The U-20, a GermanU-boat under the command of KapitänleutnantWalther Schwieger, sinks the British steamship Centurion off the southeast coast of Ireland on May 6, 1915. This tragic event has far-reaching consequences and shapes the course of World War I.
The Centurion is traveling through the waters southeast of Ireland when a torpedo fired from the U-20 hits the vessel, causing it to rapidly sink. This act of aggression results in the loss of many innocent lives and sends shockwaves throughout the world.
At the time of the incident, World War I is in full swing. Germany, engaged in submarine warfare, seeks to disrupt British supply lines and cut off its access to vital resources. The sinking of merchant ships, regardless of their civilian nature, is part of Germany’s strategy to weaken the enemy. The attack on the Centurion is just one of many instances in which German submarines target and sink British vessels.
A difference in this particular incident as opposed to other similar incidents is the widespread outrage it triggers. The Centurion is an unarmed cargo ship carrying civilian goods, and its destruction is seen as a ruthless and unjustifiable act. The loss of civilian lives and the callousness with which the submarine attack is executed causes public opinion to turn against Germany.
The sinking highlights the growing concern over unrestricted submarine warfare and its impact on civilian populations. It pushes the United States, which at the time is neutral, closer to entering the war on the side of the Allies. The incident also plays a significant role in shaping public opinion in other neutral countries, putting pressure on Germany to reconsider its aggressive tactics.
In response to international outrage, Germany initially defends its actions, arguing that the Centurion was carrying contraband cargo. However, under mounting pressure, the German government eventually backs down and pledges to modify its submarine warfare policies to reduce the risk to civilian lives. This move is meant to appease neutral countries and prevent the United States from entering the war.
The sinking of the Centurion has a lasting impact on maritime warfare. The incident leads to the introduction of new rules of engagement, such as the requirement for submarines to surface and warn civilian vessels before attacking. These rules aim to minimize civilian casualties and reduce the risk of similar tragedies occurring in the future.
Moreover, the sinking serves as a catalyst for technological advancements in submarine warfare. Navies worldwide realize the need for more sophisticated anti-submarine measures and began developing detection systems and tactics to counter the stealth of submarines. This incident marks a turning point in the evolution of naval warfare, as nations seek to adapt and respond to the new challenges posed by underwater vessels.
The following day, May 7, 1915, the U-20 sinks the British ocean linerRMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. The liner sinks in eighteen minutes with 1,197 casualties. The wreck lies in 300 feet of water.
On November 4, 1916, U-20 becomes grounded on the Danish coast south of Vrist, after suffering damage to its engines. Her crew attempts to destroy her with explosives the following day, succeeding only in damaging the boat’s bow but making it effectively inoperative as a warship.
The U-20 remains on the beach until 1925 when the Danish government blows it up in a “spectacular explosion.” The Danish navy removes the deck gun and makes it unserviceable by cutting holes in vital parts. The gun is kept in the naval stores at Holmen, Copenhagen for almost 80 years. The conning tower is removed and placed on the front lawn of the local museum Strandingsmuseum St. George Thorsminde, where it remains today.
(Pictured: The U-20, second from left, at Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, on February 17, 1914)
Joyce is the eldest of three sons of Michael Joyce, an Irish Catholic from a family of tenant farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, and his wife, Gertrude (née Brooke), who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, is from a well-off AnglicanAnglo-Irish family of physicians associated with County Roscommon. The Joyces return to Ireland in 1909. William, a precocious child, attends Coláiste Iognáid SJ, a Jesuit school in County Galway, from 1915 to 1921. At the age of fourteen, he abandons Catholicism for Anglicanism, apparently after being told that all non-Catholics, including his mother, would be damned. In adult life he is nominally anglican, though his adherence to Christianity is tenuous.
The Joyces are unionists and teach their children fervent imperialism. During the Irish War of Independence, Joyce openly associates with the Black and Tans and acts as a scout for them. An acquaintance claims that his views are so extreme even loyalists dislike him. On December 9, 1921, he flees to England to join the Worcestershire Regiment and is followed to England in 1923 by the rest of the family. When he enlists, he claims to be eighteen, but after he contracts rheumatic fever, his age is discovered, and he is discharged in March 1922. For a time, he studies mathematics and chemistry at Battersea Polytechnic Institute as a pre-medical student (1922–23), but he leaves of his own accord, with a reputation for laziness and violent political views. His studies in English and history at Birkbeck College are more successful. He is a brilliant linguist and mathematician and graduates BA with first-class honours in 1927. He publishes an academic article on philology and considers progressing to an MA. He later falsely claims that his research had been plagiarised by a Jewish academic. In 1932, he enrolls at King’s College, London, for a Ph.D. in educational psychology.
