Hone is born in Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin on October 26, 1831. He is the son of Brindley Hone, a merchant and director of the Midland Great Western Railway.
Though a member of a very artistic family, Hone’s initial training is as an engineer at Trinity College Dublin followed by a brief period of work for the Irish Railway before going to Paris in 1853 to study painting. He first studies under Adolphe Yvon, the French military painter, and later Thomas Couture, who is one of the earliest exponents of realism and from whom he learns principles which influence his work throughout his career.
Most of Hone’s later paintings are landscapes, very often enlivened with animals and occasionally with figures. In France he is influenced by the painter Gustav Courbet who is taking a new and quite revolutionary realistic approach. His closest painting tips are, however, from another French impressionist, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He becomes a close friend of one of Corot’s followers at the Barbizon school of landscape painting. At Barbizon he learns to appreciate colour, texture and tone in the landscape and applies it in strong and confident brushworks to the painting of Irish subjects on his return. In Paris he also works closely with artist Édouard Brandon, also a follower of Corot.
Hone’s paintings which are completed in France have many similarities to those that he completes at his country farm in County Dublin, but the finish is perhaps more polished and professional in the later Irish works.
From 1876, except for four years, Hone exhibits at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). He is elected a full member in 1880 and in 1894 becomes Professor of Painting. His exhibition with John Butler Yeats in 1901 is one of the turning points for the history of Irish art as it is their paintings which convince Sir Hugh Lane that Dublin should have a gallery of modern art.
Nathaniel Hone dies in Dublin on October 14, 1917. After his death his widow bequeaths the contents of his studio to the National Gallery of Ireland. He rarely dates his work, so it is difficult to establish chronology. The similarity of many of his motifs and subjects often make it difficult to tell whether a view is Irish or French. Equally it is difficult to chart his developments on stylistic grounds alone.
(Pictured: Nathaniel Hone, the younger, self-portrait as an old man)
Duffy is born in Nice, France, on July 17, 1884, the daughter of the Irish nationalist Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the founders of The Nation and his third wife, Louise (née Hall) from Cheshire, England. Her mother dies when she is four. She is then raised in Nice by her Australian half-sisters from her father’s second marriage. It is a well-to-do and culturally vibrant home where she is exposed to political figures and ideas.
Duffy’s first visit to Ireland is in 1903, at the age of 18, when her father dies and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. This is when she first hears Irish spoken. She finds a grammar book in a bookshop and becomes curious. Her father was not an Irish speaker, though her grandmother in the early 1800s was likely fluent.
Duffy spends the years between 1903 and 1907 between France and England. She takes courses through Cusack’s College in London so that she can matriculate.
Duffy decides to continue her studies in Dublin but cannot afford to move until she receives a small inheritance from her grandmother on the Hall side of the family. Once in Ireland in 1907, at the age of 23, she begins her university studies, taking arts. She lives in the Women’s College, Dominican Convent, as women are not allowed to attend lectures in the Royal University of Ireland. She goes occasionally to the Gaeltacht to learn Irish. Graduating in 1911 with a Bachelor of Arts from University College Dublin (UCD), she is one of the first women to do so.
Given the lack of teachers, even without a full qualification, Duffy then teaches in Patrick Pearse‘s St. Ita’s school for girls in Ranelagh. She studies with the Dominicans again in Eccles Street, gaining a Teaching Diploma from Cambridge University.
A supporter of women’s suffrage, Duffy speaks at a mass meeting in Dublin in 1912 in favour of having the Home Rule bill include a section to grant women the vote. She also joins the Irish republican women’s paramilitary organisation Cumann na mBan, as a founding member in April 1914, serving on the provisional committee with Mary Colum, as a co-secretary.
Duffy is aware that being a suffragist and a nationalist are not necessarily the same thing, realising her involvement in Cumann na mBan is in support of nationalism. When St. Ita’s closes due to funding problems in 1912, she takes the opportunity to complete her qualifications. After receiving her Cambridge teacher’s diploma in 1913, she returns to UCD to study for a Master of Arts degree.
Duffy is in fact working on her master’s thesis during the Easter break in 1916 when the rumour comes to her that the Rising has begun in Dublin city centre. She walks to the Rebel headquarters in the GPO where she tells Pearse, one of the leaders, that she does not agree with the violent uprising.
