Concannon is educated by the Loreto nuns in Coleraine, County Londonderry. In 1897, she studies modern languages at the Royal University of Ireland on a three-year scholarship. She studies abroad during these years as in 1899, she travels to Germany and studies German in Berlin University accompanied by her friend, Mary Macken. She then travels to France to study French at Sorbonne University. In 1900, she graduates Bachelor of Arts with first class honours and goes on to study Master of Arts in 1902 at the Royal University of Ireland. She is fortunate to being one of the first generation of educated women.
In 1906, Concannon marries Tomás Bán Ó Conceanainn, who she met in 1900 when he arrived home from the United States. They settle down in County Galway where they share the same love for the Irish language and write many Irish texts. They have no children. In Galway, she is a professor at University College Galway where she teaches history, which mainly involves the history of Irish women. In 1909, she is offered a lectureship at University College Dublin, in Italian, but the offer is then withdrawn before she can accept it, so she decides to pursue a writing career.
Concannon produces over twenty books, including works on religion, the history of Ireland and Irish women’s history. Her works are highly impacted by her political and nationalist views. Her analyses of Irish history is based on Catholicism and patriotism. She is also an advocate of Irish language restoration. Her first writings are love poems to her husband. These poems are ”simple, sensuous and passionate.”
Concannon also produces a number of imaginative historical text for children. She uses her married name for her publications and her first book, entitled A Garden of girls, or the famous schoolgirls of former days, is published in 1914. It is about “school life and education of real little girls” Her next well known piece is the Life of St. Columban in 1915, which is a study about the Irish ancient monastic life and a biography of a sixth-century saint.
Two of Concannon’s books, Daughters of Banba (1922) and St. Patrick (1932), receive the Tailteann Medal for Literature, and The Poor Clares in Ireland (1929) wins the National University Prize, a D.Litt. higher doctorate degree for historical research.
Concannon’s most common publication, Women of ‘Ninety Eight, is dedicated to all the dead women and all the living ones who have given their loved ones. This book emerges on the ideologies of Catholicism and patriotism “praising the devotion of Irish nationalist women while emphasising the centrality of women’s spiritual and domestic role in the home to the well-being of the nation.” As this work is written during the time of the Irish War of Independence, she stresses the importance of women help during the rebellion as “they acted as messengers and intelligence officers,” and in some cases, they fought as any men.
Concerning the Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill 1935, which according to George Cecil Bennett will negatively impact the rural middle class of which he is a representative, Bennett accuses Concannon and her fellow Dublin men of not caring about the people of the country. Concannon goes on to vote that the Dáil should disagree with the Seanad Éireann-proposed bill with 71 others.
Though Concannon is a TD as a university representative, she votes with her party to remove university representation from the Dáil, leading one TD to say, “I am very much surprised to see such a distinguished scholar and such a great contributor to Irish literature as Deputy Mrs. Concannon voting for the disfranchisement of the University that she has so well and so ably represented.”
Concannon speaks on behalf of Irish women in the Dáil in 1936. She speaks on how Irish women play a fundamental role in Ireland’s agricultural economy and therefore more money should be put toward educating these women.
Concannon is one of the minority voices against the role appointed to women in Éamon de Valera‘s constitution. She does not contest the Dáil election of 1937.
After the adoption of the Constitution of Ireland in 1937, the National University of Ireland constituency is reconstituted in the new Seanad Éireann. The first election takes place in 1938, and Concannon is elected. She is a popular figure and is re-elected each election in the Seanad until she dies in office on February 27, 1952.
Murdoch is the daughter of Irene Alice (née Richardson) and Wills John Hughes Murdoch. Her father, a civil servant, comes from a mainly Presbyterian sheep farming family from Hillhall, County Down. In 1915, he enlists as a soldier in King Edward’s Horse and serves in France during World War I before being commissioned as a second lieutenant. Her mother trains as a singer before Iris is born and is from a middle-class Church of Ireland family in Dublin. Her parents first meet in Dublin when her father is on leave and are married in 1918. Iris is the couple’s only child. When she is a few weeks old the family moves to London, where her father had joined the Ministry of Health as a second-class clerk. She is a second cousin of the Irish mathematician Brian Murdoch.
