Meagher is born on August 3, 1823, at Waterford, County Waterford, in what is now the Granville Hotel on the Quay. He is educated at Roman Catholicboarding schools. When he is eleven, his family sends him to the Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare. It is at Clongowes that he develops his skill of oratory, becoming at age 15 the youngest medalist of the Debating Society. After six years, he leaves Ireland for the first time, to study in Lancashire, England, at Stonyhurst College, also a Jesuit institution. He returns to Ireland in 1843, with undecided plans for a career in the Austrian army, a tradition among a number of Irish families.
Meagher becomes a member of the Young Ireland Party in 1845 and in 1847 is one of the founders of the Irish Confederation, dedicated to Irish independence. In 1848 he is involved, along with William Smith O’Brien, in an abortive attempt to mount an insurrection against English rule. Arrested for high treason, he is condemned to death, but his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment in Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania.
Meagher escapes in 1852 and makes his way to the United States. After a speaking tour of U.S. cities, he settles in New York City, studies law and is admitted to the bar in 1855. He soon becomes a leader of the Irish in New York and, from 1856, edits the Irish News.
At the close of the war, Meagher is appointed secretary of Montana Territory where, in the absence of a territorial governor, he serves as acting governor.
In the summer of 1867, Meagher travels to Fort Benton, Montana, to receive a shipment of guns and ammunition sent by General William Tecumseh Sherman for use by the Montana Militia. On the way to Fort Benton, the Missouri River terminus for steamboat travel, he falls ill and stops for six days to recuperate. When he reaches Fort Benton, he is reportedly still ill.
Sometime in the early evening of July 1, 1867, Meagher falls overboard from the steamboat G. A. Thompson, into the Missouri River. His body is never recovered. Some believe his death to be suspicious and many theories circulate about his death. Early theories included a claim that he was murdered by a Confederate soldier from the war, or by Native Americans. In 1913 a man claims to have carried out the murder of Meagher for the price of $8,000 but then recants. In the same vein, American journalist and novelist Timothy Egan, who publishes a biography of Meagher in 2016, claims Meagher may have been murdered by Montana political enemies or powerful and still active vigilantes. On the frontier men are quick to kill rather than adjudicate. A similar theory shown on Death Valley Days (1960) has him survive the assassination attempt because his aide had been mistakenly murdered when he accepted one of his trademark cigars, and Meagher uses his apparent death as leverage over his political opponents.
Paul McGuinness, the founder of Principle Management Limited, a popular music act management company based in Dublin, is born on June 16, 1951, in Rinteln, Westphalia, Germany. He is the manager of the rock band U2 from 1978 to 2013.
McGuinness is born in a British military hospital at Rinteln where his father, Philip McGuinness, a native of Liverpool, is serving with the Royal Air Force. His mother, Sheila McGuinness (née Lyne), is a schoolteacher from County Kerry. There are three children in the family: Paul, Niall, and Katy.
McGuinness receives his early formal education in Ireland at the private Jesuit boarding school, Clongowes Wood College. From there he goes on to Trinity College Dublin, where he directs plays, edits the magazine T.C.D. Miscellany, and promotes gigs, but drops out before obtaining a degree.
Before becoming involved with U2, Guinness works as a film assistant director on productions such as John Boorman‘s Zardoz. For a time, he also manages folk-rock group Spud.
McGuinness first meets U2 at a Dublin gig on May 25, 1978, where they are supporting the Gamblers. Following this meeting, he becomes U2’s manager, having been introduced to the band by Bill Graham, a journalist with Hot Press magazine. His original agreement with the band is that the money is to be split equally five ways, though this is later changed.
McGuinness founds Principle Management Limited on March 29, 1984. He and Bill Whelan set up a music publishing company called McGuinness/Whelan Publishing in the late 1980s. Whelan later composes the music for the theatrical show Riverdance.
In 2002, McGuinness is presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Meteor Music Awards at the Point Theatre in Dublin and U2 wins the best Irish Band Award.
Noted for his business acumen, McGuinness is responsible for U2 3D concert films, U2-branded iPods, sponsorship from BlackBerry and the first-ever concert streamed live on YouTube.
McGuinness is regarded as the fifth member of U2, although in an interview with The Irish Press in 1985, when asked if he is the fifth member of U2, he replies, “The fifth member of U2 is in Adam (Clayton)‘s trousers.” He is also regarded as one of the most successful managers in the music business.
