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Birth of Gordon Lambert, Businessman, Senator & Art Collector

Charles Gordon Lambert, Irish businessman, senator and art collector, is born on April 9, 1919, in the family home at Highfield Road, Rathmines, Dublin, the youngest of four sons of Robert James Hamilton Lambert, a veterinarian and renowned cricketer, and his wife Nora (née Mitchell). His eldest brother, Noel Hamilton “Ham” Lambert, is a versatile sportsman and noted veterinary practitioner.

Lambert is educated at Sandford Park School, Dublin, and at Rossall School, Lancashire. He is steered by his mother toward a career in accountancy for which he prepares by studying commerce at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Graduating in 1940, he joins the accounting firm Stokes Brothers and Pim, qualifying Associate Chartered Accountant in 1943. In 1944, after auditing biscuit manufacturers W. & R. Jacob and Co. Ltd, one of Ireland’s largest and most prestigious industrial companies, he is offered and accepts a £300 a year job at Jacob’s as assistant accountant.

In 1953, Lambert becomes Jacob’s chief accountant as the management grooms him for an executive career. During 1948–56, Jacob’s suffers from profit and price controls, lack of capital investment and complacency brought about by the absence of competition. The entry of Boland’s Bakery into the Irish biscuit market in 1957 is exploited by Lambert who urges the alarmed board, which has long regarded advertising as vulgar, to market its products more vigorously. This assertiveness yields his advancement to the position of commercial manager in 1958. A year later he becomes the first non-member of the Bewley and Jacob families to be appointed to the board.

Between 1959 and 1970, biscuit consumption in Ireland doubles for which Lambert can claim much credit. Recognising that the advent of self-service stores means that manufacturers can no longer rely on retailers to sell their products, he pioneers advanced promotional techniques in Ireland, particularly the use of marketing surveys and of mass advertising in newspapers, on radio and on the emerging medium of television. To further accord with retailers’ preferences, Jacob’s drives the widespread packaging of biscuits in airtight packets rather than tins, and also introduces a striking red flash logo for its packets. His interest in contemporary art enables him to contribute directly to Jacob’s packaging designs.

Lambert is appointed to the board of the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) in 1964, a position he holds until 1977, and serves as president of the National Agricultural and Industrial Development Association (NAIDA) in 1964–65, spearheading a “Buy Irish” campaign. His involvement with NAIDA dates to the mid-1950s and leads to his friendship with Jack Lynch, Minister for Industry and Commerce. This relationship and his admiration for Seán Lemass incline him toward Fianna Fáil. He also believes the party is the one most likely to deliver economic growth.

In 1977, Lambert is appointed to Seanad Éireann by Taoiseach Jack Lynch. He sits as an independent but assures Lynch he will broadly support the government. Dismayed by Ireland’s economic uncompetitiveness, he uses this platform to bemoan the state’s financial profligacy and failure to control inflation, and the indifference of Irish politicians towards the business community, contending that Irish industrialists suffer and need to learn from the expert lobbying of the indigenous agricultural sector and of large multi-national companies based in Ireland. He also articulates his social liberalism, desire for peaceful reconciliation in Northern Ireland and support for cultural and environmental causes. But his commitment to the Seanad wanes as he grasps its irrelevance. When Lynch resigns in December 1979, Lambert joins the Fianna Fáil party in a futile bid to preserve his political influence.

Following Jacob’s takeover of Boland’s Bakery in 1966, Lambert becomes joint managing director of a new entity, Irish Biscuits Ltd, the manufacturing and trading company for the Boland’s and Jacob’s biscuits operations. W. & R. Jacob and Co. Ltd becomes a holding company. In 1968, he becomes the sole managing director. From 1977 he begins withdrawing from the active administration of the company, relinquishing his managing directorship in 1979 to become chairman.