Duffy spends all of Easter week working in the GPO kitchens with other volunteers like Desmond FitzGerald and a couple of captured British soldiers, ensuring the volunteers are cared for. The women in the GPO are given the opportunity to leave under the protection of the Red Cross on the Thursday as the shelling of the building has caused fires, but almost all of them refuse. In the end, she is among the second group of the people to leave the GPO on the Friday, tunnelling through the walls of the buildings to avoid coming under fire.
Duffy’s group makes it to Jervis Street Hospital where they spend the night. The next day, Saturday, Pearse formally surrenders. She heads for Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, another volunteer position, on the morning after the surrender, to see what is happening. There she finds a holdout of volunteers who are unaware of the surrender or that the fighting is over.
After 1916 Duffy is elected to the Cumann na mBan’s executive and in 1918 is one of the signatories to a petition for self-determination for Ireland which is presented to President Woodrow Wilson by Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. During her time in the GPO, she had collected names of the volunteers and promised to take messages to their families. This possibly influences her in being involved in the National Aid Association and Volunteers Dependants Fund. In the aftermath of the rebellion there are 64 known dead among the volunteers, while 3,430 men and 79 women are arrested. Families need support. These organisations are able to arrange funding from the United States.
In 1917, Duffy co-founds and runs Scoil Bhríde, as a secondary school for girls in Dublin through the medium of Gaelic. It is still in operation as a primary school. Her co-founder is Annie McHugh, who later marries Ernest Blythe. The end of the Rising leads to the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). During this time, she is mostly focused on the school. However, it is raided by the military and Duffy later admits it is in fact used for rebel meetings and to safeguard documents. In October 1920, the Irish leader Michael Collins meets Archbishop Patrick Clune there in secret. In an effort to support the nationwide boycott of the police, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), in 1920, she has a leaflet sent to all branches of Cumann na mBan which states in part that the RIC are the “eyes and ears of the enemy. Let those eyes and ears know no friendship.”
The war ends with the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. The result is the Irish Civil War which lasts until 1923. Duffy is a supporter of the Treaty, which her brother had signed, and as such she leaves Cumann na mBan and joins Cumann na Saoirse, in which she is instrumental in founding as an Irish republican women’s organisation which supports the Pro-Treaty side.
Once the civil war is over, Duffy leaves the political arena and returns to education. She especially needs to focus on funding in the early years of the school. She works with UCD’s Department of Education from 1926, once Scoil Bhríde is recognised as a teacher training school. She publishes educational documents like School Studies in The Appreciation of Art with Elizabeth Aughney and published by UCD in 1932.
Until her retirement, Duffy also lectures on the teaching of French. She retires as principal in 1944.
Recognising the importance of her first-hand experience and with a good political understanding, Duffy records her memories of the events in which she has taken part. In 1949, she gives an account of her life in relation to nationalist activities to the Bureau of Military History. She is involved in a Radio Éireann broadcast in 1956 about the women in the Rising. In 1962, she takes part in the RTÉ TV program Self Portrait broadcast on March 20, 1962. In March 1966 she gives a lecture in UCD to mark the 50th anniversary of the Rising which is published in The Easter rising, 1916, and University College Dublin (1966).
Duffy dies, unmarried, on October 12, 1969, aged 85, and is interred in the family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.
In 2014, An Post issues a stamp to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Cumann na mBan. In 2016, for the centenary, a documentary is produced, discussing seven of the women, including Duffy, who were involved in the Easter Rising.
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.
Barton is born in Dublin on April 21, 1856. Her father is a lawyer from Rochestown, County Tipperary, and her mother’s family is from County Galway. Educated privately, she is a liberal in social affairs. Her interests include horse racing. She is cousins with sisters Eva Henrietta and Letitia Marion Hamilton. She begins exhibiting her broad-wash watercolour paintings with the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI) in 1872. She and her sister Emily visit Brussels in 1875, where they receive drawing tuition in drawing and fine art painting under the French artist Henri Gervex. There, along with her close friend Mildred Anne Butler, she begins to study figure painting and figure drawing.