McGuinness steps down as manager of U2 after 34 years on November 13, 2013, with Madonna‘s manager, Guy Oseary, succeeding him in 2014 when he sells Principle Management Limited to Live Nation.
McGuinness is a founding partner of TV3 (Ireland) and is one of the owners of Ardmore Film Studios. He becomes a member of the Arts Council of Ireland on January 1, 1988, having been appointed by Charles Haughey. He serves until February 2000 when he resigns.
McGuinness has been an advocate on behalf of artists, record labels, and music publishers. On January 28, 2008, in a speech at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, he specifically accuses companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook of building “multi-billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it.”
In 2015, McGuinness founds Primo Productions, a film and TV company. Primo produces three seasons of Riviera, a drama set in the South of France. He writes the “list of ingredients” for the show: “Rich people behaving badly in the sun, yachts, Maseratis, great clothes, beautiful women, art fraud, money laundering through the auction houses, Russians, English people, American, French. Murder, adultery.” Everyday life on the Côte d’Azur. His production partner is Kris Thykier of Archery Pictures. The show is originally commissioned by Anne Mensah of Sky Atlantic.
McGuinness marries Kathy Gilfillan in 1977. They meet while he is studying at Trinity. Gilfillan is director of The Lilliput Press. They have two children.
O’Connor is educated in St. Mary’s College, Dublin, and then in Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, a public school run by the Jesuit order. It is also attended by the man who later condemns O’Connor to death, his close friend Kevin O’Higgins. He studies experimental physics, logic, and metaphysics. He also attends the College of Science, Merrion Street. He takes a BA (1906) and receives a B.Eng (1911). In 1910, he takes his Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts degrees at University College Dublin (UCD), then known as the National University. Prominent in the university’s Literary and Historical Society, he advocates militant constitutional nationalism as one of the many society members active in the Young Ireland branch of the United Irish League.
During the subsequent Irish War of Independence (1919-21) O’Connor is Director of Engineering of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a military organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers. The specialist skills of engineering and signaling are essential to the development of the 5th Battalion, Dublin Brigade. Its men are forbidden frontline duty as their contribution is regarded as vital, their number too small. But units only expand on an incremental local basis, disappointing General Richard Mulcahy.
O’Connor is also involved in the Republican breakout from Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England, on October 25, 1919. Michael Collins takes a particular interest in the escape and actually visits Austin Stack in the prison under a false name to finalise the arrangements. IRA men hold up traffic while a ladder is propped up against the outside of a prison wall. In all six prisoners escape, among them Piaras Beaslaí.
O’Connor refuses to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which establishes the Irish Free State. It is ratified by a narrow vote in Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament. He and many like him feel that the Treaty copper-fastens the partition of the six counties of Northern Ireland and undermines the Irish Republic declared in 1916.
On January 10, a meeting is held at O’Connor’s home in Monkstown, Dublin. In attendance are all senior anti-Treaty IRA officers except Liam Mellows. O’Connor is appointed to chair this grouping, known as the Republican Military Council. It is agreed that an IRA convention should be called without delay; failing this, a separate GHQ will be formed. At a further meeting in O’Connor’s office on March 20, a temporary IRA GHQ staff is elected under Liam Lynch as chief of staff. O’Connor remains in charge of engineering.
On March 26, 1922, the anti-Treaty officers of the IRA hold a convention in Dublin, in which they reject the Treaty and repudiate the authority of the Dáil. However, they are prepared to discuss a way forward. The convention meets again on April 9. It creates a new army constitution and places the army under a newly elected executive of 16 men, including O’Connor, that are to choose an army council and headquarters staff. Asked by a journalist if this development means the anti-Treatyites ware proposing a “military dictatorship” in Ireland, O’Connor replies, “You can take it that way if you want.”
On April 14, 1922, O’Connor is one of a number of IRA leaders in a 200-strong force that occupies the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the Provisional Government. They intend to provoke the British troops, who are still in the country, into attacking them, which they believe will restart the war with Britain and re-unite the IRA against their common enemy. They also occupy other smaller buildings regarded as being associated with the former British administration, such as the Ballast Office and the Freemasons‘ Hall in Molesworth Street, but the Four Courts remains the focus of interest. On June 15, O’Connor sends out men to collect the rifles that belong to the mutineers of the Civic Guards.