Initially, Lambert views art as a hobby but he comes to see it as a calling, drawing inspiration from Sir William Basil Goulding, his predecessor as Ireland’s leading collector and advocate of modern art. From the late 1970s he serves as head of the Contemporary Irish Art Society (CIAS) and on the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the advisory committee of the Dublin Municipal Gallery, the board of the National Gallery of Ireland, the editorial board of the Irish Arts Review and the international council of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) opens in 1991 and receives through the medium of the Gordon Lambert Trust some 212 works, which form the centerpiece of its collection. Thereafter Lambert gifts another 100 works to IMMA. He sits on IMMA’s board from 1991, and the west wing of the museum is named after him in 1999.

Despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1988, Lambert remains relatively active and plays golf into his 80s. In 1999 he receives an honorary LLD from TCD. From 1997, he relies increasingly on Anthony Lyons, an acquaintance of longstanding, to care for him. His last years are overshadowed by the collapse in autumn 2002 of his close but complex relationship with his family. Thereafter he shuns his relations and changes his will, granting Lyons a substantial portion of his estate while curtailing the amount to be received by his family. He dies in a Dublin hospital on January 27, 2005. Relatives challenge his final will in the High Court in 2009 but it is upheld.

(Pictured: Photograph of director of Jacob’s Biscuits, Gordon Lambert, speaking from a podium at the first Jacob’s Television Awards. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, James O’Keefe, is sitting behind Lambert. The awards ceremony takes place at the Bishop Street factory, Dublin.)


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Death of Aengus Fanning, Journalist & Editor of the Sunday Independent

Aengus Fanning, Irish journalist and editor of the Sunday Independent from 1984 until his death, dies on January 17, 2012, following a battle with lung cancer. He is also a former editor of farming for the Irish Independent. He is listed at number 31 on a list of “most influential people” in Irish society compiled for Village magazine.

Fanning is born on April 22, 1944, in the family home at Cloonbeg Terrace, Tralee, County Kerry, the fourth child among five sons and one daughter of Arnold (‘Paddy’) Fanning, a teacher, and his wife Clara (née Connell). Originally from Rostrevor, County Down, his mother is born a Presbyterian and converts to Catholicism to marry his father, though neither is religious. His father is a noted organiser of local theatrical productions, having written a one-act play, Vigil, which is staged in the Abbey Theatre in 1929.

Fanning has a keen interest in sport, having represented Kerry in Gaelic football in his youth. He is also passionate about cricket. He also plays the clarinet and is a jazz fan. He is a graduate of University College Cork (UCC).

In May 1964 Fanning is hired as a reporter by his uncle, James Fanning, the owner of the Midland Tribune in Birr, County Offaly, and pursues an unglamorous beat covering court sittings, local authority meetings and GAA matches. Needing a better salary to start a family, he joins Independent Newspapers (IN) in Dublin as a general reporter in May 1969, and soon after marries Mary O’Brien from Streamstown, County Offaly. They settle in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, and have three sons.

Fanning covers the Northern Ireland troubles during 1969–70, before reporting increasingly on farming matters, becoming the IN group’s agricultural correspondent in 1973, as Ireland’s European Economic Community (EEC) accession sparks a farming boom. He is made head of news analysis at the Irish Independent in 1982, improving the op-ed page and using it to advocate more market-driven economic policies.

Fanning is appointed editor of the mid-to-upmarket Sunday Independent in 1984 from. Under his leadership, the newspaper adopts what Irish newspaper historian John Horgan calls a “new emphasis on pungent opinion columns, gossip and fashion” which results in the paper overtaking its main rival, The Sunday Press. For a time, his deputy editor is journalist Anne Harris.

In a 1993 interview with Ivor Kenny in the book Talking to Ourselves, Fanning describes himself as a classical liberal who is opposed to both Ulster loyalist and Provisional Irish Republican Army terrorism. He also expresses a strong advocacy of the free market, arguing that the goal of a good newspaper is to be as commercially successful as possible:

“If three or four papers out of 15 are successful and the others are not, they might say they’re not driven by the market, they have some higher vocation: to serve the public interest or some pompous stuff like that. That’s how they feel good about themselves. Fair enough, if that’s how they want to explain the world. It’s a grand excuse for relative failure… I think we live or die by the market, it will always win through.”