In 1879, Barton joins the local committee of the Irish Fine Art Society. Afterward she trains at Paul Jacob Naftel‘s art studio in London. She, like Butler, studies under Naftel. In 1882, she exhibits her painting Dead Game, at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). In 1884, she exhibits at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA). Later, she shows at the Japanese Gallery, the Dudley Museum and Art Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. In 1893, she becomes an associate member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, attaining full membership in 1911.
Barton’s watercolours and townscapes become well known in both Dublin and London. This is helped by her illustrations in books of both cities including Picturesque Dublin, Old and New by Francis Farmer and her own book Familiar London.
(Pictured: “A rest in rotten row” – 1892 watercolour by Rose Maynard Barton. The painting shows a nurse and child resting on Rotten Row, Hyde Park, London.)
Stoney is born in Dublin on February 4, 1870, to George and Margaret Sophia Stoney. Her father is a mathematical physicist who later serves as Secretary of Queen’s University of Ireland and is an advocate for women’s right to higher education in Ireland. His efforts are considered to be among the principal reasons that women can qualify for a medical license. Of weak health as a child, she is at first privately educated in the home but then attends the Royal College for Science of Ireland with her sister Edith. In 1883, the Stoney family moves to London in order to provide higher education for the daughters since this is unavailable for women in Ireland at the time. She attends the London School of Medicine for Women where she is a distinguished student with great academic achievements in subjects such as anatomy and physiology. She obtains her MBBS with honours in 1895 and a Doctor of Medicine in 1898, going on to specialise in radiology.
Stoney works as an ENT clinical assistant at the Royal Free Hospital as well as spending six years as a demonstrator in anatomy at the London School of Medicine for Women.
After this she spends a short amount of time in the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children in Kingston upon Hull and then goes on to establish an X-ray department in the Elizabeth Garret Anderson Hospital for Women in London in 1902. At the hospital she carries out a variety of work but mainly deals with X-rays, often developing the radiographic plates at her own house. She is the first female radiologist to work in the United Kingdom at a time when knowledge on radiology and the equipment involved is still in its developmental stages. She is forced to work in poor conditions with badly ventilated rooms and a lack of space for X-ray work. She is given no assistance and has to do the majority of the work on her own. Furthermore, she is excluded as a member of the medical staff and from the X-ray department committee. In 1906 she sets up a practice in Harley Street.
Stoney leaves the hospital at the start of the war. She has 13 years of experience in her field when World War I breaks out in August 1914. She and her sister Edith, a medical physicist, volunteer to assist the British Red Cross, but both are refused by surgeon Frederick Treves since they were women. Despite the refusal, Stoney prepares an X-ray installation and helps to organise a unit of women volunteers alongside Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, Women’s Imperial Service League and the Belgian Red Cross to aid the Belgian soldiers in Antwerp. The team converts an abandoned music hall into a makeshift hospital where she manages the surgical unit as head of the medical staff and radiologist. The hospital comes under fire and after enduring ongoing shellfire for 18 hours, the hospital is evacuated. The team walks to Holland, where they manage to cross the Scheldt River on buses carrying ammunition, twenty minutes before the bridge is blown up. She and her unit earn the 1914 Star for bravery.
Stoney continues working in a hospital near Cherbourg in France, mainly dealing with cases relating to compound fractures and locating bullet fragments in wounds. During this time, she becomes experienced in recognizing dead bone and discovers that removing it will speed up recovery.
In March 1915, the Cherbourg hospital is no longer needed, and Stoney moves back London. She begins full-time work at the 1,000-bed Fulham Military Hospital. She is one of the first female physicians granted to serve as a full-time worker under the British War Office and goes on to receive the Order of the British Empire in June 1919. She works as the Head of the X-ray and Electrical Department and remains there until 1918.
In her later years, Stoney suffers from ill health, largely attributed to her over-exposure to radiation in her work. It is reported that she has X-ray dermatitis of her left hand, a painful skin condition associated in modern times with radiation therapy as a treatment for cancer. She moves to the south coastal town of Bournemouth in England where she is on the staff of two hospitals, practicing radiology part-time. She occupies the position of Honorary Medical Officer to the Electrical Department of the Royal Victoria and West Hants Hospital in Bournemouth. She is the founder and president of the Wessex branch of the British Institute of Radiology. She serves as the consulting actinotherapist at the Victoria Cripples Home. During retirement she pens a number of articles in contribution to the medical literature of the time. She publishes research on topics such as fibroids, goitre, Graves’ disease, soldier’s heart, rickets and osteomalacia.