Michael Collins tries desperately to persuade the IRA men to leave the Four Courts. At the Third IRA Convention on June 18, the Executive is split over whether the Irish Government should demand that all British troops leave within 72 hours. A motion to this effect, opposed by Lynch, is narrowly defeated, whereupon O’Connor and others leave the meeting to set up a separate GHQ. The IRA effectively splits into two factions opposed to the government.
On June 22, 1922, Sir Henry Wilson is assassinated in London by two IRA men, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan, each a former British soldier. Some now argue that this was done on the orders of Michael Collins, who had been a close friend of Dunne’s in the London Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George writes an angry letter to Collins, which includes the line “…still less can Mr. Rory O’Connor be permitted to remain his followers and his arsenal in open rebellion in the heart of Dublin… organizing and sending out from this centre enterprises of murder not only in the area of your Government…”
On June 28, 1922, after the Four Courts garrison has kidnapped J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell, a general in the National Army, Collins gives orders for the shelling of the Four Courts with borrowed artillery lent by Winston Churchill. The shelling leads to the Four Courts catching fire, damaging parts of the building in addition to destroying numerous government documents. O’Connor is one of 130 men that surrender on June 30, some of whom are arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison. This incident marks the official start of the Irish Civil War, as fighting breaks out openly around the country between pro- and anti-Treaty factions.
On December 8, 1922, along with three other republicans, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey, captured with the fall of the Four Courts, O’Connor is executed by firing squad in reprisal for the anti-Treaty IRA’s killing of Free State Teachta Dála (TD) Sean Hales. The execution order is signed by Kevin O’Higgins. O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’s wedding on October 27, 1921. Their deaths remain a symbol of the bitterness and division of the Irish Civil War. O’Connor, one of 77 republicans executed by the Provisional Government, is seen as a martyr by the Republican movement in Ireland.
On O’Connor’s execution, the equestrienne Joan de Sales La Terriere, a close friend of his, names her son in his honour. “Rory O’Connor Place” in Arklow is named in his honour. There is also a pub in Crumlin, Dublin, named after him and a housing estate near Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, called “Rory O’Connor Park.” A Sinn Féincumann (UCD) is named after him.
(Pictured: Rory O’Connor addressing members of the IRA’s Dublin City Brigade at Smithfield, April 1922)
Ordained in 1924, the theology in which McQuaid is trained is conservative — strongly neo-scholastic and hostile to modernism and liberalism. His hatred of the French Revolution is expressed in several pastorals and speeches throughout his career. He also regards Protestantism as a fundamental error from which Irish Catholics should be quarantined as much as possible.
Appointed Dean of Studies at Blackrock College, McQuaid becomes a prominent figure in Catholic education and chairs the Catholic Headmasters’ Association for several years. In 1931 he is appointed president of Blackrock College, in which capacity he becomes acquainted with Éamon de Valera, the future Irish Taoiseach whose sons attend the school. In 1936 while drafting a new Irish constitution, de Valera consults McQuaid, although he rejects McQuaid’s draft “One, True Church” clause which states, among other things, that the Catholic Church is the one true church in Ireland.
When McQuaid is appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 1940, the appointment of a priest from the regular clergy causes considerable surprise. Irish government archives reveal that de Valera, as is suspected at the time, presses McQuaid’s claims at the Vatican. However, it is doubtful whether the Vatican needs much persuasion. There is a dearth of potential episcopal talent and McQuaid has an outstanding reputation as a Catholic educationalist.
Once appointed, McQuaid proves to be one of the ablest administrators in the history of the Irish Church. In the first two years of his episcopate, he sets up the Catholic Social Service Conference to alleviate the poverty and distress in Dublin which is aggravated by the war, and the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau to help the thousands of Irish emigrants going to Britain for war work. These two organizations fill a much-needed gap and continue to exist after the war. The expansion of Dublin city and its suburbs during his episcopate requires the building of new churches, schools, and hospitals. Meeting these demands also necessitates a considerable increase in the number of clergies, secular and regular, whose numbers more than double in the period from 1941 to 1972.
Given his previous career, the importance McQuaid assigns to education is not surprising. He is critical of the low priority accorded to education by successive governments and is particularly critical of the poor and pay conditions of teachers. His intervention in the primary teachers’ strike in 1946 is poorly received by the government and marks the souring of his relationship with de Valera. During his episcopate the number of primary schools increases by a third while the number of secondary schools more than double but, as with social welfare, the government increasingly assumes a dominant role in education from the 1960s onwards. Almost immediately after his appointment in 1940, he takes a hardline stand against the attendance of Catholic students at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). The ban lasts until 1970, when the increase in student numbers renders it untenable and he accedes reluctantly.