Fanning recruits a number of noted writers to contribute to the newspaper, including historians Conor Cruise O’Brien and Ronan Fanning, journalists Shane Ross and Gene Kerrigan, poet Anthony Cronin and novelist Colm Tóibín. However, his editorship is not without controversy. The columns published by Eamon Dunphy and Terry Keane draw criticism. Michael Foley notes some Irish commentators criticised Fanning’s Sunday Independent, claiming the newspaper was publishing “a mix of sleaze and prurience.”

Fanning also defends the controversial Mary Ellen Synon, who calls the Paralympics games “perverse.” One of the more bizarre incidents occurs in 2001 when he is involved in fisticuffs with a colleague at the newspaper – operations editor Campbell Spray.

Diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2011, Fanning spends his last months undergoing treatment in St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, dying there on January 17, 2012, at the age of 69. His remains are cremated at Mount Jerome Crematorium.

Anne Harris, Fanning’s second wife, succeeds him as editor and lasts three years. As well as pioneering changes in the domestic print media’s role, Fanning’s Sunday Independent led Irish society’s turn towards free market hedonism, catching the public mood better than its more conventionally liberal rivals by rendering this cultural transformation in an exuberant, somewhat parodied form, and without regard for lingering post-Catholic inhibitions.


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Birth of Maeve Kyle, Olympic Athlete & Hockey Player

Maeve Esther Enid Kyle, OBE, Irish Olympic athlete and hockey player, is born Maeve Esther Enid Shankey in County Kilkenny on October 6, 1928.

Kyle briefly attends Kilkenny College where her father C.G. Shankey is headmaster, before attending Alexandra College and finally, Trinity College, Dublin. She is the granddaughter of William Thrift.

Kyle competes in the 100m and 200m in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, and subsequently in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, and the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, where she reaches the semi-finals of both the 400m and 800m. She takes the bronze medal in the 400m at the 1966 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Dortmund, Germany. She wins four gold medals in W45 Category at the 1977 World Masters Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the 100m, 400m, high jump and long jump. She holds World Masters records at W40 for the 100m (12:00 secs) and 400m (55.30 secs) and W45 100m (12.50 secs) and W50 long jump at 5.04m.

In field hockey, Kyle gains 58 Irish caps as well as representing three of the four Irish provinces (Leinster, Munster and Ulster) at different stages of her career. She is named in the World All Star team in 1953 and 1959. She is also a competitor in tennis, swimming, sailing and cricket and works as a coach. She is chair of Coaching NI. In 2006, she is awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of the University (DUniv) from the University of Ulster.

Kyle is awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2006 Coaching Awards in London in recognition of her work with athletes at the Ballymena and Antrim Athletics Club. Earlier in 2006 she is one of 10 players who are initially installed into Irish hockey’s Hall of Fame. She is appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.


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Birth of Sir William Basil Goulding, Art Collector, Businessman & Cricketer

Sir William Basil Goulding, Irish cricketer, squash player, art collector and prominent businessman, is born in Dublin on November 4, 1909. He is an important art collector of contemporary art in Ireland and is renowned for his extensive collection which is dispersed posthumously. He is an adept businessman and sits on the boards of many companies.

Goulding is educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford. He inherits the family business W & HM Goulding Ltd. and succeeds his father as Chairperson in 1935. Goulding Ltd. is a well-established fertiliser manufacturer based in Dublin and Cork. The factory closes and is demolished in the mid-20th century and very little of it remains today. The land is donated to the people of Cork by Goulding in the late 1960s and is subsequently developed as an amenity park.

In 1939 Goulding marries Valerie Hamilton Monckton, daughter of Sir Walter Monckton, a lawyer, the UK Attorney General during the Edward VIII abdication crisis, and later a Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol West. She is an Irish campaigner for disabled people, founder of the Central Remedial Clinic and senator. Together, they have three sons, Hamilton, Timothy and Lingard. The family lives in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, where he has the significant ‘Goulding Summer House’ built by Scott Tallon Walker architects.

During World War II, Goulding is commissioned as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force. By the end of 1942 he has reached the rank of wing commander.

The Arts Act of 1951 establishes the Arts Council in response to the Bodkin Report which outlines the sad condition of the arts in Ireland. Goulding is a co-opted member of the Council from its formative years and is instrumental in acting on many of its policies.