From 1947 to 1948 Murdoch studies philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. She meets Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge but does not hear him lecture, as he had left his Trinity College professorship before she arrives. In 1948 she becomes a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she teaches philosophy until 1963. From 1963 to 1967 she teaches one day a week in the General Studies department at the Royal College of Art.
In 1956 Murdoch marries John Bayley, a literary critic, novelist, and from 1974 to 1992 Warton Professor of English at Oxford University, whom she had met in Oxford in 1954. The unusual romantic partnership lasts more than forty years until Murdoch’s death. Bayley thinks that sex is “inescapably ridiculous.” She in contrast has “multiple affairs with both men and women which, on discomposing occasions, Bayley witnesses for himself.”
Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net, is published in 1954 and is selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. She had previously published essays on philosophy, and the first monograph about Jean-Paul Sartre published in English. She goes on to produce 25 more novels and additional works of philosophy, as well as poetry and drama.
Murdoch’s last novel, Jackson’s Dilemma, is published in 1995. She is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1997 and dies on February 8, 1999, in Oxford, England. There is a bench dedicated to her in the grounds of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she enjoyed walking.
O’Grady is the son of Admiral Hayes O’Grady and his wife, Susan Finucane. His father is one of the chiefs of the Cinél Donnghaile, the collective name of the O’Gradys. He is a nephew of Standish O’Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and a cousin of the novelist Standish James O’Grady, with whom he is sometimes confused. As a child he is fostered in Coonagh, County Limerick, an Irish-speaking area. There he learns Irish and comes into contact with the Gaelic manuscript tradition, listening to stories read aloud from manuscripts in farmers’ houses during wakes or while carding wool. He maintains this interest in the literary tradition throughout his life.
O’Grady receives his secondary education in Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, his name appearing in the school register for August 1846. Subsequently he attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD) from 1850 to 1854 but does not graduate. He is critical of an education system that makes no mention of Irish history and legend. During his student days he becomes a friend of the leading scholars and antiquarians, John O’Donovan, George Petrie and Eugene O’Curry, as well as the bookseller and publisher, John O’Daly. At this time he begins copying Gaelic manuscripts under their direction. He purchases from O’Daly in 1853 a collection in Irish of “tales and other pieces, in prose and verse” which he presents to the British Museum in 1892. He is a founding member of the Ossianic Society in 1853 and becomes its president in 1856. O’Curry attacks him publicly in a review in TheTablet, questioning his ability as a scholar. The publication of the society’s third volume prompts the review.
In 1857 O’Grady moves to the United States where he remains for thirty years. In 1901 he contributes an essay on Anglo-Irish Aristocracy to a collection entitled Ideals in Ireland edited by Augusta, Lady Gregory.
O’Grady is a bachelor all his life and dies on October 16, 1915, in his home in Ballinruan, Hale, Cheshire, England. He is buried in Altrincham cemetery.
Murray is born in Macroom, County Cork on January 17, 1873, the seventh of the eleven children of Cornelius Murray and Honora Murray (née Kelleher). He is educated at St. Patrick’s Teacher Training College in Drumcondra, Dublin. He works as a schoolteacher and in 1900 is appointed headmaster of the national school in Rathduff, County Cork. His first play, The Wheel of Fortune, is produced in 1909 by the Little Theatre in Cork, a theatre he co-founded with Daniel Corkery, Con O’Leary and Terence MacSwiney. The play is revised and renamed Sovereign Love in 1913. In 1915, he moves to Dublin as headmaster of the Model Schools at Inchicore, where he remains until his retirement from teaching in 1932.
Murray’s play Birthright is performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1910 and establishes him as a writer of force. In all, he writes fifteen plays, all of which are produced by the Abbey. His two most highly regarded works are Maurice Harte (1912) and Autumn Fire (1924). Both of these and Birthright are performed in New York City on Broadway, with Autumn Fire having a run of 71 performances. He also writes an autobiographical novel Spring Horizon (1937).
It has been stated both by A. DeGiacomo and by R. Allen Cave that, in the Art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Murray is awarded a bronze medal for his play Birthright. However, according to the official record for the games, although Murray is a participant in the literature category with this play and also with Maurice Harte, he does not win a medal.