Joyce is disturbed by the difference between depressed post-war Britain and the imperial ideal that he had imbibed in Galway and is mocked for his outspoken patriotism and obvious Irishness. He identifies strongly with Thomas Carlyle, an earlier angry anti-liberal from the provinces. His life is marked by repeated episodes of hero worship, followed by disillusion and bitter denunciation. In 1923, he joins the British Fascists, an organisation that has a significant Irish loyalist membership, and in 1924 he allies himself with a militant splinter group, the National Fascists. Most British fascists see themselves as Tory auxiliaries, and they often provide a security presence at conservative meetings. On October 22, 1924, while stewarding a meeting addressed by a Jewish conservative candidate, he has his face slashed and is left with a prominent scar across his right cheek. He joins the Conservative Party in 1928 and is active in the Chelsea constituency until 1930, when he is forced out because of his eccentricities and sexual misbehaviour. On April 30, 1927, he marries Hazel Kathleen Barr. They have two daughters but separate in 1935, largely because of his infidelities, heavy drinking, and temper. The marriage is dissolved in 1937.
In November 1933, Joyce abandons his Ph.D. studies to work for Sir Oswald Mosley‘s British Union of Fascists (BUF). By early 1934 he has become its paid publicity director, traveling throughout Britain to organise meetings. He is a powerful, rabble-rousing speaker, driven by an instinctive awareness that vitriolic verbal abuse gives speaker and audience a sense of power and solidarity. MI5 sees him as a compelling, though deranged, personality. On February 8, 1937, he marries Margaret Cairns White, a BUF activist from Lancashire, with whom he had cohabited since 1936.
Joyce leads a BUF faction that favours a recruitment strategy based on uncompromising ideological assertion. This is challenged by populists who prioritise marches and displays and hold that indoctrination should follow membership. In February 1937, he is BUF candidate for the London County Council in Shoreditch. The party wins 14 percent of the vote. In March 1937, he, along with many full-time BUF staff, are sacked when the BUF cuts expenses. But his dismissal also reflects Mosley’s awareness that his obsessive rhetoric repels “respectable” recruits and that he is no longer a biddable, slavish admirer of “the Leader.” He later falsely claims near-exclusive credit for the BUF’s escalating antisemitism, a view that Mosley eventually finds it convenient to adopt in order to evade his own responsibility.
In April 1937, Joyce founds the National Socialist League, helped by a wealthy patron. He supports himself as a private tutor, refusing to take Jewish pupils. He is active in various antisemitic and pro-Nazi groups such as the Right Club and engages in “peace” campaigns based on the view that British interests lay with Germany against Russia. Political marginalisation intensifies his admiration for Nazi Germany and hero worship of Adolf Hitler. By the time of the Munich crisis in 1938, he has decided that if war comes, he will go to Germany, though he also considers moving to Ireland. He renews his British passport for one-year terms in August 1938 and August 1939.
On August 26, 1939, Joyce and his wife leave London for Berlin. He is allegedly tipped off about his impending arrest and internment by an MI5 officer, to whom he had supplied information on communists. His siblings, whom he recruited into his fascist organisations, are variously penalised for his activities. At a loose end in Berlin, he is persuaded by a British associate to become a radio announcer with the English-language service of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG). He makes his first broadcast on September 6, 1939, and receives a contract in October. He finds in radio an outlet for his forceful style and delight in saying the unsayable, and in the early years of the war takes an exultant pride in recounting Nazi victories. His performances are admired by Joseph Goebbels, whom Joyce, to his regret, never meets. On September 26, 1940, he acquires German citizenship.
The novel experience of hearing the enemy in one’s own living room attracts wide audiences in Britain. Joyce’s practice of naming newly captured prisoners of war in his broadcasts is also a compelling motive for listening. In fact, he tries to recruit British prisoners of war as collaborators. The name “Lord Haw-Haw,” invented by the Daily Express radio critic in September 1939, initially applies to several English-language broadcasters but in time becomes associated with Joyce. He is initially a figure of fun, imitated by comedians, but there are sinister undercurrents of terrifying omnipotence, intensified by his sneering, gloating delivery and his delighted deployment of the “big lie” technique. It is widely believed that British-based fifth columnists supply him with information, that he predicts air raids, and shows minute local knowledge. In time, fear and his growing notoriety feed popular hatred of him in Britain, though his anti-British taunts allegedly win appreciative Irish audiences. He exults that he is daily committing treason and rendering himself liable to the death penalty.
