seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Italy


by Leave a comment

Birth of Novelist John Banville

William John Banville, novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas, and screenwriter, is born in Wexford, County Wexford, on December 8, 1945. He also has a 30-year career working in the Irish newspaper industry and serves as literary editor of The Irish Times from 1988 until 1999.

Banville is born to Agnes (née Doran) and Martin Banville, a garage clerk, in Wexford. He is the youngest of three siblings. He is educated at CBS Primary, Wexford, a Christian Brothers school, and at St. Peter’s College, Wexford. Despite having intentions of being a painter and an architect, he does not attend university. After school, he works as a clerk at Aer Lingus, which allows him to travel at deeply discounted rates. He takes advantage of these rates to travel to Greece and Italy. He begins working as a sub-editor at The Irish Press in 1969.

Banville publishes his first book, a collection of short stories titled Long Lankin, in 1970. His first novel, Nightspawn, appears in 1971, followed by his second, Birchwood, two years later. His The Revolutions Trilogy, published between 1976 and 1982, comprises works named after renowned scientists: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, has a mathematical theme, and, in combination with the three books from The Revolutions Trilogy, is the fourth book from the “Scientific Tetralogy.” His 1989 novel, The Book of Evidence, begins The Frames Trilogy, dealing with the work of art. It is completed by Ghosts and Athena. His thirteenth novel, The Sea, wins the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black, most of which feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in 1950s Dublin. His alternative history novel, The Secret Guests (2020), is published under the name B. W. Black.

Banville wins the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy makes him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d’Italia (a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer. He is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1969, Banville marries the American textile artist Janet Dunham, whom he met in San Francisco the previous year while she is a student at the University of California, Berkeley. The couple has two sons together. The marriage breaks down after Banville has an affair with a neighbour, Patricia Quinn, who subsequently becomes director of the Arts Council of Ireland. Banville has two daughters with Quinn, born around 1990 and 1997. Despite separating, Banville and Dunham never divorce and he describes them as remaining “on good terms.” Dunham dies at Blackrock Clinic on November 22, 2021, after which Banville states that he experienced “brain fog” due to grief and is unable to write for six months. In a 2024 interview, he expresses regret over his relationship history, saying, “I caused Janet such anguish. I have caused Patricia Quinn such anguish. I wasn’t good with my children. I was not a good parent. I am not a good person. I am selfish. But I have to have responsibility.”

Banville currently lives in Howth, Dublin.


by Leave a comment

Death of William Trevor, Writer & Playwright

William Trevor Cox KBE, Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer, dies in Crediton, Devon, England, on November 20, 2016. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language. He wins the Whitbread Prize three times and is nominated five times for the Booker Prize, the last for his novel Love and Summer (2009), which is also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2011. His name is also mentioned in relation to the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Trevor wins the 2008 International Nonino Prize in Italy. In 2014, he is bestowed with the title of Saoi within Aosdána. He resides in England from 1954 until his death in 2016, at the age of 88.

Trevor is born as William Trevor Cox on May 24, 1928, in Mitchelstown, County Cork, to a middle class, Anglo-Irish Protestant (Church of Ireland) family. He moves several times to other provincial locations, including Skibbereen, Tipperary, Youghal and Enniscorthy, as a result of his father’s work as a bank official.

Trevor is educated at a succession of schools including St Columba’s College, Dublin (where he is taught by Oisín Kelly) and at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), from which he receives a degree in history. He works as a sculptor under the name Trevor Cox following his graduation from TCD, supplementing his income by teaching. 

Trevor marries Jane Ryan in 1952 and emigrates to England, working as a teacher, a sculptor and then as a copywriter for an advertising agency. During this time he and his wife have their first son. In 1952, he becomes an art teacher at Bilton Grange, a prep school near Rugby. He is commissioned to carve reliefs for several churches, including All Saints’ Church, Braunston, Northamptonshire. In 1956, he moves to Somerset to work as a sculptor and carries out commissions for churches. He stops wood carving in 1960. 

Trevor’s first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, is published in 1958 by Hutchinson & Co. of London, but receives little critical success. He later disowns this work, and, according to his obituary in The Irish Times, “refused to have it republished.” It is, in fact, republished in 1982 and in 1989.

