After a period at the University of Göttingen, de Brún is appointed professor of mathematics at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, in 1914. In April 1945, he is elected by the Senate of the National University of Ireland to succeed John Hynes as President of University College, Galway, an office he holds until his retirement in 1959. His friend Thomas MacGreevy refers to de Brún as, “Rector Magnificus,” and praises his, “Olympian capacity to appreciate the most exalted works of art and literature, ancient and modern.”
The School of Mathematics, Mathematical Physics and Statistics is based in Áras de Brún, a building named in de Brún‘s honour. He subsequently becomes Chairman of the Arts Council of Ireland, a position he holds until his death in 1960. He also serves as chairman of the Council of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).
De Brún is close friend of 1916 Easter Rising leader Seán Mac Diarmada and is deeply affected by the latter’s execution.
De Brún was a prolific writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language, including the well-known poem “Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso.” He further translates into Modern Irish many great works of the Western canon, including Homer‘s Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles‘ Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Plutarch‘s Parallel Lives, as well as French stage plays by Jean Racine and Dante Alighieri‘s Divine Comedy. With regards to his importance to modern literature in Irish, he is recently termed “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time.”
De Brún purchases land at Dunquin in the Dingle PeninsulaGaeltacht. In the 1920s, he also builds a house there known as Tigh na Cille, where his sister and her children often visit and stay at length. Through his literary mentorship of his niece, the future poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, he has been credited with having an enormous influence upon the future development of modern literature in Irish.
After suffering a heart attack at his house at Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire, into which he had recently moved, de Brún dies on June 5, 1960, in St. Vincent’s nursing home, Leeson Street, Dublin.
Smyllie is born on March 20, 1893, at Hill Street, Shettleston, Glasgow, Scotland. He is the eldest of four sons and one daughter of Robert Smyllie, a Presbyterian printer originally from Scotland who is working in Sligo, County Sligo, at the time, and Elisabeth Follis, originally from Cork, County Cork. His father marries in Sligo on July 20, 1892, and later becomes proprietor and editor of the unionistSligo Times. Smyllie attends Sligo Grammar School in 1906 and enrolls at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1911.
After two years at TCD, Smyllie’s desire for adventure leads him to leave university in 1913. Working as a vacation tutor to an American boy in Germany at the start of World War I, he is detained in Ruhleben internment camp, near Berlin, during the war. As an internee, he is involved in drama productions with other internees. Following his release at the end of the war, he witnesses the German revolution of 1918–1919. During this period, he encounters revolutionary sailors from Kiel who temporarily make him a representative of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, and he observes key events including the looting of the Kaiser’s Palace and violent clashes between rival factions in Berlin. It is also during this period that he secures a personal interview with David Lloyd George at the Paris Convention of 1919. This helps Smyllie gain a permanent position with TheIrish Times in 1920, where he quickly earns the confidence of editor John Healy. Together, they take part in secret but unsuccessful attempts to resolve the Irish War of Independence.
Smyllie contributes to the Irishman’s Diary column of the paper from 1927. In 1927, he publishes an exclusive report outlining a draft government including both Labour Party and Fianna FáilTDs, signaling the volatile politics of the early state years.
Smyllie’s knowledge of languages (particularly the German he had learned during his internment) led to numerous foreign assignments. His reports on the rise of National Socialism in 1930s Germany are notably prescient and instill in him a lasting antipathy towards the movement.
When Healy dies in 1934, Smyllie becomes editor of TheIrish Times and also takes on the role of Irish correspondent for The Times (London), a position that brings significant additional income. Under Healy’s leadership, The Irish Times shifted from representing the Anglo-Irish ascendancy to becoming an organ of liberal, southern unionism, and eventually becomes a critical legitimising force in the Irish Free State. Smyllie enthusiastically supports this change. He establishes a non-partisan profile and a modern Irish character for the erstwhile ascendancy paper. For example, he drops “Kingstown Harbour” for “Dún Laoghaire.” He also introduces the paper’s first-ever Irish-language columnist. He is assisted by Alec Newman and Lionel Fleming, recruits Patrick Campbell and enlists Flann O’Brien to write his thrice-weekly column “Cruiskeen Lawn” as Myles na gCopaleen. As editor, he introduces a more Bohemian and informal style, establishing a semi-permanent salon in Fleet Street’s Palace Bar. This becomes a hub for journalists and literary figures and a source of material for his weekly column, Nichevo.