In his later years, Murray holds a number of significant positions: director of the Authors’ Guild of Ireland, vice-president of the Irish Academy of Letters and president of the Irish Playwrights’ Association. He is awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by the National University of Ireland in 1949. He dies on March 7, 1959, at his home on Sandymount Strand, Ballsbridge, Dublin, of viral pneumonia, his wife having predeceased him by fifteen years. His extensive papers, containing scripts of almost all of his fifteen plays, correspondence, clippings, reviews, and other material, are held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI).
D’Alton is born to Joseph D’Alton and his wife Mary Brennan, at the height of the Land Wars in Ireland. He is baptised four days later, on October 15, 1882, with Michael and Mary Brennan acting as his godparents. His mother has a daughter, Mollie Brennan, from a previous marriage, she remarries again after the Cardinal’s father dies in 1883.
D’Alton occupies important roles at the National Seminary and is successively Professor of Ancient Classics (1912), Greek (1922), Vice-President (1934), and President (1936). He is raised to the rank of Monsignor on June 27, 1938.
D’Alton is named Archbishop of Armagh and thus Primate of All Ireland on June 13, 1946, and is created Cardinal Priest of Sant’ Agata de’ Goti in Rome by Pope Pius XII in the consistory of January 12, 1953. As a cardinal elector in the 1958 papal conclave, he gives a hint of the difficulties involved in that papal conclave and achieving unanimity in the voting.
One highlight of D’Alton’s time in Armagh is the Patrician Year Celebrations in 1961, marked by the Irish Catholic hierarchy as the 1,500th anniversary of the death of Saint Patrick and as such an opportunity to promote the “spiritual empire” created by the Irish Catholic church in the wider anglophone world. He writes a pastoral letter to mark the occasion.
Cardinal D’Alton is seen to be more ecumenical in outlook than other members of the Irish hierarchy. He tries to broker talks between the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom to ease the tensions between both countries, even going so far as to address the situation regarding the Irish ports, but to little avail.
In 1952, D’Alton becomes the first individual from the Republic of Ireland to receive an honorary degree from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), when he is conferred with a Doctorate in Literature. He already possesses a Doctor of Divinity, so this degree is a recognition of his earlier works such as Horace and His Age: A Study in Historical Background (1917), Roman Literary Theory and Criticism: A Study in Tendencies (1931), and Selections from St. John Chrysostom (1940).
In D’Alton’s hometown of Claremorris, the Dalton Inn Hotel and Dalton Street (formerly Church Street) are named after him. A plaque commemorating him is unveiled at the Dalton Inn Hotel on September 28, 2023. Plans to canonise him have been discussed.
Hayes-McCoy is born to Thomas Hayes-McCoy and Mary Kathleen Hayes-McCoy (née Wallace). His grandfather, Thomas Hayes-McCoy, is a Dubliner who as a child came to Galway in 1834 and is later a well-known Parnellite. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Burke, is a Galway artist. He grows up on Eyre Square where his father runs a gentleman’s hairdressing business. His two older siblings are Ignatius and Marguerite. The latter receives a PhD-degree in History at University College Galway (UCG), and later teaches at the Galway Technical School.
Hayes-McCoy receives his early education from the Patrician Brothers, Galway. His earliest notebook of 1927 and a manuscript history of Poland of the same year, now at the National Library of Ireland (NLI), testify to an early interest in history and heritage. From 1928 to 1932 he is a student scholarship holder at University College Galway, graduating in 1932 with a Bachelor of Commerce, and a Bachelor of Arts, with first-class honours in both, and a specialisation in “History, Ethics, Politics” for the latter. Mary Donovan O’Sullivan is one of his professors of history, and Liam Ó Briain, professor of Romance languages, is a stimulating influence. At this time, Hayes-McCoy is a member of the Republican Club, a committee member of the Literary and Debating Society, and in 1931 he is one of the founding members of a new Irish Students’ Association.
Hayes-McCoy pursues his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, and then spends two years at the Institute of Historical Research, London, in the Tudor seminar of J. E. Neale, rewriting his PhD and eventually publishing it as Scots mercenary forces in Ireland, 1565–1603 (Dublin and London, 1937), with a foreword by Eoin MacNeill. This is characterised by meticulous archival research, and it anticipates by sixty years the much-vaunted New British History of the late twentieth century by tracing the interconnections between events in England, Ireland, and Scotland.