In 1964, at the age of 36, Trevor is awarded the Hawthornden Prize for The Old Boys. This success encourages him to become a full-time writer.

In 1971, he and his family move from London to Devon in South West England, first to Dunkeswell, then in 1980 to Shobrooke, where he lives until his death. Despite having spent most of his life in England, he considers himself to be “Irish in every vein”.

Trevor dies peacefully in his sleep, at the age of 88, at Crediton, Devon, England, on November 20, 2016.


by Leave a comment

Death of Chicago Mobster Charles Dean O’Banion

Charles Dean O’Banion, better known as Dion O’Banion, is murdered by Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Albert Anselmi in Chicago, Illinois, on November 10, 1924. He graduates from the violent newspaper wars of early 20th century Chicago to become the chief bootlegging rival of mobsters Al Capone and Johnny Torrio.

O’Banion is born to Irish Catholic parents in Maroa, Illinois on July 8, 1892. After the death of his mother in 1901, he moves with his family to a North Side neighborhood populated largely by other Irish Americans. The neighborhood, then known as Kilgubbin after an Irish place name and now called Goose Island, is notorious for its high crime rate, and by all accounts he fits easily into that environment. In his teens, he forms a street gang with Earl “Hymie” Weiss, Vincent “The Schemer” Drucci and George “Bugs” Moran with whom he continues to associate throughout his life.

Chicago of the period is, according to Mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson, a “wide open city.” Wide open for rackets such as prostitution and gambling, and wide open for violent competition among gangsters. Bombings and murder are met with token official resistance but are often settled by uneasy truces among the rivals.

The violence extends to the press. O’Banion and his friends are “sluggers” for, first, the Chicago Tribune and later for the Tribune’s rival, the Chicago Examiner. Sluggers intimidate sellers and readers of the wrong newspaper. Although played for laughs in stage and film in productions such as The Front Page, the Chicago newspaper wars are quite violent and include lethal gunfights in saloons and on the streets.

In 1909, O’Banion is arrested and convicted of robbery and assault.

The newspapers wars are a good warm-up for O’Banion’s work as a bootlegger when Prohibition comes into effect in 1920. Chicago, with its large population of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe, is a town that loves its beer, wine and liquor. Almost from the start, O’Banion’s North Side Gang is at odds with the South Side outfit led at the time by Torrio.

About 1921, O’Banion and Torrio, who actively wants peace with his rival, work out a deal that seems to satisfy both the South Side gangsters and O’Banion’s group. O’Banion not only keeps the North Side and the Gold Coast, a wealthy neighborhood on Lake Michigan, but he even gets a slice of Cicero, a suburb controlled by Torrio and Capone on the South Side of Chicago, and they all share profits from a lakefront casino called The Ship.

Eventually the peace breaks down. O’Banion is enraged by efforts of a third gang, the Genna crime family’s West Side Gang, to expand its bootlegging and rackets operations into his territory. The Gennas are allied with Torrio’s South Side gang. O’Banion seals his fate when he refuses to forgive a gambling debt that one of the Gennas had racked up at The Ship.

On the morning of November 10, 1924, O’Banion is in his North Side flower shop, Schofield’s, a front for his mob activities. A Torrio associate from New York City, Frankie Yale, enters the shop with Genna gunmen John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. When O’Banion and Yale shake hands, Yale grasps O’Banion’s hand in a tight grip. At the same time, Scalise and Anselmi step aside and fire two bullets into O’Banion’s chest and two into his throat. One of the killers fires a final shot into the back of his head as he lies face down on the floor.

Since O’Banion is a major crime figure, the Catholic Church denies him burial in consecrated ground. However, a priest O’Banion has known since childhood recites the Lord’s Prayer and three Hail Marys in his memory. Despite this restriction, his funeral is the biggest anyone can remember. Among those attending are Al Capone and members of the South Side Gang. But there soon will be other funerals. The Beer Wars, as they become known, are just beginning.