One of Smyllie’s early political challenges as editor concerns the Spanish Civil War. At a time when Irish Catholic opinion is strongly pro-Franco, he ensures TheIrish Times coverage is balanced and fair, though advertiser pressure eventually forces the withdrawal of the paper’s young reporter, Lionel Fleming, from the conflict. His awareness of the looming European crisis earns him the Order of the White Lion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. However, during World War II, he clashes with Ireland’s censorship authorities, especially under Minister Frank Aiken. He challenges their views both publicly and privately, though his relationship with the editor of the Irish Independent, Frank Geary, is cold, reducing the effectiveness of their joint opposition to censorship.
During the 1943 Irish general election, Smyllie uses the paper to promote the idea of a national government that could represent Ireland with authority in the postwar world. He praises Fine Gael’s proposal for such a government and criticises Éamon de Valera for dismissing it as unrealistic. This leads to a public exchange between de Valera and Smyllie, with the latter defending The Irish Times’s role as a constructive voice for Ireland’s future rather than a partisan interest.
Following the war, Smyllie’s editorial stance shifts toward defending Ireland’s neutrality and diplomatic position. When Winston Churchill accuses de Valera of fraternising with Axis powers, Smyllie counters by revealing Ireland’s covert collaboration with the Allies, such as military and intelligence cooperation, despite official neutrality. In the same period, he continues to oppose censorship, particularly the frequent banning of Irish writers by the Censorship of Publications Board. This opposition features prominently in a controversy on TheIrish Times letters page in 1950, later published as the liberal ethic. The paper also adopts a critical stance toward the Catholic Church, notably during the 1951 resignation of Minister for HealthNoël Browne amid opposition from bishops and doctors to a national Mother and Child Scheme. His editorials suggest the Catholic Church is effectively the government of Ireland, though he maintains a cordial relationship with Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who invites him annually for dinner.
Smyllie is also wary of American foreign policy, showing hostility particularly during the Korean War. American diplomats in Dublin allege that Smyllie is “pro-communist“. Despite growing readership among an educated Catholic middle class, TheIrish Times’s circulation in 1950 remains under 50,000, far below the Irish Independent and the Fianna Fáil-aligned The Irish Press.
In later years, Smyllie’s health declines, prompting a quieter lifestyle. He moves from his large house in Pembroke Park, Dublin, to Delgany, County Wicklow. As he does not drive, he becomes less present in the newspaper office in D’Olier Street, contributing to a decline in the paper’s dynamism. His health deteriorates further, resulting in frequent absences from his editorial duties, though he retains his position despite management attempts to limit his authority, especially over finances. He dies of heart failure on September 11, 1954.
In 1925, Smyllie marries Kathlyn Reid, eldest daughter of a County Meath landowner. They have no children.
Smyllie is an eccentric: he hits his tee shots with a nine iron, speaks in a curious mix of Latin phrases and everyday Dublin slang, and weighs 22 stone (308 lbs.; 140 kg) yet still cycles to work wearing a green sombrero.
Farrell is born and raised in the Convent Road area of Dalkey and is educated at Harold Boy’s National School and the Christian Brothers in Dún Laoghaire, from which he wins a scholarship. He is playing football with Cabinteely Schoolboys when spotted by a Shamrock Rovers scout and subsequently joins Rovers on his 17th birthday in August 1939. Among his early teammates is the veteran Jimmy Dunne. With a team that also includes Jimmy Kelly, Tommy Eglington, Jimmy McAlinden and Paddy Coad, he later helps Rovers reach three successive FAI Cup finals. They win the competition in 1944 and 1945 and finish as runners up in 1946.
In July 1946, together with Tommy Eglington, Farrell signs for Everton. In eleven seasons with the club, he plays 421 league games and scores 14 goals. He also plays a further 31 games in the FA Cup and scores an additional four goals. In 1951 he is appointed Everton captain and during the 1953–54 season leads them to the runners up place in the Second Division, thus gaining promotion to the First Division. During his time with the club his teammates, apart from Eglington, also include Alex Stevenson, Peter Corr, Harry Catterick, Wally Fielding, Tommy E. Jones, Brian Labone and Dave Hickson. He is never sent off during his time at Goodison Park.
