and at home amongst all his friends and acquaintances.
From a young age Kickham is imbued with these patriotic ideals. He becomes acquainted with the teaching of the Young Irelanders through their newspaper The Nation from its foundation in October 1842. His father read the paper aloud every week for the family. Like all the young people of the time, and a great many of the old ones, his sympathies are with the Young Irelanders on their secession from the Repeal Association.
When he is 22 years old, Kickham contributes The Harvest Moon sung to the air of “The Young May Moon,” to The Nation on August 17, 1850. Other verses are to follow, but the finest of his poems according to A. M. O’Sullivan, appear in other journals. Rory of the Hill, The Irish Peasant Girl, and Home Longings, better known as Slievenamon, are published in the Celt. The First Felon appears in the Irishman. Patrick Sheehan, the story of an old soldier, is published in the Kilkenny Journal, and becomes very popular as an anti-recruiting song.
Kickham begins to write for a number of papers, including The Nation, but also the Celt, the Irishman, the Shamrock, and becomes one of the leading writers of The Irish People, the Fenian newspaper, in which many of his poems appear. His writings are signed using his initials, his full name, or the pseudonyms, “Slievenamon” and “Momonia.”
Kickham is the leading member of the Confederation Club in Mullinahone, which he is instrumental in founding. When the revolutionary spirit begins to grip the people in 1848, he turns out with a freshly made pike to join William Smith O’Brien and John Blake Dillon when they arrive in Mullinahone in July 1848. On hearing of the progress of O’Brien through the country, he sets to work manufacturing pikes and is in the forge when news reaches him that the leaders are looking for him. It is here that he meets James Stephens for the first time. At O’Brien’s request, he rings the chapel bell to summon the people and before midnight a Brigade has answered the summons. He later writes a detailed account about this period which brings his connection with the attempted Rising of 1848 to a close.
After the failed 1848 uprising at Ballingarry, Kickham has to hide for some time, as a result of the part he had played in rousing the people of his native village to action. When the excitement has subsided, he returns to his father’s house and resumes his interests in the sports of fishing and fowling and spends much of his time in literary pursuits. Some of the authors in which he is well versed are Alfred Tennyson and Charles Dickens and he greatly admires George Eliot, and after William Shakespeare, is Robert Burns.
In the autumn of 1857, a messenger arrives from New York with a message for James Stephens from members of the Emmet Monument Association, calling on him to get up an organization in Ireland. On December 23, Stephens dispatches Joseph Denieffe to the United States with his reply and outlines his conditions and his requirements from the organisation in America. Denieffe returnd on March 17, 1858, with the acceptance of Stephens’ terms and £80. That evening the Irish Republican Brotherhood commences. Those present in Langan’s, lathe-maker and timber merchant, 16 Lombard Street, for that first meeting are Stephens, Kickham, Thomas Clarke Luby, Peter Langan, Denieffe and Garrett O’Shaughnessy. Later it includes members of the Phoenix National and Literary Society, which is formed in 1856 by Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in Skibbereen, County Cork.
In mid-1863, Stephens informs his colleagues that he wishes to start a newspaper, with financial aid from O’Mahony and the Fenian Brotherhood in America. The offices are established at 12 Parliament Street, almost at the gates of Dublin Castle. The first issue of The Irish People appears on November 28, 1863. The staff of the paper along with Kickham are Luby and Denis Dowling Mulcahy as the editorial staff, O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor in charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. John O’Leary is brought from London to take charge in the role of Editor. Shortly after the establishment of the paper, Stephens departs on an America tour, and to attend to organizational matters. Before leaving, he entrusts to Luby a document containing secret resolutions on the Committee of Organization or Executive of the IRB. Though Luby intimates its existence to O’Leary, he does not inform Kickham as there seems no necessity. This document later forms the basis of the prosecution against the staff of The Irish People.