McQuaid has a formidable list of achievements in health care, especially maternity and pediatric services, physical and mental handicap services, and the treatment of alcoholism. It is ironic, therefore, that the most controversial episode of his career occurs in this area — the Irish hierarchy’s rejection in 1951 of a free mother-and-child health service. This leads to the resignation of the Minister for Health, Dr. Noël Browne, and is a watershed in Church-State relations in Ireland. With Irish tuberculosis and infant mortality statistics ranking among the highest in the world, the hierarchy, and particularly McQuaid, lose considerable support by lining up with the conservative medical establishment to resist efforts at socialized medicine.
From various pastorals that McQuaid issues at the time, it is clear that he does not see the need for the Second Vatican Council. As its deliberations proceed, his unease grows, and he becomes increasingly preoccupied with the issue of episcopal power and independence that he believes are being threatened by the Council. In the areas of liturgical reform, greater lay participation, and ecumenism, he is slow in implementing the Vatican II reforms. His views on ecumenism had always been lukewarm and had led to allegations that he was anti-Protestant. His personality and policies are criticized by a more assertive Dublin laity, but being a shy, reserved man who increasingly feels the isolation of office, he never responds to such comments. In 1968 the reaction to Humanae vitae causes open rebellion in the Dublin diocese, the force of which catches him unaware. His last pastoral as archbishop in 1971 betrays his anger and bemusement at the response to Humanae vitae in Dublin.
McQuaid’s substantial archives are released by the Dublin Diocesan Archives in the late 1990s. In 1999 journalist John Cooney publishes a hostile biography of McQuaid, which makes controversial allegations of sexual abuse against McQuaid. The allegations are based on tenuous evidence gathered by McQuaid’s nemesis from the 1951 Mother and Child controversy, Dr. Noël Browne, who had died in 1997. No corroborating evidence is produced or has since emerged.
A keen fan of all competitive sport, Coveney plays rugby for Garryowen, Cork Constitution and Crosshaven Rugby Club. In 1997-98, he leads the “Sail Chernobyl Project” which involves sailing a boat 30,000 miles around the world and raising €650,000 for charity. He is a qualified sailing instructor and lifeguard. He spends several years working as an agriculture adviser and farm manager.
Coveney is first elected to Dáil Éireann in a 1998 by-election as a Fine Gael candidate for Cork South-Central. He holds Shadow Ministries in the areas of Drugs and Youth Affairs, Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, and Transport. He chairs the Fine Gael Policy Development Committee prior to the 2011 Irish general election.
Coveney is a member of Cork County Council and the Southern Health Board from 1999 to 2003.
Coveney is elected to the European Parliament in 2004 and is a member of the EPP-ED group. He is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee. He is the author of the European Parliament’s Annual Report on Human Rights in the World for the year 2004 and again for 2006.
Coveney is named Tánaiste by Leo Varadkar, replacing Frances Fitzgerald, on November 30, 2017, a position he holds until June 27, 2020. He also serves as Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government as well as Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. For the six-month period ending June 2013, he chairs the EU Council of Agriculture & Fisheries Ministers where he is at the forefront regarding EU efforts in respect of Common Agricultural (CAP) as well as Common Fisheries (CFP) Policy reforms. Under his chairmanship both dossiers are progressed significantly, with a reform package for CFP agreed in May 2013 and a reform package for CAP agreed at the end of the Irish Presidency in July. The Defence portfolio is added to his brief on July 11, 2014.
In July 2008, Simon marries his long-time girlfriend Ruth Furney, an IDA Ireland employee. They have three daughters and currently live in Carrigaline, County Cork.
Hopkirk is raised as a Catholic, and educated at Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare from 1945 to 1949 before attending Trinity College, Dublin until 1953. His academic career, however, is held back by his dyslexia. He first learns the basics of car control at the age of nine, when a local clergyman leaves him his invalid carriage in his will. He later graduates to a motorcycle with a sidecar, which is added at the insistence of his father who feels it would be safer, and upon attending Trinity to study engineering, acquires an Austin 7 “Chummy” Tourer which he uses to make his rally debut. Now bitten by the car bug, he drops out of university to start working for Dublin‘s Volkswagen assembler’s retail operation in Ballsbridge, where he purchases a string of used Volkswagen Beetles to enter in competitions.