Farrell leaves Everton in October 1957 and follows Tommy Eglington to Tranmere Rovers where he becomes player-manager. He plays 114 league games for Tranmere, before leaving in December 1960. After a time as manager at Sligo Rovers, he becomes manager of Holyhead Town and, helped by a number of former Everton and Tranmere players, guides them to the Welsh Football League (North) title.
When Farrell begins his international career in 1946 there are, in effect, two Ireland teams, chosen by two rival associations. Both associations, the Northern Ireland–based IFA and the Ireland–based FAI claim jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and select players from the entire island. As a result, several notable Irish players from this era, including Farrell, play for both teams.
Farrell makes 28 appearances and scores three goals for the FAI XI. While still at Shamrock Rovers, he captains the FAI XI on his international debut on June 16, 1946, against Portugal. On September 21, 1949, together with Johnny Carey and Con Martin, he is a member of the FAI XI that defeats England 2–0 at Goodison Park, becoming the first non-UK team to beat England at home. After Martin puts the FAI XI ahead with a penalty in the 33rd minute, Farrell makes victory certain in the 85th minute. Tommy O’Connor slips the ball to Farrell and as the English goalkeeper Bert Williams advances, he lofts the ball into the unguarded net. He scores his second goal for the FAI XI on October 9, 1949, a in 1–1 draw with Finland, a qualifier for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. His third goal comes on May 30, 1951, as Farrell scores the opening goal in a 3–2 win against Norway.
Farrell also makes seven appearances for the IFA XI between 1946 and 1949. On November 27, 1946, he makes his debut for the IFA XI in a 0–0 draw with Scotland. Together with Johnny Carey, Con Martin, Bill Gorman, Tommy Eglington, Alex Stevenson and Davy Walsh, he is one of seven players born in the Irish Free State to play for the IFA XI on that day. The draw helps the team finish as runners-up in the 1946-47 British Home Championship. He also helps the IFA XI gain some other respectable results, including a 2–0 win against Scotland on October 4, 1947, and a 2–2 draw with England at Goodison Park on November 5, 1947.
After returning to Ireland following his retirement, Farrell settles in Dublin and follows his father into the insurance business. He dies on March 16, 1999, following a long illness. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Deansgrange, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.
Betty Ann Norton, Irish drama teacher and founder of the Betty Ann Norton Theatre School and actor agency, is born on July 5, 1936.
Norton grows up in Dublin near the South Circular Road. Her mother, Frances, plays the violin and her father, Eugene, is a baritone singer. Frances is a full-time homemaker while Eugene works as manager of the Bacon Shops on Grafton Street. One of two children, her younger brother, Jim Norton, also becomes a successful actor. She attends school at St. Louis High School, Rathmines.
Norton attends the Ena Mary Burke School of Drama and Elocution on Kildare Street, Dublin, where Hollywood starMaureen O’Hara had also trained. Her acting school offers an annual Ena Mary Burke scholarship in Burke’s honour.
Norton originally plans to become an actor, but her family does not approve and her mother encourages her to become a teacher. In 1959, she establishes the Betty Ann Norton Theatre School on Harcourt Street in Dublin. Her husband, Michael, is co-director of the school. According to Norton, changes to traffic by the new Luas tram system causes the business to change premises to her childhood school, St. Louis High School in Rathmines in 2006.
Norton meets her husband, Michael J. Cunneen, on the Aran Islands in 1965 and they marry in 1967. They lived in Dún Laoghaire. Michael dies in the Blackrock Clinic on May 12, 2017.
Gray meets her husband, Edmund Dwyer Gray, in September 1868 when she witnesses him saving five people from a wrecked schooner during a storm in Killiney Bay, near Dún Laoghaire. She later meets him, and the couple are married in 1869. They had four children, with three surviving to adulthood: Edmund, Mary and Sylvia. She places both of her daughters in convents after their education and the early death of their father, supposedly as she fears they will harm her chances of remarrying.