In the absence of an academic post, Hayes-McCoy becomes an assistant keeper in the Art and Industrial Division at the National Museum of Ireland (1939–1959), with a responsibility for the Military History, and the Irish War of Independence collections. One of his first tasks is to prepare a standing exhibition on Irish history before 1916. His research, long-standing personal interest in the military, and his curatorial experience, helps form an expert knowledge of historical Irish warfare. This leads to his role in co-founding The Military History Society of Ireland in 1949 whose journal, The Irish Sword, he edits. He describes the vagaries of setting up such a body, its reception, and the historiographical considerations attendant on it, in a paper published posthumously in The Irish Sword.
On August 19, 1941, Hayes-McCoy marries Mary Margaret “May” O’Connor, daughter of C.J. and M.B. O’Connor of New Ross/Enniscorthy. They have three daughters and two sons: Mary, Ann, Ian, Robert, Felicity. The family home is in Dublin.
Earning high reputation by continued research and by publishing leads to Hayes-McCoy’s receipt of the D.Litt. degree from the National University, and to his membership in the Royal Irish Academy in 1950. In his professional career, apart from the broad spectrum of press publications, he publishes prolifically. The works that are judged most influential, are his Scots mercenary forces in Ireland 1565–1603 (1937), the papers “The early history of guns in Ireland” (1938–1939), “Strategy and tactics in Irish warfare, 1593–1601” (1941), “The army of Ulster, 1593–1601” (1951), the controversial “Gaelic society in Ireland in the late sixteenth century” (1963), and the monographs “Irish battles” (London 1969), and “A history of Irish flags from earliest times” (Dublin 1979). A member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, his most notable contribution is the publication “Ulster and other Irish maps, c.1600” (Dublin 1964).
In 1946, Hayes-McCoy is appointed to a committee of eight historians to advise on setting up the Bureau of Military History, a body established for the creation and compilation of material on the history of the Irish movements for independence, 1913–1921, specifically from witness statements. The committee is also to further offer guidance and oversee progress of the Bureau in coordination with the Ministry of Defence. It subsequently expresses concerns about the state’s role and methods in the collection of statements.
Having begun writing for the press at an early stage, Hayes-McCoy’s public position at the Museum encourages him to go further. He has broad involvement with local history groups to whom he presents papers, and also works for newspapers and for radio and television. To the national and Galway press he usually contributes articles on military aspects of Irish history, as well as book reviews, but he also uses them as a platform to engage with what he sees are flaws in the education of history in Ireland which during his lifetime is constrained by a certain degree of political and cultural state control.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Hayes-McCoy becomes involved in a number of paratheatrical events of national significance one of which – the “Pageant of St.Patrick” for which he writes the script (An Tóstal 1954) – is realised on an immense scale. He scripts these works to begin with and is later principally engaged as historical consultant. In that capacity, he collaborates in 1955 and 1956 with Micheál Mac Liammóir and Denis Johnston on their scripts for pageants on St. Patrick and on the Táin Bó Cuailgne, at times finding it difficult to square the historical liberties taken by these artists with his own role.
On Irish radio and television Hayes-McCoy is most active in the mid-1960s, editing and contributing to Thomas Davis lectures series, writing scripts for a series of thirty children’s programmes on all aspects of Irish history, and preparing/contributing on air to the television series “Irish battles” and “The long winter.” As well as writing for RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, he contributes scripts to BBC Northern Ireland‘s schools radio programmes.
In 1959, Hayes-McCoy succeeds to the chair of his former history professor at UCG with the full remit of lecturing, administering examinations to undergraduates, and supervising postgraduate theses. Among his students who continue in the field of history are Nicholas Canny, Martin Coen, Patrick Melvin, Peter Toner, Tony Claffey, and Breandán Ó Bric. After his appointment to UCG, the family home remains in Dublin, and he commutes to Galway weekly during term time.
In the early 1960s, Hayes-McCoy becomes a spokesperson for the movement rekindled by the Old Galway Society to preserve the landmark “Lion’s Tower” in the city. The ultimate failure of the campaign informs his regret, expressed a year later, that Ireland is forgetful about its past and that “we don’t bother to find out about it or to maintain our ancient heritage,” and, on a perceived spirit of conformity, “take my own city of Galway, it is now more prosperous than it was, but it is no longer distinctive. I do not believe that it is essential for progress that we should lose our heritage.”