Kickham’s first contribution to The Irish People, entitled Leaves from a Journal, appears in the third issue and is based on a journal he kept on his way to America in 1863. This article leaves no doubt as to his literary capacity according to O’Leary. It falls to Kickham, as a good Catholic, to tackle the priests, though not exclusively with articles such as “Two Sets of Principles,” a rebuff to the doctrines laid down by Lord Carlisle, and “A Retrospect,” dealing with the tenant-right movement chiefly but also the events of the recent past and their bearing on the present. Kickham articulates the attitude held by the IRB in relation to priests, or more particularly in politics.
On July 15, 1865, American-made plans for a rising in Ireland are discovered when the emissary loses them at Kingstown railway station. They find their way to Dublin Castle and to Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of G Division. Ryan has an informer within the offices of The Irish People named Pierce Nagle. He supplies Ryan with an “action this year” message on its way to the IRB unit in Tipperary. With this information, Ryan raids the offices of The Irish People on September 15, followed by the arrests of O’Leary, Luby, and O’Donovan Rossa. Kickham is caught after a month on the run. Stephens is also caught but with the support of Fenian prison warders John J. Breslin and Daniel Byrne is less than a fortnight in Richmond Bridewell when he vanishes and escapes to France. The last issue of The Irish People is dated September 16, 1865.
On November 11, 1865, Kickham is convicted of treason. Judge William Keogh, with many expressions of sympathy for the prisoner, and many compliments in reference to his intellectual attainments, sentences him to fourteen years’ penal servitude. The prisoners’ refusal to disown their opposition to British rule in any way, even when facing charges of life-imprisonment, earn them the nickname of “the bold Fenian men.” Kickham spends time from 1866 until his release in the Woking Convict Invalid Prison.
Kickham is given a free pardon from Queen Victoria on February 24, 1869, because of ill-health, and upon his release he is made Chairman of the Supreme Council of the IRB and the unchallenged leader of the reorganized movement. He is an effective orator and chairman of meetings despite his physical handicaps. He wears an ear trumpet and can only read when he holds books or papers within a few inches of his eyes. For many years he carries on conversations by means of the deaf and dumb alphabet.
Kickham is the author of three well-known stories, dealing sympathetically with Irish life and manners and the simple faith, the joys and sorrows, the quaint customs and the insuppressible humour of the peasantry. Knocknagow is deemed one of the finest tales of peasant life ever written. Sally Cavanagh is a touching story illustrating the evils of landlordism and emigration. For the Old Land deals with the fortunes of a small farmer’s family.
Kickham dies on August 22, 1882, at the house of James O’Connor, a former member of the IRB and afterward MP for West Wicklow, 2 Montpelier Place, Blackrock, Dublin, where he had been living for many years, and had been cared for by the poet Rose Kavanagh. He is buried in Mullinahone, County Tipperary.
O’Connor is one of five children of Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) Supreme Council member and later MPJames O’Connor. He is IRB treasurer in 1870 and party to the discussions on the New Departure, a collaboration between constitutional and physical force nationalists, the open and the secret movements. Her uncle, John O’Connor, is a leading member of the Supreme Council.
In 1890, when O’Connor’s father is a journalist, her mother, Mary O’Connor, and four of her sisters – Annie, Aileen, Kathleen and Norah – die after eating contaminated mussels gathered on the seashore near where they lived in what became known as the Seapoint tragedy. She becomes violently ill, but survives.
O’Connor travels to London after a falling out with her stepmother six years later. She finds work as a civil servant and a paid speaker for the Liberal Party, through which she meets Crompton Llewelyn Davies, adviser to David Lloyd George and solicitor to the General Post Office, brother of Arthur Llewelyn Davies and uncle of the boys who inspire the creation of Peter Pan. They marry on December 8, 1910. The marriage produces two children: Richard and Catherine.
Davies is an orthodox home ruler but is radicalised by the 1916 Easter Rising. Davies and her husband raise funds for Roger Casement‘s legal defence and later lobby for his death sentence to be commuted. She is saluted as one of the “fond ones” in a letter from Casement to Margaret Gavan Duffy on the eve of his August 3, 1916, execution in Pentonville Prison.
Following the Easter Rising, Davies takes her two children to Ireland and purchases Furry Park, a crumbling mansion near Dublin. She collaborates with Michael Collins during the Irish War of Independence and her home in Clontarf becomes one of Collins’ many safe houses as he directs the war. She is arrested and imprisoned in 1920. Collins also stays at her Portmarnock house, using it as a safe house.