Gray is a noted hostess during her husband’s political career, in particular while he is Lord Mayor of Dublin. Following his death in 1888, she holds over 40% of the shares in her husband’s newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal. While she is not involved in the day-to-day running of the company, she does exert influence over the newspaper. When Charles Stewart Parnell‘s party splits, the paper sides with Parnell at Gray’s consent. She is one of a number of prominent Catholic women in Dublin who continue to support Parnell. In 1891, she appears with Parnell in public, leading to the Archbishop of Dublin describing her as “a rock of scandal.”
It is only when the Freeman’s Journal‘s circulation and revenue suffers after the establishment of an anti-Parnell newspaper, the National Press, that Gray’s loyalty to Parnell wavers. Influenced by her son, she decides that the Freeman’s Journal will abandon its relationship with Parnell. This decision is formalised at a special general meeting to the Freeman company on September 21, 1891, seeing the pro-Parnell board replaced with one that includes her son and Captain Maurice O’Conor. The Freeman’s Journal and the National Press merge in March 1892, after which Gray is bought out of the company with her son and O’Conor stepping down from the board, thus ending the Gray family’s 50-year relationship with the Freeman’s Journal.
Gray marries Captain O’Conor in November 1891. A Captain, and later a Major, with the Connaught Rangers, he is a relative of Charles Owen O’Conor and George Moore. She is twelve years his senior, and the couple has no children. They live on Inisfale Island on Lough Allen, County Leitrim. She lives the last thirty years of her life there, with failing eyesight and eventual blindness. She dies there April 15, 1927. O’Conor dies in a hotel in Dún Laoghaire on January 3, 1941, in poor circumstances.
Peter Desmond Farrell, Irish footballer who plays as a right-half for, among others, Shamrock Rovers, Everton and Tranmere Rovers, dies in Dublin on March 16, 1999. As an international, he also plays for both Ireland teams – the FAI XI and the IFA XI. His playing career follows a similar path to that of Tommy Eglington. As well as teaming up at international level, they also play together at three clubs.
Farrell is born on August 16, 1922, and raised in the Convent Road area of Dalkey, County Dublin, and is educated at Harold Boy’s National School and the Christian Brothers in Dún Laoghaire, from which he wins a scholarship. He is playing football with Cabinteely Schoolboys when spotted by a Shamrock Rovers scout and subsequently joins Rovers on his 17th birthday in August 1939. Among his early teammates is the veteran Jimmy Dunne. With a team that also includes Jimmy Kelly, Tommy Eglington, Jimmy McAlinden and Paddy Coad, he later helps Rovers reach three successive FAI Cup finals. They win the competition in 1944 and 1945 and finish as runners up in 1946.
In July 1946, together with Tommy Eglington, Farrell signs for Everton. In eleven seasons with the club, he plays 421 league games and scores 14 goals. He also plays a further 31 games in the FA Cup and scores an additional four goals. In 1951 he is appointed Everton captain and during the 1953–54 season leads them to the runners up place in the Second Division, thus gaining promotion to the First Division. During his time with the club his teammates, apart from Eglington, also include Alex Stevenson, Peter Corr, Harry Catterick, Wally Fielding, Tommy E. Jones, Brian Labone and Dave Hickson. He is never sent off during his time at Goodison Park.
Farrell leaves Everton in October 1957 and follows Tommy Eglington to Tranmere Rovers where he becomes player-manager. He plays 114 league games for Tranmere, before leaving in December 1960. After a time as manager at Sligo Rovers, he becomes manager of Holyhead Town and, helped by a number of former Everton and Tranmere players, guides them to the Welsh Football League (North) title.
When Farrell begins his international career in 1946 there are, in effect, two Ireland teams, chosen by two rival associations. Both associations, the Northern Ireland–based IFA and the Ireland–based FAI claim jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and select players from the entire island. As a result, several notable Irish players from this era, including Farrell, play for both teams.