While at one time member and secretary of the London Sinn Féin office and informed by a pride of country and place, Hayes-McCoy’s professional and private outlook are marked by a distrust of nationalism or of any antagonising national agendas compromising genuine scholarship. In a paper drafted on tendencies in modern historical studies, he criticises the two historiographical extremes, each to be avoided, each unfortunately characteristic of the moment – extreme de-bunking and extreme “adding for effect.” “A history is a record of fact; to add pseudo-facts is as grave a sin as to leave out real facts that may change the colour of the whole.”
Hayes-McCoy’s abiding pastime is drawing. Among his papers in the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway are approximately 40 items with predominantly maritime subjects, and he has a special regard for the history of ships, and a romantic liking of the sea. He also has a lifelong interest in Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, and their works, and in the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Hayes-McCoy’s middle age is marked by intermittent ill health. He dies on November 27, 1975, in his room at the Great Southern Hotel, Eyre Square, Galway.
Hayes-McCoy’s papers are held at the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway.
Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which is to shape his later view of Ireland. He attends Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.
After graduating, Gwynn spends ten years from 1886 tutoring as a schoolmaster, for a time in France, which creates a lifelong interest in French culture, as expressed in his Praise of France (1927). By 1896 he has developed an interest in writing, becoming a writer and journalist in London focused on English themes, until he comes into contact with the emerging Irish literary revival, when he serves as secretary of the Irish Literary Society.
This is the beginning of a long and prolific career as a writer covering a wide range of literary genres, from poetry and biographical subjects to general historical works. The eighteenth century is Gwynn’s particular specialism. He writes numerous books on travel and on the topography of his own homeland, as well as on his other interests: wine, eighteenth-century painting and fishing.
Gwynn returns to Ireland in 1904 when he enters politics. In the 1906 Galway Borough by-election he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this period, he is active in the Gaelic League and is one of the few Irish MPs to have close links to the Irish literary revival. Along with Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts he founds the Dublin publishing house of Maunsel and Company. He is opposed to the demand for the Irish language to be a compulsory subject for matriculation. He supports the campaign which wins the establishment of a Catholic university when he serves on the Irish University Royal Commission in 1908. During the debate on the third Home Rule Bill, and at the request of his party leader John Redmond, he writes The case for Home Rule (1911) and is in charge of much of the party’s official publicity and its replies to criticism from Sinn Féin.
On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gwynn strongly supports Redmond’s encouragement of Irish nationalists and the Irish National Volunteers to support the Allied and British war effort by enlisting in Irish regiments of the Irish Divisions, especially as a means to ensure the implementation of the suspended Home Rule Act at the end of an expectedly short war. Now over fifty, he enlists in January 1915 with the 7th Leinster Regiment in the 16th (Irish) Division. In July he is commissioned as a captain in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Connaught Rangers and serves with them on the Western Front at Messines, the Somme and elsewhere.
Gwynn is one of five Irish Nationalist MPs who enlist and serve in the army, the others being John L. Esmonde, Willie Redmond, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan, as well as former MP Tom Kettle. Together with Kettle and William Redmond, he undertakes a recruitment drive for the Irish divisions, co-operating with Kettle on a collection of ballads called Battle Songs for the Irish Brigade (1915). He is made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in July 1915. In 1916, he is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission.
Recalled to Ireland in late 1917 to participate in the Irish Convention chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett, Gwynn sides with the Redmondite faction of the Irish Party in supporting a compromise with the southern unionists in an attempt to reach consensus on a Home Rule settlement which would avoid partition. On the death of Redmond in March 1918, he takes over as leader of the moderate nationalists in the Convention. He opposes the threat of compulsory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1918, though as a member of the Irish Recruiting Council he continues to support voluntary recruitment, encountering intense opposition led by Sinn Féin.
Gwynn forms the Irish Centre Party in 1919 and stands unsuccessfully as an Independent Nationalist for Dublin University in the 1918 Irish general election. The party merges with Plunkett’s Irish Dominion League to press for a settlement by consent on the basis of dominion status, but Gwynn subsequently breaks with Plunkett due to his willingness to accept partition as a temporary compromise. The polarities which divide Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War increasingly sideline his brand of moderate cultural nationalism. Although he supports the newly emergent nation, he equally condemns some of the excesses, such as the burning of houses belonging to Free State senators.