Hopkirk’s first win comes in 1953 at the Cairncastle hillclimb at the wheel of a VW Beetle. He is offered a free Beetle for the 1953 Circuit of Ireland by Isaac Agnew of Belfast. It is the first of many Circuit entries. The following year he leads the Circuit on the first day of the competition.
Hopkirk starts his winning career in professional racing and rally driving in 1955, taking a class win at that year’s Circuit of Ireland Rally, and clinching his first Hewison Trophy, awarded to the most successful Irish rally driver of the year. He goes on to win the Trophy for three consecutive years. By this time he has graduated to a Triumph TR2. His success in the Triumph is noticed by the Standard Motor Company, who offers him his first factory drive in a Standard Ten at the 1956 RAC Rally in March of that year, where he takes the early lead before suffering problems later on. Two months later he takes a Standard Eight to third place in the Tulip Rally in the Netherlands, his first trip outside of Britain and Ireland. However he loses his drive with Standard in 1958, after overdriving his car at the Alpine Rally in an effort to make up time lost due to a puncture on the Stelvio Pass, damaging the engine and forcing him to retire from the competition.
In 1959 Hopkirk joins the Rootes Group as a works driver, initially picking up a drive in a Hillman Husky at the Safari Rally after reigning F1 World Champion Mike Hawthorn, who is originally meant to drive the car, is killed in a road accident. Later that year he places third overall and takes a class win at the Alpine Rally in a Sunbeam Rapier, and he leads the 1960 Safari Rally until his Rapier suffers a differential failure. He takes two Circuit of Ireland Rally wins in 1961 and 1962 and another third at the Alpine Rally in 1961. While at Rootes he also takes part in circuit racing, winning his class in a Rapier in the touring car race supporting the 1960 British Grand Prix.
Hopkirk finishes third at the 1962 Monte Carlo Rally in a Sunbeam Rapier. However, he becomes frustrated by the Rapier’s lack of reliability, culminating in all three works cars blowing their engines within the space of a kilometre at that year’s Acropolis Rally. After being impressed by a test drive of Pat Moss‘ Austin-Healey 3000, he sets his mind on a move, joining the British Motor Corporation and making his debut in a 3000 at the Liège-Sofia-Liège rally in August. In his second competition with the 3000, the RAC Rally, he finishes in second despite having to complete two miles of a special stage with a shredded tyre after a puncture. He first competes in a Mini at the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally, where he finishes sixth. That season he also finishes second on the Tulip Rally, sixth on Liège-Sofia-Liège, and fourth on the RAC Rally. In addition he takes the Mini to third place in the Tour de France Automobile‘s Touring Category behind two 3.8-litre Jaguars, winning his class and the overall on handicap.
Hopkirk also travels to Australia during his career to drive for the BMC Works Team in the annual Bathurst 500 race for standard production cars at the Mount Panorama Circuit. He drives at Bathurst in a Morris Cooper S from 1965 to 1967, obtaining a best result of 6th outright and 3rd in class in the 1965 Armstrong 500 when paired with Mäkinen. In 1965, he wins a Coupe d’Argent at the Alpine Rally. He wins the 1965 and 1967 Circuit of Ireland Rally, the 1966 and 1967 Alpine Rally, and the 1967 Rally Acropolis.
Hopkirk is elected as a life member of the British Racing Drivers’ Club in 1967, and is also president of the Historic Rally Car Register, and a patron of disability charity WheelPower.
In 1968 Hopkirk finishes second at the second edition of the Rally de Portugal. The following year, he finishes second in the Circuit of Ireland Rally and the RAC Rally, then fourth at the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally with teammates Tom Nash and Neville Johnston in a Triumph 2.5 PI. He elects to step away from full-time competition at the end of that year, coinciding with British Leyland head Lord Stokes‘ decision to close down BL’s competition department.
In 1977, with co-driver Taylor Mike, Hopkirk takes part once again in a revived edition of the London-Sydney Marathon, the Singapore Airlines London to Sydney Rally, this time driving a Citroën CX 2400, taking third place overall in front of another CX driven by Claude Laurent and Jean-Claude Ogier.