Goulding is the founding Chairperson of the Contemporary Irish Art Society in 1962, along with Gordon Lambert, Cecil King, Stanley Mosse, James White and Michael Scott. The enthusiasm and vision of these founding members of the society is the catalyst which leads to the development of many important art collections in Ireland. The purpose of the society is to encourage a greater level of patronage of living Irish artists which, at the time, is extremely low. This is mainly achieved by raising funds to purchase artworks by living artists, which are then donated to public collections. The first purchase in 1962 is an important painting by Patrick Scott, donated to the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (now the Hugh Lane Gallery). Over the following 12 years the society purchases 37 works for the gallery, until in 1974, Dublin Corporation starts to provide an annual purchasing fund for the gallery.

Following completion of the report ‘Design in Ireland,’ the Kilkenny Design Workshops (KDW) is set up in 1963. It endeavours to nurture native Irish crafts particularly textiles, metalwork, ceramics, glass and furniture to have a modern yet distinctly Irish sensibility. The KDW is the first State sponsored design agency in the world and is held as a model of governmental intervention in design. Goulding sits on the board of the KDW from its origination and occupies the role of Chairperson from 1977 until 1981.

A right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper, Goulding plays twice for the Ireland cricket team against the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in 1934, the year in which his father is president of the Irish Cricket Union. He makes his debut in July in a two-day match, scoring seven runs in the Ireland second innings and taking one catch in the MCC first innings. The following month, he plays his only first-class match, not scoring in either inning. In addition to playing cricket, he also represents Ireland at squash, and captains Oxford University at football.

(Photo: Basil Goulding from Tim Goulding’s website, http://www.timgoulding.com)


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Birth of Radiohead Guitarist Ed O’Brien

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Edward John O’Brien, English guitarist, member of the alternative rock band Radiohead and grandson of a Tipperary emigrant, is born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England on April 15, 1968. In 2010, Rolling Stone names him the 59th greatest guitarist of all time. Along with the other members of Radiohead, he is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

O’Brien grows up listening to post-punk acts such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam and the Ants, Depeche Mode, The Police and David Bowie. His earliest guitar influence is Andy Summers of The Police, particularly his use of delay and chorus effects on “Walking on the Moon.” His other influences include Peter Buck of R.E.M., Paul Weller of The Jam, Johnny Marr of The Smiths, John McGeoch of Magazine and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Edge of U2. He attends Abingdon School, an independent school for boys, in Oxfordshire, England, where he meets the other members of Radiohead. In 1985, they formed On a Friday, the name referring to the band’s usual rehearsal day in the school’s music room. O’Brien also studies economics at the University of Manchester.

In 1991, On a Friday sign a six-album record contract with EMI and changes their name to Radiohead. They find early success with their 1992 single “Creep“. Their third album, OK Computer (1997), propels them to international fame and is often acclaimed as one of the best albums of all time. O’Brien becomes depressed during the extensive OK Computer tour. After the tour, he returns to Oxford and falls further into depression.

Radiohead’s next albums, Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), are recorded simultaneously and mark a dramatic change in sound, incorporating influences from electronic music, classical music, jazz and krautrock. O’Brien keeps an online diary of Radiohead’s progress during the recording and initially struggles with the band’s change in direction. At the suggestion of Michael Brook, creator of the Infinite Guitar, he begins using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely. He combines these with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds. By 2011, Radiohead has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

O’Brien releases solo music under the name EOB. His first solo track, the ambient composition “Santa Teresa,” is released on October 4, 2019. His first solo album, Earth, is announced in December 2019 and is due for release in April 2020 on Capitol Records. Recording for Earth begins in late 2017 and ends in early 2019. It is produced by Flood, Catherine Marks, and Adam “Cecil” Bartlett and is mixed by Alan Moulder, with contributions from drummer Omar Hakim, The Invisible members Nathan East and Dave Okumu, folk singer Laura Marling, Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood. He begins a North American tour in February 2020.