Gwynn’s personal life also becomes complicated at this stage and around 1920. He has a romantic association with married artist Grace Henry who is perhaps the best-known female artist in Ireland at the time. During this period, he and Grace travel in France and Italy and at various stages in his life she painted portraits of him including a very distinguished looking one of him in his late 60s or early 70s. Their relationship contributes significantly to the separation of Henry from her artist husband Paul Henry in 1930.
During the 1920s, Gwynn also devotes himself to writing, covering political events as Irish correspondent to The Observer and The Times. Later in his career, he writes some substantial works, and together with his son Denis Gwynn (The Life of John Redmond, 1932) does much to shape the retrospective image and self-justification of John Redmond. In the mid-1930s he authors three books with a connecting theme of fishing with the artist Roy Beddington serving as illustrator: The Happy Fisherman (1936), From River to River (1937), and Two in a Valley (1938).
Gwynn is awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1940, and a Litt.D. by the University of Dublin in 1945. The Irish Academy of Letters awards him the Gregory Medal in April 1950. In his literary writings he stands for a humanism and tolerance, which qualities, due to political upheavals, were relatively rare in the Ireland of his day.
Gwynn dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin, and is buried at Tallaght Cemetery, south County Dublin.
Gwynn marries his cousin Mary Louisa (d. 1941), daughter of Rev. James Gwynn. She later converts to Catholicism. They have three sons and two daughters who are brought up in her religion, of whom Aubrey (1892–1983) becomes a Jesuit priest and professor of medieval history at University College Dublin (UCD). Their second son, Denis Rolleston (1893–1971), is professor of modern Irish history at University College Cork (UCC).
Gwynn’s brother Edward John (1868–1941) becomes provost of Trinity College and another brother Robert Malcolm becomes its senior dean. His sister Lucy Gwynn is the first woman registrar of Trinity. A third brother, Charles, has a successful career in the British Army and retires as a Major General. Younger brothers Lucius and Jack are noted cricketers.
Paul Joseph Brady, Irish singer-songwriter and musician, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 19, 1947. Interested in a wide variety of music from an early age, his work straddles folk and pop.
Brady begins learning piano around age six and by the age of eleven he has begun to play guitar, spending hours of his school holidays learning every song that the Shadows had recorded. He is also influenced by Chuck Berry.
In 1963, Brady begins performing as a piano player in a hotel in Bundoran, County Donegal. In October 1964, he attends University College Dublin and performs with a number of R&B groups, covering songs by the likes of Ray Charles and James Brown. The first of these is the Inmates (late 1964–about April 1965), which evolves into the Kult (about April–December 1965), featuring Brady, Jackie McAuley (ex-Them, and future Belfast Gypsies and Trader Horne), Brendan Bonass, and Dave Pennefather. He can be seen in the documentary film Charlie Is My Darling waiting outside Dublin‘s Adelphi Cinema for the Rolling Stones‘ concert of September 3, 1965. He next joins Rootzgroup (late 1965–May 1966) and Rockhouse (about May–December 1966).
During Brady’s time at college in Dublin, the country sees a huge rise in interest in traditional Irish music. He joins the popular Irish band The Johnstons when Michael Johnston leaves in May 1967. They move to London in 1969 and subsequently to New York City in 1972 to expand their audience. Despite some success, he returns to Ireland in 1974 to join the Irish group Planxty, the band that subsequently launches the solo careers of Andy Irvine, Liam O’Flynn, Dónal Lunny, and Christy Moore.
When Planxty disbands in late 1975, Brady forms a duo with Irvine from 1976 to 1978, a partnership that produces the successful album, Andy Irvine/Paul Brady. The next few years see him establish his popularity and reputation as one of Ireland’s best interpreters of traditional songs. His versions of ballads like “Arthur McBride” and “The Lakes of Pontchartrain” are considered definitive and are still popular at concerts today. In 1975 in New York, he records three albums for Shanachie Records as guitar accompanist to resident Irish fiddlers Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds and John Vesey. He also records a 1976 album, The High Part of the Road, for the same label with Irish fiddler Tommy Peoples.