In 1982, Hopkirk wins the RAC Golden 50, a historical anniversary race celebrating the 50th RAC Rally, with co-driver Brian Culcheth in the Mini Cooper with which Timo Mäkinen had won the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally. In 1990, he wins the Pirelli Classic Marathon with co-driver Alec Poole. In 1994, he enters the Monte Carlo Rally again, driving a current Mini Cooper, very similar to the original car, but now produced by Rover Group. He and his co-pilot Ron Crellin finish the race in 60th place against much more modern and powerful machines.
In 2010, Hopkirk is among the first four inductees into the Rally Hall of Fame, along with Timo Mäkinen, Rauno Aaltonen and Erik Carlsson.
Aidan Higgins, Irish writer of short stories, travel pieces, radio drama and novels, is born on March 3, 1927, in Celbridge, County Kildare. Among his published works are Langrishe, Go Down (1966), Balcony of Europe (1972) and the biographical Dog Days (1998). His writing is characterised by non-conventional foreign settings and a stream of consciousness narrative mode. Most of his early fiction is autobiographical – “like slug trails, all the fiction happened.”
Higgins attends local schools and Clongowes Wood College, a private boarding school. In the early 1950s he works in Dublin as a copywriter for the Domas Advertising Agency. He then moves to London and works in light industry for about two years. He marries Jill Damaris Anders in London on November 25, 1955. From 1960, he sojourns in southern Spain, South Africa, Berlin and Rhodesia. In 1960 and 1961 he works as scriptwriter for Filmlets, an advertising firm in Johannesburg. These journeys provide material for much of his later work, including his three autobiographies, Donkey’s Years (1996), Dog Days (1998) and The Whole Hog (2000).
His upbringing in a landedCatholic family provides material for Higgins first novel, Langrishe, Go Down (1966). The novel is set in the 1930s in a run-down “big house” in County Kildare, inhabited by the last members of the Langrishe family, three spinster sisters, Catholics, living in not-so-genteel poverty in a once-grand setting. One sister, Imogen, has an affair with a German intellectual, Otto Beck, which transgresses the moral code of the time, bringing her a brief experience of happiness. Otto’s intellectual pursuits contrast with the moribund cultural life of mid-20th century Ireland. The book is awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and is later adapted as a BBC Television film by British playwright Harold Pinter, in association with RTÉ. Langrishe, Go Down also receives the Irish Academy of Letters Award.
Higgins second major novel is Balcony of Europe, taking its name from a feature of the Spanish fishing village, Nerja Andalusia, where it is set. The novel is carefully crafted, and rich in embedded literary references, using Spanish and Irish settings and various languages, including Spanish and some German, in its account of the daily life in the beaches and bars of Nerja of a largely expatriate community. The protagonist, an artist called Dan Ruttle, is obsessed with his friend’s young American wife, Charlotte, and by the contrast between his life among a cosmopolitan artistic community in the Mediterranean, and his Irish origins. The book is re-edited in collaboration with Neil Murphy and published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2010, with the Irish material cut and the affair between Dan Ruttle and Charlotte foregrounded.
Higgins later novels include widely acclaimed Bornholm Night Ferry and Lions of the Grunwald. Various writings have been collected and reprinted by the Dalkey Archive Press, including his three-volume autobiography, A Bestiary, and a collection of fiction, Flotsam and Jetsam, both of which demonstrate his wide erudition and his experience of life and travel in South Africa, Germany and London which gives his writing a largely cosmopolitan feel, utilising a range of European languages in turns of phrase.
Higgins lives in Kinsale, County Cork, from 1986 with the writer and journalist Alannah Hopkin. They are married in Dublin in November 1997. He is a founder member of Irish artists’ association Aosdána. He dies on December 27, 2015, in Kinsale.
Mahon, the eldest of four children, is the son of Patrick Mahon of New Park, who took part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and Barbara, a considerable heiress and the only daughter of James O’Gorman of Ennis. He studies at Clongowes Wood College, where he is one of the earliest pupils, and at Trinity College Dublin, where he takes his BA in 1822 and his MA in law in 1832. Following his father’s death in 1821, he inherits half the family property and becomes a magistrate for Clare.
In 1830, Mahon marries Christina, the daughter of John O’Brien of Dublin. She is an heiress and has property valued at £60,000 in her own right, which gives him the resources to seek election to parliament. The couple spends little time together, and she dies apart from him in Paris in 1877. They have one son who dies in 1883.