O’Brien lives in London with his wife, Susan Kobrin, who worked for Amnesty International. The couple have a son, Salvador, born in January 2004, and a daughter, Oona, born in 2006. He is a cricket fan and supports Manchester United Football Club. Around 2000, he gives up alcohol and takes up meditation. In 2011, he and his family move to Brazil and live for a year on a farm near Ubatuba. In 2020, he announces that he believes he has contracted COVID-19 but is recovering in isolation.


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Death of Noel Cantwell, Soccer Player & Cricketer

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Noel Euchuria Cornelius Cantwell, soccer player and sometime cricketer, dies of cancer on September 8, 2005. Born in Cork, County Cork on February 28, 1932, he is educated at the Roman Catholic Presentation Brothers College there.

Cantwell plays as a full-back for Western Rovers, Cork Athletic F.C., West Ham United F.C. and Manchester United F.C. While at West Ham, he features in the London XI side that competes in the 1955–58 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup final on May 1, 1958. He captains the Hammers to winning the Division Two championship in the 1957–58 season and thereby leads the club into the topflight for the first time since 1932.

In November 1960, Cantwell joins Manchester United for £29,500 which at the time is a record for a full-back. He helps the club win the 1965 and 1967 league titles and captains United when winning the 1963 FA Cup Final, just as his fellow countryman Johnny Carey had done in United’s previous FA Cup win 15 years earlier. He also serves as Chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

Cantwell wins 36 full International caps for the Republic of Ireland national football team, typically playing at left full-back and on several occasions at centre-forward. He makes his debut against Luxembourg in October 1953 with his final appearance coming away to Turkey in February 1967. He scores 14 goals including 5 from penalties and also captains the Republic on several occasions including a match against England at Wembley Stadium.

In his first managerial role at Coventry City F.C. he has the onerous task of following Jimmy Hill who had taken the club into the Football League First Division for the first time in their history. He narrowly keeps the Sky Blues in the top in his first two seasons before taking them to a sixth-place finish in 1969–70, earning them qualification for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, a year before it was replaced by the UEFA Cup.

Cantwell departs from Highfield Road on March 12, 1972, to take charge of the New England Tea Men in the United States, but within seven months is back in English football as manager of Peterborough United F.C. He helps Peterborough win the Football League Fourth Division title in his first full season as manager, before leaving on May 10, 1977, for a second spell with the Tea Men. This time he spends a year in the United States.

Cantwell returns to Peterborough on November 19, 1986, for a second spell as manager, remaining in this role until he becomes general manager on July 12, 1988. He is general manager at London Road for a year until he quits football to become licensee of the New Inn at Peterborough, where he remains for 10 years until he retires in 1999. He also is landlord of the Bull and Swan in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

Cantwell also plays cricket for Cork Bohemians Cricket Club and Ireland as a left-handed batsman and a right-arm medium bowler. He plays five times for Ireland making his debut in what is his sole first-class match versus Scotland at Edinburgh in 1956, scoring 31 and 17. His last match for Ireland is against Lancashire in July 1959.

Cantwell dies on September 8, 2005, from cancer at the age of 73, leaving a widow and two children. His former teams each hold a minute of silence for him before their next matches.


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Birth of Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne

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Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne, British Army soldier, solicitor, Ireland rugby union international, amateur boxer, and a founding member of the Special Air Service (SAS), is born in Newtownards, County Down, on January 11, 1915.

Mayne attends school at Regent House School, a school for students aged 4 to 18. While at Regent he discovers his skill and love for the game of rugby. He also enjoys cricket and golf and becomes a marksman with the rifle club. He goes on to Queen’s University Belfast to study law. At university he takes up boxing and becomes the Irish Universities Heavyweight Champion in August 1936. He also wins the Scrabo Golf Club President’s cup in 1937. He graduates from Queen’s University in 1939.

During 1938, Mayne travels to Africa on the 1938 British Lions Tour to South Africa. He plays on a team that tours around Africa playing other local clubs. While traveling, it is discovered that Mayne has a wild side and on various occasions finds himself in trouble. His “go to” is to trash the hotel rooms of his teammates. The team includes some of the best players from around Ireland and Britain.