Torrio escapes an assassination attempt in 1925 and turns over his operation to Capone, the greatest gangster of all. O’Banion’s friend and conspirator Hymie Weiss, who is fingered as one of those who tried to kill Torrio, is gunned down in 1926. In 1929, in an effort to permanently put down the North Side Gang, led then by Bugs Moran, seven of the North Side mobsters are killed in the infamous Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, but Moran survives through the end of Prohibition in 1933.


by Leave a comment

Death of Nancy Wynne-Jones, Welsh & Irish Artist

Nancy Wynne-Jones HRHA, a Welsh and Irish artist, dies in County Wicklow on November 9, 2006.

Mary Esperance (“Nancy”) Wynne-Jones is born on December 10, 1922, in Penmaenucha, Wales, to landowner Charles Llewellyn Wynne-Jones and Sybil Mary Gella Scott. The family spends half the year in Wales and half the year in Thornhill, Stalbridge, Dorset. She has two brothers, Andrew and Ronald (“Polly”), both of whom die in Africa during World War II.

Wynne-Jones is educated at home. Her skill in art leads to her getting lessons in Sherborne from a children’s book illustrator. Her music is encouraged by the family doctor and she begins to compose and study the violin, receiving lessons in Bournemouth with the first violinist of the symphony orchestra. After the start of World War II, she continues in Aberystwyth. She goes on to study the violin and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London (1940–43). While in London she also serves as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse until 1943 and later as a draughtswoman at the Ordnance Survey.

After the war, Wynne-Jones purchases and manages a bookshop on the King’s Road in Chelsea, but it is not a financial success. She returns to painting, studying at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, from 1951 to 1952 and the Chelsea School of Art from 1952 to 1955. She travels extensively through Portugal and Italy painting landscapes. An interest in completing landscapes in an abstract manner leads her to study with Peter Lanyon in St. Ives, Cornwall.

Wynne-Jones begins study in Cornwall in 1957 and remains there for fifteen years. Her first public exhibition is in a group show in 1957 at the Pasmore Edwards Gallery, Newlyn. Other group shows are Jefferson Place Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1959) and in Falmouth, Cornwall (1960). Her solo exhibitions are at the New Vision Centre, London (1962 and 1965), Florence (1963) and Dolgellau (1964). From the 1960s through the 1990s she exhibits in Britain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Holland, South Africa, and the United States.

In 1962, Wynne-Jones purchases Trevaylor House near Penzance and provides accommodation for other artists including renowned Irish painter Tony O’Malley, sculptor Conor Fallon and English poet and writer W. S. ‘Sydney’ Graham. In the 1970s she exhibits in Ireland at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin (1970) and at the Emmet Gallery, Dublin (1975 and 1977). During the 1980s she exhibits at the Lincoln and Hendricks galleries in Dublin before joining the Taylor Gallery, run by John and Patrick Taylor. She is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1994 and becomes a member of Aosdána in 1996. Originally an abstract artist, her contact with the Irish countryside slowly transforms her work to that of a landscape artist, albeit with an influence of abstraction attached to it. She becomes well-known in Irish art circles as an eminent Irish landscape artist.

Wynne-Jones is involved with artist Derek Middleton before moving to Cornwall. There she becomes romantically involved with Graham who is in an open marriage, however, it is the death of her mentor Peter Lanyon which devastates her. She meets the sculptor Conor Fallon through their mutual friend, Tony O’Malley. Fallon had arrived in Cornwall ostensibly to meet Lanyon. They marry in 1966. Their honeymoon in Provence is immortalised in expressionist paintings done by her. The couple adopts a boy and a girl, siblings, John and Bridget. In 1972, she moves with her family to Kinsale, County Cork. It is in the area around here that a number of her paintings are created. Later she paints the mountain visible from her Wicklow home after the family moves in the late 1980s. She moves to Ballard House, near Rathdrum, County Wicklow in 1987.

Wynne-Jones dies on November 9, 2006, and is buried in Ballinatone (Church of Ireland), Rathdrum.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Dairine Vanston, Landscape Artist

Dairine (Doreen) Vanston, Irish landscape artist who works in a Cubist style, is born in Dublin on October 19, 1903.