As a result, when Mahon is elected for Clare at the 1830 United Kingdom general election, he is entitled to take his seat. However, during the election campaign he quarrels with O’Connell, and after his election he is unseated for bribery. He is subsequently acquitted and stands again at the 1831 United Kingdom general election, but is defeated by two O’Connell-backed candidates, one of whom is his old schoolfriend Maurice O’Connell, Daniel O’Connell’s son. He gives up on politics, becomes deputy lieutenant of Clare, and captain of the local militia.
Following his defeat in the 1852 election, Mahon returns to Paris, then travels on to Saint Petersburg, where he serves in the Imperial Bodyguard. During this period, he journeys through lands from Finland to Siberia. He then travels across China, India and Arabia. His finances largely exhausted, he serves as a mercenary in the Ottoman and Austrian armies before returning to England in 1858. Late that year, he leaves for South America, where he attempts to finance the construction of a canal through Central America.
Mahon is a close associate of Charles Stewart Parnell, who he successfully nominates for the leadership of the League in 1880 but is dropped in 1885 as a party candidate because of his age and his tendency to vote with the Liberal Party in Parliament. He is also embroiled in a court case disputing the will of his son.
Mahon had served alongside William O’Shea as an MP, and the two were close friends. He introduced him and Katharine O’Shea, his wife, to Parnell. After Parnell is named in the O’Sheas’ divorce case in 1890, Mahon splits with Parnell, siding with the Irish National Federation. However, Parnell attends Mahon’s funeral in Glasnevin Cemetery a few months later.
(Pictured: Caricature of James Patrick Mahon by Sir Leslie Matthew Ward under the pseudonym “Spy” published in Vanity Fair in 1885)
Coveney is interested in yachting throughout most of his adult life. His yacht Golden Apple of The Sun, designed by Cork-based designer Ron Holland, is a successful competitor in the Admiral’s Cup in the 1970s. A later 50-foot yacht, Golden Apple, is used by the family for the “Sail Chernobyl” project. The family sails around the world to raise €650,000 for Chernobyl Children’s Project International, a charity which offers assistance to children affected by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
In March 1998 it becomes publicly known that the Moriarty Tribunal has questioned Coveney about whether he had a secret offshore account with Ansbacher Bank, a bank which had become notorious for facilitating tax evasion. Ten days later, on March 13, 1998, Coveney visits his solicitor to change his will. The following day, he dies in a fall from a seaside cliff while out walking alone. His son, Simon Coveney, insists that his father had never held an Ansbacher account. It later emerges that Hugh Coveney had $175,000 on deposit in the secret Cayman Islands-based bank. The account was closed in 1979.
The funeral of Hugh Coveney takes place at St. Michael’s Church in Blackrock, Cork on March 18, 1998. Simon Coveney is later elected to succeed his father in the resulting by-election on November 3, 1998.
Kettle is born on February 9, 1880, in Malahide or Artane, Dublin, the seventh of twelve children of Andrew J. Kettle (1833–1916), a leading Irish nationalist politician, progressive farmer, agrarian agitator and founding member of the Irish National Land League, and his wife, Margaret (née McCourt). One of his brothers is the industrial pioneer, Laurence Kettle. He is influenced considerably through his father’s political activities.
Kettle is killed in action with ‘B’ Company of the 9th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in an attack on German lines on September 9, 1916, near the village of Ginchy during the Somme Offensive in France. During the advance he is felled when the Dublin Fusiliers are “struck with a tempest of fire,” and having risen from the initial blow, he is struck again and killed outright. His body is buried in a battlefield grave by the Welsh Guards, but the location of the grave is subsequently lost. His name is etched on the monumental arched gateway for the missing of the Somme at Thiepval.
Kettle is one of the leading figures of the generation who, at the turn of the twentieth century, give new intellectual life to Irish party politics, and to the constitutional movement towards All-Ireland Home Rule. A gifted speaker with an incisive mind and devastating wit, his death is regarded as a great loss to Ireland’s political and intellectual life.
As G. K. Chesterton surmises, “Thomas Michael Kettle was perhaps the greatest example of that greatness of spirit which was so ill rewarded on both sides of the channel […] He was a wit, a scholar, an orator, a man ambitious in all the arts of peace; and he fell fighting the barbarians because he was too good a European to use the barbarians against England, as England a hundred years before has used the barbarians against Ireland.”
seamus dubhghaill 