Farrell makes 28 appearances and scores three goals for the FAI XI. While still at Shamrock Rovers, he captains the FAI XI on his international debut on June 16, 1946, against Portugal. On September 21, 1949, together with Johnny Carey and Con Martin, he is a member of the FAI XI that defeats England 2–0 at Goodison Park, becoming the first non-UK team to beat England at home. After Martin puts the FAI XI ahead with a penalty in the 33rd minute, Farrell makes victory certain in the 85th minute. Tommy O’Connor slips the ball to Farrell and as the English goalkeeper Bert Williams advances, he lofts the ball into the unguarded net. He scores his second goal for the FAI XI on October 9, 1949, a in 1–1 draw with Finland, a qualifier for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. His third goal comes on May 30, 1951, as Farrell scores the opening goal in a 3–2 win against Norway.
Farrell also makes seven appearances for the IFA XI between 1946 and 1949. On November 27, 1946, he makes his debut for the IFA XI in a 0–0 draw with Scotland. Together with Johnny Carey, Con Martin, Bill Gorman, Tommy Eglington, Alex Stevenson and Davy Walsh, he is one of seven players born in the Irish Free State to play for the IFA XI on that day. The draw helps the team finish as runners-up in the 1946-47 British Home Championship. He also helps the IFA XI gain some other respectable results, including a 2–0 win against Scotland on October 4, 1947, and a 2–2 draw with England at Goodison Park on November 5, 1947.
After returning to Ireland following his retirement, Farrell settles in Dublin and follows his father into the insurance business. He dies on March 16, 1999, following a long illness. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Deansgrange, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.
Connolly travels to Russia on several occasions in 1920 and 1921 and forms a close association with Vladimir Lenin and is hugely influenced by the Soviet leader. He is a delegate to the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) as a delegate of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in June 1920. It is here he meets Lenin at just 19 years of age following an introduction from journalistJohn Reed. According to Connolly, Lenin speaks English with a Rathmines accent which he acquired from his Irish tutor.
Connolly helps form and becomes President of the first Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) in October 1921. He is editor of the CPI newspaper, The Workers’ Republic. He opposes the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty between the representatives of the Irish Republic and the British state, and fights in the Irish Civil War on the anti-treaty side. The CPI is the first Irish political party to oppose the Treaty and urges the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to adopt socialist policies to defeat the new Irish Free State government. The CPI is dissolved in 1924 by the Comintern but in 1926, Connolly helps set up a second Marxist party, the Irish Workers’ Party. He is the party leader and editor of its journal, The Hammer and Plough. This party too is dissolved in 1927.
Connolly enters a semi-retirement between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, but in the late 1960s, he begins a comeback. He is elected as party chairman in 1971 and holds this position until 1978. During his time as chairman, he oversees the expulsion of the Socialist Labour Alliance in 1971, some of whose members go on to form the Socialist Workers Network (SWN), which in turn eventually establishes People Before Profit (PBP).
In 1921, Connolly marries Jessica Maidment, a socialist activist in England and chartered accountant, who from 1928 works for Russian Oil Products in Dublin. She dies in 1930 from blood poisoning arising from an operation. He is survived by his second wife, Peggy, whom he marries in 1937, sons, and daughters. His recreations include chess and bridge; highly adept at both, he learns the former from Seán Mac Diarmada as prisoners after the Easter rising and is international bridge correspondent for the Irish Independent.
(Pictured: Roddy Connolly during an interview conducted for the RTÉ Television project “Portraits 1916” on January 9, 1966)
John Havelock Nelson, composer and conductor, dies in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on August 5, 1996. He makes an immense contribution to the development of the cultural life of the province – and beyond – over the second half of the 20th century.
Nelson is born of middle-class parents in Cork, County Cork, on May 25, 1917, his distinctive forename being taken from a cousin of his mother who lost his life in World War I. Despite his birthplace, both his parents’ ancestral roots lie firmly in Northern Ireland.
Nelson’s father Robert comes from Larne, County Antrim, where he was raised. However, the early years of his mother Grace are quite eventful. She is born in the Belgian Congo on account of her father’s placement there as a missionary in the latter years of the 19th century (his family hail from Tobermore, County Londonderry). She is eventually sent home at an early age, due to the threat of malaria, and is raised in Belfast by an aunt and uncle who have no family of their own. It appears that Nelson inherits his musical genes from both parents. Although his father is trained as a chartered accountant, he is a capable baritone singer who studies in the early 1900s with C. J. Brennan, later to become the organist and choirmaster at St. Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast). Meanwhile, his mother shows talent as a pianist during her upbringing in her adopted city and by her early 20s is offering her services as an accompanist.