In 1940, Joyce publishes a commissioned self-justifying propaganda work, Twilight over England. His representation of himself echoes that of Hitler in Mein Kampf – the provincial patriot, whose martial sacrifices are betrayed by corrupt elites, learning through poverty the hollowness of bourgeois patriotism and the need to synthesise socialism with nationalism. He shares with his hero a paranoid belief in his own ability to create an alternative reality through language and obstinacy. He dreams of becoming the English Führer.
In Berlin, the Joyces’ marriage comes under increasing strain, marked by drunken rows, domestic violence, and infidelity on both sides, though they retain a fierce mutual fascination. They divorce on August 12, 1941, but remarry on February 11, 1942, while continuing their previous behaviour. As the Axis powers begin to fail, his broadcasts become more defensive, focusing on the Soviet threat. On October 14, 1944, he is awarded the German War Merit Cross, first class. On October 22, he is sworn into the Volkssturm (territorial army) and begins drilling. The Joyces are evacuated from Berlin in March 1945, initially to Apen near the Dutch border and then to Hamburg, where he makes a last, drunken, defiant broadcast on April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler’s death. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Sweden, the Joyces hide at Flensburg near the Danish border. On May 28, 1945, he is shot and captured while gathering firewood.
Joyce is brought back to Britain on June 16 after Parliament passed legislation simplifying treason trial procedures. At his September 17-20 trial, he proves his American citizenship, but the court holds that his illegally acquired British passport incurred duties of allegiance. His appeals are rejected by the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. His fate is influenced by British public opinion, and possibly by a desire to avoid antagonising the Soviet Union. In his death cell he blames the defeat of national socialism on German limitations. He also fantasises that he could have saved Hitler from his incompetent subordinates.
Joyce is hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Wandsworth Prison on January 3, 1946. Unlike most of his fellow Nazis, he proclaims to the end his allegiance to national socialism and hatred of Jews. He corresponds cheerfully with Margaret, joking evasively about the death camps and expressing a belief that his spirit will survive, watch over her, and continue his work. To neo-Nazis he becomes a martyr. Even among those to whom his activities had been repellent, a significant body of opinion holds he should not have been condemned on a questionable and innovative technicality. The historian A. J. P. Taylor maintains that Joyce was executed for making a false declaration to obtain a passport, a misdemeanour that normally incurs a £2 fine.
In 1976, Joyce is reinterred in Galway as it is feared that a grave in England might become a fascist shrine. Thomas Kilroy‘s play Double Cross (1986) juxtaposes Joyce and Brendan Bracken as Irishmen who reinvented themselves through fantasies of Britishness. The BBC Sound Archive has recordings of some of Joyce’s broadcasts and transcripts of others, collected during the war as evidence for a future treason trial.
(From: “Joyce, William Brooke (‘Lord Haw-Haw’)” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
McKeown is ordained to the priesthood on July 3, 1977.
Following ordination, McKeown’s first pastoral assignment is as chaplain at Mater Infirmorum Hospital, before returning to Rome to complete his licentiate. He returns to the Diocese of Down and Connor in 1978, where he is appointed as a teacher at Our Lady and St. Patrick’s College, Knock, while also serving as assistant priest in Derriaghy. He returns to St. MacNissi’s College in 1983, where he continues his involvement with youth ministry and is given responsibility for organising the annual diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes.
McKeown subsequently returns to St. Malachy’s College in 1987, where he teaches and serves as dean of the adjoining seminary, before succeeding Canon Noel Conway as president in 1995. During his presidency, he completes a Master of Business Administration at the University of Leicester in 2000, specialising in educational management.
McKeown has completed the Belfast Marathon on two occasions: as a priest with a team of 48 from Derriaghy in 1982, and as a bishop fundraising for a minibus for St. Malachy’s College in 2001.
In response to a 2007 decision by Amnesty International to campaign for the legalisation of abortion in certain circumstances, McKeown supports the decision of Catholic schools in the diocese to disband their Amnesty International support groups, on the grounds that it is no longer appropriate to promote the organisation in their schools.