Vanston is the daughter of solicitor John S. B. Vanston, and sculptor Lilla Vanston (née Coffey). She attends Alexandra College, going on to study at Goldsmiths College, London under Roger Bissière. She then goes to Paris to the Académie Ranson, being sent there following the advice of Paul Henry. While in Paris she meets Guillermo Padilla, a Costa Rican law student at the University of Paris. They marry in 1926 and she takes the name Vanston de Padilla. The couple lives for a time in Italy, before moving to San José, Costa Rica. The marriage breaks down in the early 1930s, at which point she returns to Paris with her son and studies with André Lhote. She is living in France at the outbreak of World War II with Jankel Adler, but is able to escape to London in 1940, and later to Dublin.

Vanston’s time in Paris leaves a lasting impression on her work, including use of primary colours and a strong Cubist influence. She belongs to what critic Brian Fallon calls the “Franco-Irish generation of painters who looked to Paris,” along with Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, and Norah McGuinness. Her time spent living in Costa Rica in the late 1920s and early 1930s imbues her work with tropical and highly toned colours. In Dublin in 1935, she exhibits 17 paintings, largely Costa Rican landscapes, at Daniel Egan’s gallery on St. Stephen’s Green. This is the closest thing to a solo show she would mount, with this show also featuring Grace Henry, Cecil Ffrench Salkeld, and Edward Gribbon.

Meeting the English artist Basil Rakoczi, who is also living in Dublin during World War II, leads Vanston to become associated with The White Stag group. In November 1941, she exhibits for the first time at a group show with 24 other artists, including Patrick Scott. One work that is shown at this exhibition is the painting Keel dance hall, which demonstrates that she spends time in the west of Ireland. The most important event staged by the group is the Exhibition of subjective art, which takes place at 6 Lower Baggot St. in January 1944. The Dublin Magazine notes her work at this show as the most effective of the experimental vanguard. This work, Dying animal, is a Cubist work with semi-representation forms rendered in bold colours. In 1945, her work is featured in a White Stag exhibition in London of young Irish painters at the Arcade gallery, Old Bond Street.

In 1947, Vanston spends almost a year in Costa Rica where she paints primarily in watercolours. Apart from this period, she lives and works in Dublin, living at 3 Mount Street Crescent near St. Stephen’s Church. At the inaugural Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943, she exhibits five works. At the first Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1960, of which she is a founder, she exhibits three landscapes and a work entitled War. She largely exhibits with the Independent Artists, the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, and the Oireachtas na Gaeilge, and does not exhibit with the Royal Hibernian Academy. Later in life, she exhibits with the Figurative Image exhibitions in Dublin, and is amongst the first painters chosen for Aosdána. A number of her works are featured in the 1987 exhibition, Irish women artists, from the eighteenth century to the present arranged by the National Gallery of Ireland and The Douglas Hyde Gallery.

Vanston dies on July 12, 1988, in a nursing home in Enniskerry, County Wicklow. Her work is greatly admired, but has received little by way of critical attention, which may have been to do with her slow rate of output. A number of her works have proved difficult to trace. She was a private person, even refusing to cooperate with the Taylor Galleries in the 1980s when they wanted to mount a retrospective of her work. The National Self-Portrait Collection in Limerick holds a work by Vanston.

(Pictured: Dairine Vanston with Guillermo Padilla in Paris)


by Leave a comment

The Irish Brigade Fights at the Battle of Chiari

On September 1, 1701, the Irish Brigade of France fights at the Battle of Chiari in northern Italy during the War of the Spanish Succession. The engagement is part of Prince Eugene of Savoy‘s campaign to seize the Spanish controlled Duchy of Milan in the Italian peninsula, and follows his victory over Marshal Nicolas Catinat at the Battle of Carpi in July. Marshal François de Neufville, 2nd Duke of Villeroy, replaces Catinat as commander of the Franco–Spanish–Savoyard forces in the theatre, carrying with him orders from King Louis XIV to push the Imperialists out of Italy.