By chance, this is how his parents meet. They marry in 1916, shortly before their arrival in Cork where Robert takes up his first accountancy job. Within a month of Nelson’s birth, the family moves to Dublin where his father has secured a better post, eventually settling near Dún Laoghaire, just south of the capital city. From the age of five, now the eldest of four brothers born a year apart, he starts piano lessons and makes such rapid progress that, by the age of ten, he is able to play in a piano trio and to accompany his father in informal concerts. By the age of twelve, he wins a scholarship to the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, giving him the opportunity to study piano and theory and helping him to establish his core musical skills. Soon he adds conducting and organ lessons to his study programme.
As far as Nelson’s general education is concerned, this is completed at St. Andrew’s College, Dublin, where he excels in English, history and the sciences. By his late teens, he is determined to pursue a professional career as a musician. His father, however, exercises caution in this regard, advising him to take a science degree in the first instance. Consequently, he gains entry to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1935 to read Natural Science, then makes a decision the following year to change to Medical Science. By 1939, he completes his primary degree in Medical Science, leading to doctoral research in bacteriology. At the same time, he begins a 4-year music degree at TCD while remaining musically active outside the university in relation to his piano studies, and also co-founds and conducts the Dublin Orchestral Players, a body that continues to provide an invaluable platform for amateur performers. He completes his university studies in 1943, graduating with a PhD in Medical Science and a primary Music degree. Seven years later he also completes a doctorate in Music from the same university.
His university career now behind him, like many fellow Irishmen, Nelson feels a desire to contribute to the World War II effort and applies for a commission in the medical branch of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1944. Eventually, he is called up and located at RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire, where he remains until after the end of the War, only returning to Dublin for his marriage in 1945. By nature, an outgoing, sociable person, he wastes no time in immersing himself in music-making activities when off duty, both inside and outside his RAF base. It is during this immediate post-war period that he becomes convinced that he wants to pursue a career in music. By chance, his attention is drawn to a BBC advertisement regarding a number of regional posts for staff accompanists, including Northern Ireland. His application is successful, and he reports for duty at BBC Northern Ireland in March 1947, where he remains for the next 30 years. In his new post, his main role is to play and accompany on the piano. To this end, he becomes involved in a number of new radio programmes, notably Children’s Hour. Elsewhere, he composes and arranges music for adult dramas and serials, the best known being The McCooeys. Another responsibility is to assist in auditioning local musicians for broadcasting opportunities, a process that uncovers much local talent, including a young James Galway. While his activities revolve around radio work in the 1950s, the next 20 years embrace opportunities arising from the new medium of television, including the popular Songs of Praise which involve him as conductor.
Nelson’s decision to retire from the BBC in 1977 enables him to focus fully on his free-lance career which had been running parallel, up until then, with his broadcasting work. In this capacity he is able to give full rein to his diverse range of musical skills as choral and orchestral conductor, chamber musician, music-festival adjudicator, composer and arranger. One should not overlook his role as animateur in founding the Studio Symphony Orchestra (1947) and the Studio Opera Group (1950). Both became integral parts of the local cultural scene during Nelson’s lifetime. His contribution as a festival adjudicator is an important activity, notably when undertaking tours abroad, including to Canada and the Caribbean. His visits to the latter area lead him to form the Trinidad and Tobago Opera Company shortly after his BBC retirement. In his busy lifestyle, he makes time to satisfy his creative energy as a composer and arranger. In total he publishes over 100 pieces, many inspired by his love of Irish traditional song and are of short duration and scored for a variety of vocal combinations. His enjoyment of his reputation as a piano accompanist of international standing is confirmed by his association with some of the leading Irish and British professional singers of the period, including Bernadette Greevy (soprano), Margaret Marshall (soprano), Peter Pears (tenor) and Ian Wallace (bass-baritone).