Stoney retires from all of her hospital positions in 1928 at the age of 58. She, along with her older sister Edith, travel in retirement. One trip is to India, where she writes her final scientific paper, the subject of which is osteomalacia (bone softening), in particular in relation to pelvic deformities in childbirth. She studies and investigates this topic overseas, and specifically the association between UV exposure, vitamin D and skeletal development. In India, she also uses her expertise to advise on the use of UV light in hospitals.
Stoney dies at the age of 62, on October 7, 1932. She is suffering from a long and painful illness, vertebral cancer, again largely attributed to her work in the presence of high levels of radiation. Her funeral takes place on October 11 at Golders Green Crematorium, London. The British Journal of Radiology publishes her official obituary which spans five pages, containing many warm personal testimonials. After her sister’s death, Edith Stoney continues to travel and research.
Within one year of becoming Director of the School of Irish Studies in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Bergin resigns both the senior professorship and his office of director. The reason for his resignation is never made public.
Bergin, who never uses the name Joseph except when signing with his initials, does not seem to have felt the need of institutional religion, and during his lifetime, he rarely attends religious services. He develops Irish nationalist sympathies and remains a firm nationalist all his life but without party affiliations. From the number of Irish speakers living in Cork, he quickly masters the spoken Irish of West Munster. By 1897, his knowledge of spoken and literary Modern Irish is so strong that he is appointed lecturer in Celtic in Queen’s College, Cork. It is during this time that he becomes an active member of the Gaelic League.
Bergin publishes extensively in the journal for Irish scholarship, Ériu. He is best known for his discovery of Bergin’s Law, which states that while the normal order of a sentence in Old Irish is verb-subject-object, it is permissible for the verb, in the conjunct form, to be placed at the end of the sentence. His friend Frank O’Connor writes humorously that while he discovers the law “he never really believed in it.” He writes poetry in Irish and makes a number of well-received translations of Old Irish love poetry.
Bergin is celebrated in Brian O’Nolan‘s poem Binchy and Bergin and Best, originally printed in the Cruiskeen Lawn column in The Irish Times and now included in The Best of Myles. He is noted for his feuds with George Moore and William Butler Yeats, but he enjoys a lifelong friendship with George William Russell. Frank O’Connor describes Bergin’s eccentricities affectionately in his memoir My Father’s Son.
Osborn Bergin dies in a nursing home in Dublin at the age of 76 on October 6, 1950, having never married. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork. He leaves the valuable contents of his library – over 1,200 volumes on philology and other scholarly subjects, many with important annotations – and a collection of personal papers to the Royal Irish Academy (RIA). There is a portrait of Bergin at UCD.
Whelan is the sixth of thirteen children born to farmer John Whelan and Bridget Price. He attends national school at Beleek and Clifden, before leaving school at the age of 15 to work on his father’s farm. He moves to Dublin at the age of 18, where he finds work as a railway man, and joins the Irish Volunteers as a member of ‘A’ Company, 3rd Battalion, Dublin Brigade. He lives at Barrow Street, Ringsend, Dublin, and works at a train depot.
Whelan is arrested on November 23, 1920, and, on February 1, 1921, is charged with the shooting death of Captain G.T. Baggallay, an army prosecutor who had been a member of courts that sentenced Volunteers to death under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act on Bloody Sunday (1920).
Whelan is defended at his court-martial by Michael Noyk, through whom he protests his innocence of the charges. As in the case of Patrick Moran, there is eyewitness evidence that Whelan had been at Mass at the time the shooting had taken place.
The prosecution casts doubt on the reliability of the eyewitnesses, arguing that as Catholics they are not neutral. The defence complains that it is unfair to suggest the witnesses “were prepared to come up and perjure themselves on behalf of the prisoner” because “they belonged to a certain class and might hold certain political opinions.”