It is reported in an article in The Irish News that the mention of McKeown as a possible successor to Walsh as Bishop of Down and Connor is actively opposed by some priests in the diocese, who regard him as being “too soft” on the issue of integrated education. This opposition is branded a “Stop Donal” campaign.
McKeown also serves as a member of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference and its committee on education and chairs its committees on vocations and youth. He leads the youth of the diocese to World Youth Day in 2002 and 2005 and also travels to Rome with his brother bishops for their quinquennial visit ad limina in 2006. He is also a regular contributor on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster.
McKeown starts a 33-day journey of prayer toward the Consecration to Jesus Christ through Mary on January 9, 2025. The prayer takes place online each evening at 7:00 p.m. The 33 days of prayer take place the week following the Baptism of the Lord until the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on February 11.
Hayes sends a plan for the invasion of Northern Ireland by German troops to Germany in April 1940. This plan later becomes known as Plan Kathleen. He is also known to have met with German agent Hermann Görtz on May 21, 1940, in Dublin shortly after the latter’s parachuting into Ireland on May 5, 1940, as part of Operation Mainau. He is known to have asked Görtz for money and arms to wage a campaign in Northern Ireland, although shortly after this meeting the original Plan Kathleen is discovered. The discovery of the plan leads to the acceleration of joint British and Irish military planning for a German invasion known as Plan W.
Another meeting on August 15, 1940, on Rathgar Road, Dublin, organised by Hayes and attended by senior IRA men Paddy McGrath, Tom Harte and Tom Hunt, is also raided by the Garda Síochána.
On June 30, 1941, Northern-based IRA men kidnap Hayes, accusing him of being a spy. By his own account, he is tortured and “court-martialed” for “treason” by his comrades, and would have been executed, but he buys himself time composing an enormously long confession. He manages to escape on September 8, 1941, and hands himself in to the Garda for protection.
The Officer Commanding (O/C) of the IRA Northern Command, Seán McCaughey, is convicted on September 18, 1941, of the kidnapping. After a long hunger and thirst strike in Portlaoise Prison, he dies on May 11, 1946.
Hayes is later sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court on account of his IRA activities.
Within IRA circles, Hayes is still considered a traitor and an informer. One of the main allegations against him is that he informed the Garda Síochána about IRA arms dumps in Wexford. However, this is later blamed on a Wexford man named Michael Deveraux, an officer of the Wexford Battalion of the IRA who is subsequently abducted and executed by an IRA squad in County Tipperary on Hayes’ orders. George Plant, a Protestant IRA veteran, is later executed in Portlaoise Prison for Devereux’s murder.
After his release, Hayes resumes his clerical position at Wexford County Council. He dies in Enniscorthy on December 28, 1974.
O’Brien is a ship builder and designer, and his notable boats include the Kelpie (used for gun running in 1914), the Saoirse (in which he circumnavigates the globe) and the Ilen (a Falkland Islands service ship).
O’Brien is credited with two buildings in his lifetime: the Co-operative Hall in County Donegal and the People’s Hall in County Limerick. He is also known as a naval architect, having designed two ships, the Saoirse and the llen. He later captains both of these ships himself.
In Saoirse, a 20-ton, 42-foot ketch designed and built in 1922 in Baltimore, County Cork, he and three crew members circumnavigate the globe between 1923 and 1925 – the first recorded by an amateur skipper from west to east, the first yacht circumnavigation by way of the three great capes: Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin, and the first boat flying the Irish tri-colour to enter many of the world’s ports and harbours. His voyage begins and ends at the Port of Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives. His account of the voyage, Across Three Oceans, (1927) becomes one of the classics of maritime literature.
Up until O’Brien’s circumnavigation, this route is the preserve of square-rigged grain ships taking part in the grain race from Australia to England via Cape Horn (also known as the clipper route).
O’Brien’s seagoing experiences are put to use in his design of the Ilen, which is built for the Falkland Islands as a service boat and launched in the spring of 1926. In 1998, Ilen returns to the site where she was first built, on the River Ilen near Baltimore, County Cork, where she undergoes a full restoration and is re-launched in May 2018. This task provides work-based learning for the students of the Ilen School.