Davies says in later life that she and Michael Collins had been lovers, but the historian Peter Hart claims her to be a stalker. It has been suggested that Collins is the father of her son Richard. Historian Meda Ryan denies this saying “Letters from him and a phone call confirmed that he was born December 24, 1912, before his mother met Collins.”
Historian Tim Pat Coogan in his book Michael Collins says that Davies claimed on the night that Collins learned that Éamon de Valera was going to reject the Anglo-Irish Treaty “he was so distressed that I gave myself to him.” Coogan refuses to give a source and in the footnotes, he says, “Confidential source.”
Davies makes a lasting contribution to Irish literature with a translation, with George Thomson, of the Muiris Ó Súilleabháin book Fiche Bliain faoi Bhláth as Twenty Years a-Flowering. She is thought to have helped Collins write his book The Path to Freedom.
Drew is born on September 18, 1838, in Victoria Place, Belfast, into the large family of Rev. Thomas Drew, son of a Limerick grocer, and Isabella Drew (née Dalton). He is one of four sons and eight daughters of the couple, although most of the children die young. His sister, Catherine Drew, is a prominent Londonjournalist and an early champion of women’s rights.
Drew is educated in Belfast and in 1854 articled to the Antrimcounty surveyor and architect Sir Charles Lanyon, before moving to work in Dublin in 1862, where he becomes principal assistant to William George Murray. In 1865, he becomes the diocesan architect of the united dioceses of Down, Connor and Dromore. From this point forward, church architecture is his principal activity. He is consulting architect for both St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.
Drew marries Adelaide Anne, sister of William George Murray, in 1871.
Among other projects, Drew is responsible for the design of the Ulster Bank on Dame Street, Rathmines Town Hall and the Graduates’ Building at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He takes an interest in historic buildings and is the first to draw serious attention to the architectural and historic importance of the St. Audoen’s Church, Dublin’s oldest parish church, in 1866. He produces detailed plans of the church for which he wins the Fitzgerald medal from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), carries out excavations and draws up a paper on the church and its history.
From 1885 to 1892, Richard Orpen works with Drew as a managing assistant. Drew’s most significant work in Belfast is St. Anne’s Cathedral, completed in 1899.
From 1879 onward Drew lives in Gortnadrew, one half of a pair of semi-detached houses of his own design, on Alma Road in Monkstown, County Dublin. For many years he serves as a commissioner of the local township of Blackrock, Dublin. He dies on March 13, 1910, a month after an unsuccessful operation for appendicitis. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in the suburban area of Deansgrange in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.
Drew is commemorated in a memorial brass in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. His wife survives him by three years and in her will bequeaths back to the RIAI the loving cup presented to her husband in commemoration of his knighthood, and to the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery (Ulster Museum since 1962) an 1852 portrait of his father Thomas. A portrait of Drew by Walter Osborne is held in the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) in Dublin.
Doyle is born on May 17, 1923, in Dundrum, Dublin, to Michael and Eileen Doyle (née Lawlor), one of seven children. In 1945, at the age of 22, he builds a pub and leisure complex called the County Club in Churchtown, Dublin. Following the success of this venture, he moves into the hotel business.
The first hotel that Doyle develops is the South County Hotel in Stillorgan, now called the Stillorgan Park Hotel, which opens in 1964. He officially registers his hotel company as P. V. Doyle Hotels Limited on September 4, 1969.
Doyle marries Margaret Ellen Briody, a nurse, in Ballynarry Church, Kilnaleck, County Cavan in 1947. They have five children together: sons Michael, David and daughters Anne, Eileen and Bernie.
Orpen wants to pursue painting, but “for family reasons” he becomes an architect. He spends eleven years with Thomas Drew, initially as a pupil, and later as a managing assistant from 1885 to 1892. From around 1884, he attends the annual excursions of the English Architectural Association. Around 1890, he establishes his own architectural practice in Drew’s offices at 22 Clare Street, Dublin. In 1896, he moves his office to 7 Leinster Street. In 1888 he is elected as a member of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), serving as a council member from 1902 to 1910, as honorary secretary from 1903 to 1905, and as president from 1914 to 1917. He designs the institute’s official seal in 1909. In 1904, the Irish Builder describes him as the “originator of the bungalow in Ireland.”