The military court does, however, trust the evidence of an army officer who lives in the same house as Baggallay and who has identified Whelan as the man covering him with a revolver during the raid. There is also testimony by a soldier who had passed by the house when he heard shots fired. This witness says he saw Whelan outside, attempting to start his motorcycle. Whelan is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.
In Mountjoy Prison, Whelan is imprisoned with the writer and activist Ernie O’Malley, who describes him as “… smooth-faced, quiet and brown eyed with wavy hair; he smiled quietly and steadily. His voice was soft and when he laughed with the others one knew that the fibre was not as hard and that there was a shade of wistfulness about him.”
Whelan is quoted just before being hanged, “Give the boys my love. Tell them to follow on and never surrender. Tell them I am proud to die for Ireland.”
Whelan is hanged at 6:00 a.m. along with Patrick Moran, the first of six men to be executed in pairs that day. A crowd estimated at 40,000 gathers outside the prison to pray as the executions take place. His mother, Bridget, sees him before his execution and waits outside with the praying crowd holding candles. She tells a reporter that she had left her son “so happy and cheerful you would almost imagine he was going to see a football match.” He is 22 years old at the time of his death.
Following the Two for One policy that decrees the assassination of two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in retaliation for every executed Irish Volunteer, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Whelan’s native Clifden ambushes and fatally shoots RIC Constables Charles Reynolds and Thomas Sweeney at Eddie King’s Corner on March 16, 1921. In response to the RIC’s request for assistance over the wireless, a trainload of Black and Tans arrive in Clifden from Galway in the early hours of Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1921, and proceed to “burn, plunder and murder.” During what is now called “The Burning of Clifden,” the Black and Tans kill one local civilian (John McDonnell), seriously injure another, burn down fourteen houses, and damaged several others.
Whelan is one of a group of men hanged in Mountjoy Prison in the period 1920-1921 who are commonly referred to as the Forgotten Ten. In 2001, he and the other nine, including Kevin Barry, are exhumed from their graves in Mountjoy Prison and given a full state funeral. He is now buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. An annual commemoration is still held in Clifden in his honor.
(Pictured: Patrick Moran (left) and Thomas Whelan (right) before their executions, Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, March 14, 1921, courtesy of Kilmainham Gaol Museum.)
Leventhal is born Abraham Jacob Leventhal in Lower Clanbrassil Street, Dublin, on May 9, 1896. His parents are Moses (Maurice) Leventhal and Rosa (née Levenberg). His father is a draper, and his mother is a poet. She is a Zionist, who is a founding member of the Women’s Zionist Society. He lives in the “Little Jerusalem” area of Dublin, the area around the South Circular Road, in his youth. He attends Wesley College, Dublin, and then Trinity College Dublin (TCD) to study modern languages. He edits the TCD student magazine in 1918. It is in TCD that he acquires the nickname “Con,” an allusion to his father’s job as a “Continental” agent. He joins the first Zionist commission and travels to Palestine after World War I and helps to found the newspaper Palestine Weekly. He is then invited to join the Jewish National Fund‘s London office and begins working on the Zionist Review. He returns to Dublin to complete his degree in 1920, and in 1921 travels to Paris where he meets James Joyce.
Leventhal marries Gertrude Zlotover in October 1922. He works with his father-in-law, Joseph Zlotover, at the family furniture business on Mary Street for a time. After, he starts a number of unsuccessful businesses of his own, including the Irish Book Shop on Dawson Street from 1924 to 1925. It is possibly his business failures that inspire the idea of the TCD Students Appointment Association, which would give students pragmatic business skills. TCD accepts this proposal and employes him as the first administrator.