O’Brien has some involvement with gun running in 1914 on behalf of the Irish Volunteers, for political reasons and because he has experience in sailing. On July 26, 1914, nine hundred guns are brought to Howth harbour aboard Erskine Childers‘ yacht Asgard. As part of the same operation, O’Brien transports arms on his yacht, Kelpie. The guns on Kelpie are transshipped to another yacht, Chotah, owned by Sir Thomas Myles, before being landed at Kilcoole in County Wicklow on August 1, 1914. After the gun running incidents, he serves in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
In 1928, O’Brien marries a well-known artist, Kathleen Francis, the youngest daughter of Sir George Clausen, RA. The couple thereafter moves to Ibiza, where they live on the Saoirse until Kathleen’s death in 1936. They have no children. Relocating to Cornwall, where he lives with his sister, he writes books on sailing and works of fiction for children. Although too old for active service when war with Germany breaks out in 1939, he assists the British war effort by serving in the Small Ships Pool, which delivers support vessels across the Atlantic and brings food supplies from the United States in private yachts.
In 1940 O’Brien sells Saoirse to the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club. The boat remains in use until 1980, when it is lost off the Jamaican coast. After the war he retires to another sister’s home in Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives and continues to write books for children until his death on April 18, 1952.
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.
Smith is born at 174 South Street, New York City, on December 30, 1873, and raised in the Fourth Ward on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He resides there for his entire life. His mother, Catherine (née Mulvihill), is the daughter of Maria Marsh and Thomas Mulvihill, who are immigrants from County Westmeath, Ireland. His father, baptised Joseph Alfred Smith in 1839, is a Civil War–veteran and the son of Emanuel Smith, an Italian marinaro.
Although Smith remains personally untarnished by corruption, he — like many other New York Democrats — is linked to the notorious Tammany Hallpolitical machine that controls New York City politics during his era. He serves in the New York State Assembly from 1904 to 1915 and holds the position of Speaker of the Assembly in 1913. He also serves as sheriff of New York County from 1916 to 1917. He is first elected governor of New York in 1918, loses his 1920 bid for re-election, and is elected governor again in 1922, 1924, and 1926. He is the foremost urban leader of the efficiency movement in the United States and is noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as the New York governor in the 1920s.
Smith is the first Roman Catholic to be nominated for president of the United States by a major party. His 1928 presidential candidacy mobilizes both Catholic and anti-Catholic voters. Many Protestants, including German AmericanLutherans and Southern Baptists, fear his candidacy, believing that the Pope in Rome would dictate his policies. He is also a committed “wet” (i.e., an opponent of Prohibition in the United States) and as New York governor, he repeals the state’s prohibition law. As a “wet,” he attracts voters who want beer, wine and liquor without having to deal with criminal bootleggers, along with voters who are outraged that new criminal gangs have taken over the streets in most large and medium-sized cities. Incumbent RepublicanSecretary of CommerceHerbert Hoover is aided by national prosperity, the absence of American involvement in war and anti-Catholic bigotry, and he defeats Smith in a landslide in 1928.
Smith then enters business in New York City and becomes involved in the construction and promotion of the Empire State Building. He seeks the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination but is defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, his former ally and successor as governor of New York. During the Roosevelt presidency, he becomes an increasingly vocal opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Smith is an early and vocal critic of the Nazi regime in Germany. He supports the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 and addresses a mass-meeting at Madison Square Garden against Nazism in March 1933. His speech is included in the 1934 anthology Nazism: An Assault on Civilization. In 1938, he takes to the airwaves to denounce Nazi brutality in the wake of Kristallnacht. His words are published in The New York Times article “Text of the Catholic Protest Broadcast” of November 17, 1938.
Like most New York City businessmen, Smith enthusiastically supports American military involvement in World War II. Although he is not asked by Roosevelt to play any role in the war effort, he is an active and vocal proponent of FDR’s attempts to amend the Neutrality Act in order to allow “Cash and Carry” sales of war equipment to be made to the British. He speaks on behalf of the policy in October 1939, to which FDR responds directly: “Very many thanks. You were grand.”
Smith is memorialized by The Alfred E. Smith Foundation, founded by CardinalFrancis Spellman. Today it is a significant fund raiser for charity. Each election year, presidential candidates are expected to attend, make witty remarks, and profound commentary about Smith. In 2008, then candidate Barack Obama speaks eloquently of “a man who fought for many years to give Americans nothing more than fair shake and a chance to succeed. He touched the lives of millions as a result.”