In 1978, Brady releases his first solo album, Welcome Here Kind Stranger, which wins him critical acclaim and is voted the “Folk Album of the Year” by Melody Maker magazine. However, it proves to be his last album covering traditional material. He decides to delve into pop and rock music and releases his first album of this genre in 1981, Hard Station.
Brady releases a number of successful solo albums throughout the 1980s: True for You (1983), Back to the Centre (1985), and Primitive Dance (1987). By the end of the decade, he is recognised and accepted as a respected performer and songwriter. His songs are being covered by a number of other artists, including Santana and Dave Edmunds.
Dylan is sufficiently impressed by Brady’s work to name-check him in the booklet of his 1985 box set, Biograph. The actual quote is “(…) people get too famous too fast these days and it destroys them. Some guys got it down – Leonard Cohen, Paul Brady, Lou Reed, secret heroes, John Prine, David Allen Coe, Tom Waits. I listen more to that kind of stuff than whatever is popular at the moment. They’re not just witchdoctoring up the planet, they don’t set up barriers (…)”.
In 1991, Brady reaches number 5 in the Irish Singles Chart with Nobody Knows.
Since his Hard Station album (1981), Brady is on various major labels until he creates his own label, PeeBee Music, in the late 1990s. He releases three albums in the 1990s: Trick or Treat, Songs & Crazy Dreams (a remixed compilation of earlier songs) and Spirits Colliding, which are met with critical acclaim. Trick or Treat is on Fontana/Mercury Records and receives a lot of promotion. As a result, some critics consider it his debut album and note that the record benefits from the expertise of experienced studio musicians, as well as producer Gary Katz, who works with the rock group Steely Dan. Rolling Stone, after praising his earlier but less-known solo records, calls Trick or Treat Brady’s “most compelling collection.”
Brady goes on to record several other albums, fifteen in total since going solo in 1978, and collaborates with a number of other established musicians including Bonnie Raitt and Richard Thompson. In 2006, he collaborates with Cara Dillon on the track “The Streets of Derry” from her album After the Morning. He also works with Fiachra Trench.
Brady’s fifteenth studio album, Hooba Dooba, is released in March 2010.
In 2017, a friendship is struck with Theo Katzman (Vulfpeck) and Brady tours Ireland in 2019 as half of this duo with Joe Dart, also of vulfpeck, Louis Cato and Lee Pardini. He continues to tour, record and collaborate with other artists. In 2019, Jimmy Buffett begins performing a cover of Brady’s hit, “The World is What you Make It.” In September 2019, Brady joins Buffett on his tour stops in both Dublin and London.
Brady releases the album Unfinished Business on his own label, PeeBee Music, licensed to Proper Music UK, in 2017.
While Brady and Andy Irvine’s planned tour of their 1976 album Andy Irvine/Paul Brady is impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, they finish the tour in 2022. Musicians to join them on the tour include fiddle player Kevin Burke and multi-instrumentalist Dónal Lunny, both of whom had played on the original album.
In 2009, Brady receives an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Ulster, in recognition of his services to traditional Irish music and songwriting.
Frederick Edward McWilliamCBERA, Northern Irish surrealistsculptor, dies in London on May 13, 1992. He works chiefly in stone, wood and bronze. His style of work consists of sculptures of the human form contorted into strange positions, often described as modern and surreal.
McWilliam is born in Banbridge, County Down,on April 30, 1909, the son of Dr. William McWilliam, a local general practitioner. Growing up in Banbridge has a great influence on his work. He makes references to furniture makers such as Carson the Cooper and Proctors in his letters to his friend, Marjorie Burnett.
McWilliam attends Campbell College in Belfast and later attends Belfast College of Art from 1926. After 1928, he continues to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He originally intends to become a painter, but influenced by Alfred Horace Gerrard, head of the sculpture department at the Slade, and by Henry Moore whom he meets there, he turns to sculpture. He receives the Robert Ross Leaving Scholarship which enables him and his wife, Beth (née Crowther), to travel to Paris where he visits the studio of Constantin Brâncuși.
During the first year of World War II, he joins the Royal Air Force and is stationed in England for four years where he is engaged in interpreting aerial reconnaissance photographs. He is then posted to India. While there he teaches art in the Hindu Art School in New Delhi.
After his return from India, McWilliam teaches for a year at the Chelsea School of Art. He is then invited by A. H. Gerrard to teach sculpture at the Slade. He continues in this post until 1968.