From 1888, Orpen exhibits with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), with watercolours and architectural drawings. He continues to exhibit with them until 1936. He collaborates with Percy French on a number of projects, including illustrating Racquetry Rhymes (1888) and The First Lord Liftinant and Other Tales (1890). He provides cartoons for French’s periodical, The Jarvey. His architectural illustrations are included in H. Goldsmith Whitton’s Handbook of the Irish Parliament Houses… (1891). He is one of the original members of the Architectural Association of Ireland, serving as its first president in 1896, and as vice-president in 1910.
Orpen is appointed the architect to St. Columba’s from 1897 to 1938, following a fire at the college in 1896. He becomes a fellow of the college, and the sanatorium becomes known as the Orpen building. He is an active member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland, serving as secretary in 1895, on the committee in 1904, and in 1917 sits on the organising committee for the fifth exhibition. In 1906, he is a founding member of the Arts Club. In 1906 he moves his architectural practice to 13 South Frederick Street, and moves into a house he designed, Coologe, Carrickmines, County Dublin.
From 1910 to 1914, Orpen is in an architectural partnership with Page Dickinson, with the two collaborating on plans for the new Dublin municipal gallery and conversion of the Turkish Baths, Lincoln Place. Lane rejects his and Dickinson’s gallery plans, leading to him refusing to work with Lane’s choice of architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. In 1914, he is appointed a guardian of the National Gallery of Ireland, and lectures at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art on architectural history in 1914 and 1915. He is involved in the design of a number of memorials including the setting for a bronze relief by Beatrice Campbell for the members of the Royal Irish Regiment killed in the Second Boer War and the war memorial at the Rathgar Methodist church. He serves as president of the arts and crafts section of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). He is also a governor of the Royal National Hospital for Consumption for Ireland in Newcastle, County Wicklow.
Orpen features as one of the many portraits in Seán Keating‘s Homage to Sir Hugh Lane. St. Columba’s College holds a portrait of Orpen by his brother, William, as well as a memorial stained-glass window to him by Catherine O’Brien.
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor, Irish singer-songwriter dubbed the first superstar of the 1990s by Rolling Stone magazine, is born on December 8, 1966, in Dublin. During her career she attracts publicity not only for her voice, which is alternately searing and soothing, but also for her controversial actions and statements.
O’Connor’s parents divorce when she is eight years old, and she and her siblings are sent to live with their abusive mother, who beats the children on a regular basis. Eventually, she leaves to live with her father and stepmother, but the child, who habitually shoplifts, proves to be too troublesome for the couple, and they send her to reform school. Although she hates the reform school, it is there that she makes her first contacts with the music world. A teacher introduces her to the drummer of a local band, In Tua Nua, and for a brief period she works with the band and even cowrites one of their hit singles. After a year and a half at the reform school, she is transferred to a boarding school in Waterford, but it proves unbearable. She eventually returns to Dublin, where she attempts to start her own music career.
In Dublin O’Connor eventually joins the pub rock band Ton Ton Macoute. In 1985, while singing with the group, she attracts the attention of the London-based record label Ensign Records, which asks her for a demo tape. Soon afterward she signs a contract with the label and begins work on her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, which is released in 1987 to critical praise. She follows the album with the largely autobiographical I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990). The album is propelled to the top of the U.S. pop charts on the strength of the number one single “Nothing Compares 2 U”—a transcendent cover of a 1985 Prince song.
In the following year O’Connor attracts attention not only for her singing but also for a series of controversial statements, actions, and appearances, including refusing to appear on NBC’s Saturday Night Live because of objections to the week’s guest host, boycotting the 1991 Grammy Awards ceremony and declining to sing there, and refusing to allow the U.S. national anthem to be played before one of her performances. She also attracts criticism for her public support of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and for tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992. Nevertheless, she wins the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1991 for “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” and continues to be highly regarded for her musical abilities.