(Pictured: Official Gubernatorial portrait of Alfred E. “Al” Smith by Douglas Volk)
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.”
Peter Lacy, Irish-born soldier who later serves in the Imperial Russian Army, is born Pierce Edmond de Lacy into a noble Irish family on September 26, 1678, in Killeedy near Limerick, County Limerick. Considered one of the most successful Russian Imperial commanders before Pyotr Rumyantsev and Alexander Suvorov, in a military career that spans half a century, he claims to have participated in 31 campaigns, 18 battles, and 18 sieges.
Lacy’s first taste of land battle in Russia is the disastrous defeat at Narva, in which he commands a unit of musketeers, holding the rank of poruchik. During the Great Northern War he is seriously wounded on two occasions, also gaining the rank of colonel in 1706. In the same year, Peter the Great gives him command of the Polotskii regiment and three new regiments raising him to colonel status. The following year he leads his brigade at Poltava and in the ensuing battle he greatly distinguishes himself. In the 1708 battle of Rumna, he attacks and captures the headquarters of Charles XII of Sweden. He gains fame at this stage by advising the Czar that musketeers should wait until they were within a few yards of the enemy before opening fire. Prior to this, the Russians were known for uncoordinated fire. From this point begins his fame as a soldier. His next active service, still under Prince Anikita Repnin, is the siege of Riga. He is reputedly the first Russian officer to enter the capital of Livland and he is appointed the first Russian chatelain of Riga Castle in the aftermath.
In 1719, Major General Fyodor Apraksin‘s fleet lands Lacy with 5,000 infantry and 370 cavalry near Umeå in Sweden, where they proceed to devastate a dozen iron foundries and a number of mills. Two years later he leads a similar action against Sundsvall. Soon promoted to General, he enters the Military Collegium, as the Russian Ministry of Defense was then known, in 1723. Three years later, he succeeds Repnin in command of the Russian forces quartered in Livland, and in 1729 he is appointed Governor of Riga. These positions bring him in contact with the Duchess of Courland, who before long ascends the Russian throne as Empress Anna. During her reign, Lacy’s capacity for supreme command is never doubted.
Lacy is one of the first recipients of the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky when it is established, furthermore, he is given command of all infantries in Saint Petersburg, Ingria and Novgorod. By 1728 he is ranked third of only six full generals in the Russian Army and the only foreigner. As a foreigner, his salary is 3,600 Roubles a year, 15% higher than Russian generals. Higher salaries for foreign-born generals are seen in other ranks too. His signature, even on documents in Cyrillic script, always appear in English and Latin script which suggests he never gains proficiency in the Russian language.
Having saved her from marriage to Saxe, Anna is very familiar with Lacy, and he becomes one of her most trusted generals. The War of the Polish Succession again calls him into the field. In 1733, he and Burkhard Christoph von Münnich expel the Polish king, Stanisław I, from Warsaw to Danzig, which is besieged by them in 1734. Thereupon the Irishman is commanded to march toward the Rhine and join his 13,500-strong contingent with the forces of Eugene of Savoy. To that end, his corps advances into Germany and, meeting the Austrians on August 16, returns to winter quarters in Moravia with exemplary discipline. In 1734, he commands Russian forces at the Siege of Danzig in which French and Polish forces are defeated. Lacy leads the Russians in two other decisive battles of the conflict, Wisiczin and Busawitza. In the latter battle, he is outnumbered ten to one but nevertheless prevails. For this victory, he is awarded Order of the White Eagle. After Busawitza Lacy is ordered to reinforce the Austrians at Mannheim. however, when he reaches Mannheim peace has been declared. He is received by Emperor Charles and Viennese society. On his return from Vienna, he is met by a courier from Saint Petersburg who delivers to him his patent honouring him as Field Marshal.
With the patent of Field Marshal is the news that Russia is at war with Turkey and Lacy is ordered at once to capture Azov Fortress. This he does despite being wounded in the fray. His rival, Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, had been campaigning in the Crimea with little success. Thus, after taking Azov, Lacy is ordered to capture Crimea. He bridges the Sea of Azov at a narrow point near Perekop. Within four days, aided by favourable winds and tides, his entire army crosses it and begins marching on Arabat. The Russians meet the Khan’s much larger Crimean army and rout them in two battles, on June 12 and 14. In 1738, his corps again land in Crimea and take the fortress of Chufut-Kale near the Khan’s capital, Bakhchisaray. For his success in Poland and Crimea he is awarded the Order of St. Andrew.