During his lifetime, Nelson’s outstanding services to music, both inside and outside the province, are recognised by a number of awards. The first of these is an OBE in 1966, followed in the latter part of his life by four honorary doctorates, three from local universities. A gifted and versatile musician, his personality is described by one colleague as “magnetic”- he has the unique ability to reach out to everybody irrespective of their age, status and position in life in whatever role he performs. In his best-known role as a conductor, a critic says of him that, “Dr. Nelson has a remarkable touch in getting people to do what he wants in the pleasantest way possible.” His vision and determination help to establish a vibrant music culture throughout Northern Ireland, an achievement that will remain his lasting legacy.
Nelson is survived by his three children and eight grandchildren; his wife Hazel having predeceased him in 1983.
O’Connor is born on June 7, 1874, at Worcester, Massachusetts, the eldest of three sons and two daughters of Andrew O’Connor, a stonecutter from Lanarkshire, Scotland, who becomes a professional sculptor, and Marie Anne O’Connor (née McFadden), of County Antrim. Educated in Worcester public schools, at the age of 14 he becomes apprenticed to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries. He is employed in the early 1890s on sculptural work for the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair), being active in the studio of William Ordway Partridge, and assisting Daniel Chester French on his colossal Statue of the Republic, a landmark of the 1893 Columbian exposition.
Moving to London (1894–98), O’Connor works on bas-reliefs in the studio of the painter John Singer Sargent, who uses him as a model for his mural Frieze of Prophets for the Boston Public Library. His first independent work, Sea Dreams, a relief of a head, is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1896. Returning to the United States (1898–1903), he becomes a studio assistant of French, through whom he receives his first public commission, for the Vanderbilt Memorial Doors for St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Manhattan, New York, a project completed in 1902 to wide critical acclaim. He also executes the tympanum and lateral friezes.
Around 1900, O’Connor marries an artist’s model named Nora, by whom he has a daughter. In 1902, he hires as studio model Jessie Phoebe Brown from New Jersey and of County Down parentage. The following year he elopes with her to Paris, where they marry and have four sons, the youngest of whom, Patrick O’Connor, becomes an artist and gallery curator. Jessie continues for many years as his primary model, sitting for the heads of both female and male figures, O’Connor coarsening the features for the latter.
During his years in Paris (1903–14), O’Connor is influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin, whom he befriends. Among his pupils in Paris is the American sculptor and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney. He continues to fulfil numerous commissions for funerary and public monuments in the United States, an example of the former being the Recuillement in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, near Tarrytown, New York. From 1906 he exhibits annually at the Salon in Paris, where he is the first foreigner to win a second-class medal, for his bronze statue of Gen. Henry Lawton. Included in his only exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy (1907) is a bronze relief of the prophet Nehemiah adapted from a panel of the Vanderbilt doors. The relief is subsequently included in his one-man show at the Galerie Hébrard, Paris in 1909.
In 1909, O’Connor wins a competition open to sculptors of Irish descent to execute a monument to Commodore John Barry, the County Wexford-born “father of the American navy,” for Washington, D.C. His design includes a frieze depicting events in Irish history, flanked by a group of three nude Irish emigrants entitled Exile from Ireland, and another group representing the Genius of Ireland, which includes a female figure of the “Motherland.” Probably owing to opposition from the Barry family to the depiction of their ancestor as a rough-and-ready sailor, the commission is not completed. His marble statue of Gen. Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ), a plaster of which is exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1909, is placed by the state of Indiana in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. Another marble, Peace by Justice, is commissioned as a gift from the United States to the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1913.
Returning to Paris in the mid-1920s, O’Connor becomes the first foreigner to win a gold medal at the Salon des Artistes in 1928, for the marble sculpture Tristan and Iseult, now held in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. The French government makes him a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1929. In 1926 he had exhibited a plaster group, Monument aux morts de la Grande Guerre, at the Salon in Paris. The sculpture is requested in 1932 by the people of Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, as a memorial to Christ the King, O’Connor obligingly altering the interpretation of his iconography. Imposed on a “Tree of life” are three figures of Christ, representing in turn “Desolation,” “Consolation” and “Triumph.” Cast in bronze, throughout World War II the statue remains hidden in Paris to avoid its being melted down for the valuable metal. Transported to Dún Laoghaire in 1949, due to clerical opposition to its unconventional iconography, it is not at first erected, but for years lay on its side in a garden in Rochestown Avenue until its eventual unveiling in 1978 as Triple Cross in Haigh Terrace, where it stands in Moran Park. His other chief work in Ireland is a bronze statue of Daniel O’Connell in the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. Inspired by Rodin’s famous Monument to Balzac, the work is executed at his studio in a converted stable at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare in 1931–32.