Leventhal completes a PhD in contemporary French literature, and in 1932 is appointed to the staff of the French department at TCD. He replaces his friend Samuel Beckett. During his time in TCD, he is an assistant editor to Hermathena, to which he also contributes his translations of French poetry. He is associated with a number of progressive cultural movements in Dublin of the 1920s and 1930s. He is a regular attendee at meetings held to promote Jewish culture and nationalism and lectures this group on Joyce. Through his interest in Joyce, he becomes an associate of Seumas O’Sullivan, and The Dublin Magazine. When the printers refuse to set his review of Ulysses in 1923 for The Dublin Magazine, he is moved to found his own magazine, The Klaxon, in response to the censorship. The only issue of the magazine publishes a shortened version of the review under the pseudonym “Lawrence K. Emery.” He is also associated with Francis Stuart‘s Tomorrow magazine. He is also interested in drama and is a member of the avant-garde Dublin Drama League, occasionally performing with them. Among his close friends are Daisy Bannard Cogley, Micheál Mac Liammóir, and Lennox Robinson. From 1943 to 1958 his column, “Dramatic commentary”, is published in The Dublin Magazine. He is also published in The Irish Times, The Irish Press, The Listener, Westminster Weekly, Financial Times, and International Herald Tribune. He is a regular contributor to Radio Éireann and BBC broadcasts.
Leventhal begins a long-term relationship with Ethna MacCarthy, marrying her after the death of his first wife in 1956. She dies in 1959. He retires from TCD in 1963 and moves to Paris, where he becomes Beckett’s literary assistant. He lives on Boulevard du Montparnasse with his partner Marion Leigh.
Leventhal dies of cancer in Paris on October 3, 1979. There are two known portraits of Leventhal, one by John Russell (1920) and a second by Avigdor Arikha. The Leventhal Scholarship at TCD is founded in his memory. TCD and the Harry Ransom Center hold papers relating to Leventhal.
Ahern and her books have won numerous awards, including the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction for The Year I Met You (2014). She publishes several novels and contributes a number of short stories to various anthologies.
Before starting her writing and producing career, Ahern obtains a degree in journalism and media communications from Griffith College Dublin, but withdraws from a master’s degree course to pursue her writing career.
In 2002, when Ahern is twenty-one, she writes her first novel, PS, I Love You. Published in 2004, it is the number 1 bestseller in Ireland (for 19 weeks), the United Kingdom, United States, Germany and the Netherlands. It is sold in over forty countries. The book is adapted as a motion picture directed by Richard LaGravenese and starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. It is released in the United States on December 21, 2007.
Ahern’s second book, Where Rainbows End (known as Love, Rosie in the United States), also reaches number 1 in Ireland and the United Kingdom and wins the German Corine Literature Prize in 2005. It is adapted as a motion picture titled Love, Rosie which is released in 2014, directed by Christian Ditter and starring Lily Collins and Sam Claflin.
Ahern has contributed to charity books with the royalties from short stories such as Irish Girls are Back in Town and Ladies’ Night.
Ahern’s book The Gift is published just before Christmas 2008 in the United Kingdom. Her following book, The Book of Tomorrow, is published on October 1, 2009. In 2016, she releases Flawed, her first book for young adults, and Lyrebird.
Ahern is nominated for Best Newcomer 2004/5 at the British Book Awards for her debut novel PS, I Love You. She wins the 2005 Irish Post Award for Literature and a 2005 Corine Literature Prize for her second book Where Rainbows End, which is voted for by German readers. In 2006, she is long listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for PS, I Love You. Cosmopolitan US honours her with a Fun Fearless Fiction Award 2007 for If You Could See Me Now. Irish Tatler awards her Writer of the Year at the Woman of the Year awards in 2009. Her fifth novel, Thanks for the Memories, is nominated for Most Popular Book in the British Book Awards 2008. She is voted Author of Year in the UK Glamour Awards in 2008.
Ahern marries David Keoghan in 2010. They have three children, two daughters and a son. As of 2015, they reside in Malahide in County Dublin. She had COVID-19 in early 2022, describing it as “kind of mild. I was lucky.”
Nimy Bridge is being defended by a single company of the 4th Royal Fusiliers and a machine gun section with Dease in command. The gunfire is intense and the casualties very heavy, but the lieutenant continues to fire in spite of his wounds, until he is hit for the fifth time and is carried away.
Dease wins the first Victoria Cross to be awarded in the Great War and he receives it on the first day of the first significant British encounter in that war.
When Lieutenant Dease has been mortally wounded, Private Sidney Godley offers to defend the Railway Bridge while the rest of the section retreats and is also awarded the Victoria Cross. He is taken prisoner of war.
seamus dubhghaill 