As soon as peace has been restored, Lacy is reinstated as the Governor of Livland, while Emperor Charles VI confers on him the title of an imperial count. His indifference to politics prevents his downfall following Anna’s death, when other foreign commanders, most notably von Münnich, fall into disgrace and are expelled from active service.
In December 1741, Elizabeth seizes power. Lacy is roused from bed in the early hours of the morning in a test of his loyalty. He is not aware if the men sent to him are from Elizabeth or Grand Duchess Anna. He is asked what party he is of, Anne or Elizabeth, and he answers, “Of the party of the reigning Empress.” A period of unrest follows, and he is called upon to restore order. Most of what is known as the German Faction falls out of favour at this stage. The restoration of order in Saint Petersburg is largely down to the prompt actions of Lacy.
When the Russo-Swedish War breaks out in 1741, the government of Anna Leopoldovna appoints Lacy Commander-in-Chief as the most experienced among Russian generals. He quickly strikes against Finland and wins his last brilliant victory at Lappeenranta in August 1741. His force, however, is poorly supplied and he is forced to withdraw to Saint Petersburg. The following year he rallies his forces and proceeds to capture Hamina, Porvoo and Hämeenlinna, by August encircling more than 17,000 Swedes near Helsinki and effectively bringing the hostilities to an end.
The war over, Lacy withdraws to Riga and resumes the command of the Russian forces stationed in Livland. He administers what is now northern Latvia and southern Estonia until his death on his private estate in Riga on April 30, 1751. His son, Franz Moritz von Lacy, enters the Austrian service in 1743 and becomes one of the most successful imperial commanders of the 18th century and also a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. His nephew, George Browne, is also a general in the Russian army.
Christened as William O’Brien, the seventh child of Arthur O’Brien, clerk, and Mary O’Brien (née Christie), who is from County Meath, Ó Briain takes an interest in the Irish language from an early age and begins learning Irish by himself from a grammar book, as it is not encouraged by his teachers at the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School nor spoken by his parents. While still at the O’Connell School, he starts using the Irish version of his name. He also attends meetings of the Gaelic League, then attends University College Dublin (UCD) on a scholarship, where he studies French, English and Irish, receiving a BA (1909) and an MA (1910).
UCD decides to start awarding one annual scholarship for overseas travel in 1911, and Ó Briain wins the first one, using it to visit Germany and study under Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen. After three years, he returns home, where he rejoins the Gaelic League and begins teaching French at UCD. He also joins the Irish Volunteers then, the following year, Seán T. O’Kelly convinces him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
Around this time, Ó Briain joins Sinn Féin, and he stands unsuccessfully for the party in Mid Armagh at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, taking 5,689 votes. His campaign leads, indirectly, to his arrest and three months in jail in Belfast. In 1920, following his release, he is appointed a judge in the then-illegal republican court system in Galway, and visits both France and Italy to try to source weapons for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In November 1920, he is arrested in the UCG dining room by Black and Tans, and is imprisoned for thirteen months, first in Galway and then in the Curragh camp in County Kildare, thereby missing the conclusion of the Irish War of Independence. By the time he is released, the Anglo-Irish Treaty has been signed. He supports the treaty and takes no further part in militant activity.
In the newly independent Ireland, Ó Briain remains a professor at Galway. He also stands in the 1925 Seanad election, although he is not successful. He is the founding secretary of the Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe theatre, also acting in many of its productions, and spends much time translating works from English and the Romance languages into Irish. He stands to become president of UCG in 1945, but is not elected, and in the 1940s and 1950s is best known for his many appearances on television and radio.
From his retirement in 1959, Ó Briain lives in Dublin. In 1974, the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers an honorary doctorate on him. He dies on August 12, 1974, at St. Gabriel’s Hospital, Cabinteely, County Dublin. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery is almost a state occasion, with a huge attendance of public figures, and a military firing party at the graveside, where the oration is given by Micheál Mac Líammóir and a lesson is read by Siobhán McKenna. For days after his death, the newspapers carry tributes to his many-sided career and personality. On the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Art Ó Beoláin write commemorative articles in Feasta.
On September 1, 1921, Ó Briain marries Helen Lawlor, of Dublin, who dies two years before him. The couple’s only child is Eibhlín Ní Bhriain, who is a journalist for The Irish Times and other periodicals.
seamus dubhghaill 