During the 1930s, O’Connor lives and works in London and Ireland, where he has residences at Glencullen House, County Wicklow, and 77 Merrion Square, Dublin. He dies at the latter address on June 9, 1941, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. His own bronze relief, Le feu sacré, marks the grave. A portrait painting, executed by his son Patrick in 1940, is in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which also holds twenty-six sculptures presented by O’Connor late in his life, and posthumously by his family. The collection includes a marble self-portrait bust of 1940, a bronze of the Lafayette cast by the gallery in 1984 from a reduced plaster model presented by the artist, and a bronze group entitled The Victim, on view in Merrion Square Park, from an uncommissioned and uncompleted war memorial conceived by O’Connor under the general title Le Débarquement. The National Gallery of Ireland has the Desolation maquette for the Triple Cross. A centenary exhibition of his work is held at Trinity College Dublin in 1974. His widow dies in Dublin in 1974.
(From: “O’Connor, Andrew” by Lawrence William White and Carmel Doyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Dowling is born in Kimmage, Dublin, on September 7, 1929, the sixth of four sons and three daughters of William Dowling, a ship’s captain, and his wife Mary (née Kelly). His father is violent toward the family and leaves when he is a toddler. Helped by money provided by a priest, the Dowlings move in 1934 from the basement of his maternal uncle’s flat in Merrion Square, Dublin, to a house in Mount Merrion, County Dublin. In 1942, financial necessity forces the family’s move to a smaller residence in Marlborough Road, Donnybrook, Dublin.
Dowling is educated at St. Mary’s College in Rathmines, Dublin, having previously attended KilmacudNational School and CBS Dún Laoghaire, both in County Dublin. He is a bright student, but with his fees in arrears, the dean of studies induces him to leave school early in September 1945 for a clerkship with the Standard Life Assurance Company. A few years later, he finds his vocation when he accompanies a girlfriend to the academy of acting run by Brendan Smith. He signs up in 1948 for a two-year course during which he performs in and stage-manages academy plays and stage-manages for Smith’s professional company. Upon quitting Standard Life in June 1950, he spends a year touring Ireland with Smith’s company, both as an actor and the touring group’s manager.
Dowling comes to prominence in the 1950s for his role as Christy Kennedy in the long-running radio soap opera, The Kennedys of Castleross, and as a member of the Abbey Theatre company. He returns to the Abbey as artistic director from 1987 to 1990.
Following two months in the United States in 1969 lecturing and directing at Loyola University Chicago, he spends periods during 1972–74 directing for the Missouri Repertory Theatre and lecturing and directing at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. On extended leave from the Abbey, he directs in various American theatres throughout 1975, the year he married Olwen O’Herlihy, daughter of the Irish actor Dan O’Herlihy. After his request for six months leave each year is refused, he quits the Abbey in 1976, having done over a hundred major roles for the company.
Dowling marries actress Brenda Doyle in 1952. They have four daughters, including actress Bairbre Dowling, before divorcing in 1975. In 1975, he marries Olwen O’Herlihy, with whom he has a son.
Politician Richard Boyd Barrett is the biological son of Dowling and recording artist and actress Sinéad Cusack from a 1966 relationship while both are at the Abbey Theatre. Boyd Barrett is adopted as an infant. Dowling contacts Boyd Barrett after his connection with Cusack is publicly revealed in 2007. Their relationship is made known after his death.
Dowling dies on May 10, 2013, in Massachusetts General Hospital due to complications arising from surgery. Following a funeral service at the First Congregational Church of Chester, his remains are interred in the nearby cemetery.
Dowling receives honorary doctorates from Westfield State University in Massachusetts, and from Kent State University, John Carroll University and the College of Wooster, all in Ohio. His papers, from 1976 onward, are housed at the Kent State University and John Carroll University libraries.
seamus dubhghaill 