In 1939, with outbreak of World War II, Mayne joins the Supplementary Reserves in Newtownards and receives a commission in the Royal Artillery. He serves in several units in Ireland and England, generally with light and heavy anti-aircraft units. He volunteers for the No. 11 (Scottish) Commando unit which is sent to the Middle East. There he sees action during the Syria-Lebanon campaign. Specifically, during the Battle of the Litani River, he draws attention from Captain David Stirling who is forming the new Special Air Service (SAS). Sterling recruits Mayne for the new SAS while he is in jail for striking his commanding officer.

From November 1941 to the end of 1942, Mayne is involved in several raids behind enemy lines with the SAS. He uses jeeps to go to various Axis bases and begin blowing up planes and fuel dumps. It is claimed that he personally destroyed 100 planes during these missions. In addition to serving in the Middle East, he serves as well in Sicily, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and France. In most of these locations he works with the resistance behind the enemy lines. In France he helps to train the French Resistance.

By the end of the war, Mayne has been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and has also received the British Army’s Distinguished Service Order with three bars, which means he received the award four times. After the war he joins the British Antarctic Survey in the Falkland Islands. He returns home to Newtownards when back issues, which started while he was serving in the Middle East, become more difficult for him.

Mayne is initiated into Eklektikos Lodge No. 542 in Newtownards in 1945. He is a very enthusiastic mason and joins a second lodge in Newtownards, Friendship Lodge No. 447. On the evening of December 13, 1955, he attends a meeting of Friendship Lodge and then joins some of his masonic brothers at a local bar. At about 4:00 AM on December 14, he is found dead in his Riley RM roadster in Mill Street, Newtownards, having reportedly collided with a farmer’s vehicle.

At his funeral hundreds of mourners turn out to pay their respects and to see him interred in a family plot in the town’s old Movilla Abbey graveyard. After his death his masonic jewel is preserved for many years by an old school friend before it is presented to Newtownards Borough Council where it is displayed in the Mayoral Chamber of the Council Offices.


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Birth of Cricketer Thomas Patrick Horan

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Thomas Patrick Horan, Australian cricketer who plays for Victoria and Australia, and later becomes an esteemed cricket journalist under the pen name “Felix,” is born on March 8, 1854, in Midleton, County Cork.

Horan emigrates to Australia with his parents and siblings as a small child. In Melbourne, he attends Bell Street School in Fitzroy and forms a friendship with Jack Blackham. Blackham encourages in Horan a love of cricket. Horan makes his first-class debut for Victoria in the 1874-1875 season.

The first of only two players born in Ireland to play Test cricket for Australia, Horan is the leading batsman in the colony of Victoria during the pioneering years of international cricket. He plays for Australia in the game against England subsequently designated as the first Test match, before touring England with the first representative Australian team, in 1878. Four years later, he tours England for the second time and plays in the famed Ashes Test match at The Oval.

An aggressive middle-order batsman renowned for his leg side play, Horan supplements his batting by bowling medium-pace in the roundarm style common to his era and once captures six wickets in a Test match innings. During a season disrupted by financial disputes and a strike by leading players, he captains Australia in two Test matches of the 1884–85 Ashes series but loses both games. Horan’s form peaks between the ages of 26 and 29 when he scores seven of his eight first-class centuries, including a score of 124 in a Test match on his home ground at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in January 1882.

In 1879, Horan begins writing a weekly newspaper column that continues until his death 37 years later. He establishes himself as the first Australian cricket writer who has played the game at the highest level, thus paving the way for many players to enter the media. Bill O’Reilly, the noted Australian player-writer of the twentieth century, describes him as, “the cricket writer par excellence.”

Horan’s documentation of the early years of Australian cricket are the basis for many works on the subject. Gideon Haigh writes that any, “serious scholar in the field…should probably acquaint himself with Tom Horan.” An anthology of his articles is published for the first time in 1989 when he is posthumously inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame for his writing. In part, his citation reads, “…it was as the first nationally known cricket writer that he made his major contribution to the game.”

Thomas Patrick Horan dies on April 16, 1916, in Malvern, Victoria, Australia.