During the Northern IrelandTroubles McWilliam produces a series of bronzes in 1972 and 1973 known as Women of Belfast in response to the bombing at the Abercorn Tea-Rooms.
In 1964 McWilliam is awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Queen’s University Belfast. In 1966 he is appointed CBE and in 1971 he wins the Oireachtas Gold Medal. He is represented in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Tate Britain in London. In 1984 the National Self-Portrait Gallery purchases a McWilliam self-portrait amongst acquisitions from fellow Northerners Brian Ballard, Brian Ferran and T. P. Flanagan.
Best’s parents are Henry Best and Margaret Jane Best (née Irvine). His father is an excise officer working in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, at the time of his birth.
Best’s education takes place locally at Foyle College, a grammar school in County Londonderry which dates back to 1617, schooling children ages eleven to eighteen. Following his time at Foyle College, he does not attend university, however he is a member of the Irish Literary Society in London. Instead of attending university he works as a banking assistant for a time before an inheritance allows him to travel to Paris, France.
It is in Paris that Best meets, and becomes friends with, John Millington Synge, who recommends the lectures of Marie Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville at the Collège de France. He later goes on to translate and annotate Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville’s work, Le cycle mythologique irlandais et la mythologie celtique into The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology.
Upon returning to Dublin from Paris, Best becomes Honorary Secretary of the School of Irish Learning from its inception in 1903. It is incorporated into the Royal Irish Academy in 1926. He acts as joint editor of the school’s journal Ériu, and continues after the transfer of the journal to the Academy. In 1904, he joins the staff of the National Library of Ireland as an assistant director. He succeeds as Chief Librarian in 1924, and subsequently Library Director, a post he holds until 1940. Throughout his career, he becomes a prolific expert on Celtic studies, and is widely attributed to the survival and success of the subject as it is known today.
Best’s work earns him several accolades. He receives the Leibniz Medal of the Royal Prussian Academy in 1914, an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1920, and an Honorary D.Litt. by Trinity College Dublin in 1923. In 1936, he is awarded the Medal of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Pius XI for his facsimile edition of the Milan codex. He is elected as President of the Royal Irish Academy in 1942. His works, Bibliography of Irish Philology and of Irish Printed Literature (1913) and Bibliography of Irish Philology and Manuscript Literature, 1913-41 (1942), are considered to be some of his most important scholarly outputs.
Upon his retirement from the National Library, Best becomes a Senior Professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). He retires from the DIAS in 1947 at the age of seventy-five. From 1948 to 1956, he becomes chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, a position previously held by Eoin MacNeill. While in this role, he supervises several facsimiles, including RIA MS 23 N 10, later renamed the Book of Ballycummin in 2019.
Following his retirement from the Irish Manuscripts Commission, Best spends much of the final three years of his life “sorting out his large correspondence,” much of which is currently held in the National Library. He also continues to publish new work throughout his later life. He works on a translation of the Book of Leinster alongside Osborn Bergin and Professor M. A. O’Brien, who takes over after Bergin’s death in 1950. The first fasciculus is published in 1954, the second in 1956 and the third in 1959. His work also appears in multiple academic journals, including Éiriu, and the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, Revue Celtique, Études Celtiques, Hermathena, The Dublin Magazine, and The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. He also continues with his work in palaeography, including the last paper he completes on the Book of Armagh in 1958, which appeared in Éiriu vol. xviii. His aid in the writing of others is particularly visible in his surviving correspondence with George Moore.
Best marries his wife, Edith Best (née Oldham), in 1906, he being seven years her junior. She is the older sister of Charles Hubert Oldham, who goes on to become Professor of Economics at University College Dublin. She herself is a musician, a pianist, who had studied at the Royal College of Music in London. The couple has no children, and also claims to have no affiliation with any religion. Edith passes away at their home on March 9, 1950.
Best dies on September 25, 1959, at his home on 57 Upper Leeson Street in Dublin. The Richard I. Best Papers are currently held at the National Archives of Ireland and have been instrumental in the foundation of The Richard Irvine Best Memorial lecture. This discussion and celebration of Best’s work, organised by Richard Irvine Best Memorial Lecture Trust, has taken place since 1969.
seamus dubhghaill 