In 1992 O’Connor releases an album of torch songs, Am I Not Your Girl?, which receives only minor publicity, and she releases a fourth album, Universal Mother, in 1994. Soon afterward she takes a hiatus from public life, spending time with her children and attending therapy in order to work through problems that linger from her harsh childhood. Her struggles with mental health continue throughout her life.
In 2018 O’Connor announces that she has converted to Islam and changes her name to Shuhadāʾ Sadaqat, although she states that she will continue to perform as Sinéad O’Connor. Her memoir, Rememberings (2021), receives broad critical praise, and she is the subject of the documentary Nothing Compares (2022).
(From: “Sinéad O’Connor,” written and fact checked by The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com, last updated September 30, 2024)
Following his exit from politics in 1957, having lost his Dáil seat, Finlay resumes practicing as a barrister. He successfully defends Captain James Kelly in the infamous 1970 arms trial.
In 1971, Finlay is tasked by the Fianna Fáil government with representing Ireland before the European Commission of Human Rights, when, in response to the ill treatment of detainees by security forces in Northern Ireland, they charge the British government with torture. Despite the notional recourse such prisoners would have within the British legal system, the Commission rules the complaint admissible.
During this period Finlay presides over a number of landmark cases, including Attorney General v X in 1992, when he overturns a High Court injunction preventing a pregnant teenage rape victim travelling to the UK for an abortion.
When, in the same year, Judge Liam Hamilton of the High Court, chair of the Beef Tribunal, seeks disclosure of the cabinet’s minutes for a particular meeting, Chief Justice Finlay along with the majority of the Supreme Court deny the request ruling that the concept of collective government responsibility in the Constitution takes precedence.
Finlay announces his resignation as Chief Justice of Ireland and retirement as a judge in 1994.
After his retirement, Finlay presides over a number of public inquiries.
In 1996, Finlay oversees the inquiry into the violence by English fans at the aborted 1995 friendly soccer match versus the Republic of Ireland at Lansdowne Road. His report to Bernard Allen, Minister for Sport, is critical of security arrangements on the night and recommends improvements to ticketing, seat-allocation, fan-vetting and policing arrangements. The Irish Government shares his report with the British Home Office.
After the collapse of The Irish Press group in 1995, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, John Bruton, receives a damming report from the Competition Authority that Independent Newspapers has abused its dominant position and acted in an anti-competitive manner by purchasing a shareholding in The Irish Press. In September 1995, Bruton announces the Commission on the Newspaper Industry with an extremely wide remit to examine diversity and ownership, competitiveness, editorial freedom and standards of coverage in Irish newspapers as well as the impact of the sales of the British press in Ireland. Minister Bruton appoints 21 people to the commission and appoints Finlay chair. Due to the wide remit and huge number of submissions, the commission’s report is delayed but is eventually published at the end of July recommending widespread reforms.
Following the discovery of the BTSB anti-D scandal, in 1996, Finlay is appointed the chair and singular member of the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Blood Transfusion Service Board. The speed and efficiency with which his BTSB Tribunal conducts its business, restores confidence in the Tribunal as a mechanism of resolving great controversies in the public interest.
Finlay also sits on an Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) panel to adjudicate on the cases of Rugby players accused of using banned performance-enhancing substances.
Finlay is married to Alice Blayney, who predeceases him in 2012. They have five children, two of whom follow in his family’s legal tradition: his son John being a Senior Counsel and his daughter Mary Finlay Geoghegan a former judge of the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. Whenever his work schedule allows, he escapes to County Mayo where he indulges his passion for fishing.
Thomas Finlay dies at the age of 95 in Irishtown, Dublin, on December 3, 2017.
Best known as a centre half-forward, Purcell plays in most outfield positions during his career. In 2009, he is named in the Sunday Tribune‘s list of the “125 Most Influential People in GAA History.”
Purcell’s footballing career spans three decades, from the 1940s to the 1960s. He forms a successful on-field partnership with Frank Stockwell at Galway, culminating in the team winning their fourth All-Ireland championship in 1956 and leading to their nickname as the “Terrible Twins.”
Further successes in which Purcell is involved include winning the National Football League title in 1957, three Railway Cups, one of which he captains, the 1950 Sigerson Cup, appearances with the Combined Universities side and ten county titles with the Tuam Stars, including seven in a row from 1954 to 1960.
Purcell’s involvement in the GAA continues long after his playing days as he serves in a number of positions as team mentor and administrator in Galway.
Purcell dies on August 27, 2005, at the age of 76, following a short illness at the Blackrock Clinic, County Dublin. He is buried in the Athenry Road graveyard at Tuam.
Purcell marries Rita Shannon in 1961. They have four daughters and two sons before the marriage ends. His son, Robert Purcell, marries Tessa Robinson, daughter of former Irish PresidentMary Robinson, in 2005. His grandson, Simon Carr, is a professional tennis player. Another grandson, Sam McCartan, has played Gaelic football at senior level for Westmeath. His teenage grandson, Rory Purcell, dies in 2022.
O’Brien is born in Dublin on May 9, 1871, where he lives all his life. He is an important figure in early 20th-century Irish music. For some, he is mainly known as the first teacher of singers such as John McCormack, Margaret Burke Sheridan and the writer James Joyce.
O’Brien is the eldest child of a Roman Catholic church musician. In 1885, he first appears in a public piano recital and, later in the year, becomes the organist of Rathmines parish church, a position he holds until 1888. He holds another organist’s position at the Dublin Carmelite church from 1897 to 1899 but is chiefly known as organist and choir director of Dublin’s largest Roman Catholic Church, St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, between 1903 and 1946. In 1898, he is the founder and first director of the Palestrina Choir, originally all-male, which is still active, and which is financed for many years by Edward Martyn.
O’Brien studies with Robert Prescott Stewart at the Royal Irish Academy of Music (1888-90), where he is the first winner of the Coulson Scholarship and frequently performs as both tenor singer, piano accompanist, and organist in many public concerts during the 1890s. As a church musician, he becomes particularly involved in the Cecilian Movement, conducting works by Michael Haller and others, and also pursuing their artistic ideals in his own sacred choral compositions.
O’Brien is the founding conductor of the Dublin Oratorio Society (1906), the Brisan Opera Company (1916) and conducts at many ad hoc events. In 1925, he becomes the first music director of Radio Éireann (originally called 2RN), a position he holds until 1941. He singles out his work as music director for the 31st International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin (1932) as his most prized personal achievement. As late as 1945, he founds Our Lady’s Choral Society, a large oratorio choir still in existence, which originally is recruited mainly from the various Roman Catholic church choirs in Dublin.
Among his teaching positions, O’Brien teaches at the diocesan seminary at Holy Cross College, is Professor of Gregorian Chant at the missionary seminary of All Hallows College from 1903, and Professor of Music at the Ladies’ Teacher-Training College at Carysfort Park, Blackrock, County Dublin, from 1908 until his death in Dublin on June 21, 1948. As a much-demanded vocal coach, he teaches at his home, his best-known pupils including John McCormack, Margaret Burke Sheridan and James Joyce. He performs the piano accompaniments for McCormack’s first gramophone recordings and accompanies him during his 1913–14 Australasian tour of 60 performances in three months, during which he also gives organ recitals at the Irish-dominated Catholic cathedrals of Sydney and Melbourne.
Of his two sons, Oliver O’Brien (1922–2001) largely follows in his father’s footsteps, as organist and director of the Palestrina Choir, of Our Lady’s Choral Society, music teacher at Carysfort College and as teacher in various Dublin schools. His other son, Colum O’Brien, is organist in the Pro-Cathedral.
Before his work for the Palestrina Choir, O’Brien’s musical interests are very broad, culminating in 1893 in the composition of the full-scale opera Hester. As a church music composer, he follows Cecilian ideals, with a number of hymns, motets and other choral works. He also composes a number of songs for voice and piano, with The Fairy Tree (1930) being a particular favourite of John McCormack’s.
seamus dubhghaill 