Eugene welcomes the prospect of a decisive battle, and waits on the eastern side of the Oglio to be attacked. The Imperial commander has chosen his ground carefully, entrenching his troops and guns in front of the small fortress of Chiari. Streams protect his position on three sides so, as there is not enough room for a cavalry engagement, Eugene can count on a frontal attack by the French infantry. Two battalions and a few pieces of artillery are placed in Chiari itself.

Villeroy ignores Catinat’s warning that Eugene is in a strong position, remarking that the King, “had not sent so many brave men just to look at the enemy through their spy glasses.” On September 1, the Franco-Spanish infantry advances. Deceived by the report of spies that the Imperialists are retiring, Villeroy crosse the Oglio and pushes on to Chiari expecting to attack their rearguard. The attack begins around 2:00 p.m. when three French brigades approach Chiari and overpower the Imperial troops there without much difficulty. However, instead of facing the rearguard, the French commander encounters the whole Imperial army securely entrenched in their positions. As the Bourbons’ army approaches the Imperial positions, Eugene forbids his men to fire. Loading their artillery with canister shot, they only unleash a withering fire when the Bourbon army enters point-blank range. This disorders the attackers and chaos ensues which the French and Spanish commanders cannot suppress. While this is going on, Chiari is recaptured by the Imperials after a fierce struggle. The Bourbons are driven back with heavy casualties in a contest as destructive as any battle during the war in Italy. With only minor losses, the Imperial army inflicts over 3,000 casualties in the ranks, and over 250 officers. This number grows rapidly as fever attacks the wounded.

Villeroy loses personal control during the battle, and Catinat, despite being wounded, has to organise a retreat. The French dig themselves in only a mile or so away from the Austrians on the same side of the Oglio. Here, the two opposing sides remain for the next two months: the French are too much discouraged by their repulse to resume the assault, and Eugene is unwilling to risk the advantages he had gained by attacking the French in their strong defensive position. However, as autumn advances, conditions deteriorate in both camps: fodder is so short that Eugene’s horses are forced to eat fallen leaves. But the French, whose camp is built on marshy ground, suffers most, and they move out first in mid-November, crossing the Oglio before entering winter quarters in the Duchy of Milan.

In Milan, the French presence proves increasingly unpopular: five million French livres for soldiers’ pay and lodgings, and two million for fodder, has soon been imposed on the local population, most of which has to be taken by force. For his winter quarters, Eugene proceeds to reduce the whole Duchy of Mantua, except the capital and Goito, which he closely blockades. Shortly after he occupies Mirandola and Guastalla. Eugene’s relationship with the local population has been good and he has kept a tight control: he has executed 48 of his men for looting, telling the Emperor that he had “imposed more severe discipline than has possibly ever been seen in an army.” Eugene receives little cash from the Emperor, far less than he expects, but he secures a sound footing in northern Italy and, as hoped, his success helps to encourage the Maritime Powers to come to the aid of Leopold I. Since the beginning of the year Count Johann Wenzel Wratislaw von Mitrowitz has been in London as Imperial minister, pressing for assistance. With Eugene’s two victories (Carpi and Chiari), Leopold I has proven he would fight to protect his interests, giving Wratislaw the arguments he needs to push through the alliance with the Maritime Powers. On September 7, 1701, within a week of the battle, England and the Dutch Republic sign the second treaty of the Grand Alliance, backing the Emperor’s claims to the Spanish possessions in Italy.

The French are still in Milan, but their position is weak: morale is poor and desertion is high. Louis XIV writes to Villeroy urging him to work closely with Catinat and “not again to attack the enemy without advantage.” “If you do … the King, my grandson, will lose Italy.” By October, French optimism for the campaign is gone, but Louis XIV hopes to send reinforcements for the next year’s campaign, believing the Emperor will not be able to make a comparable increase in Eugene’s strength. However, the campaign season is not yet over. As Villeroy settles down for the winter, Eugene is preparing to attack him at his headquarters in Cremona.




by Leave a comment

Death of Johnny Hayes, Member of the Irish American Athletic Club

John Joseph Hayes, an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey. He is the winner of the men’s marathon race at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. His Olympic victory contributes to the early growth of long-distance running and marathoning in the United States.

Born in New York City on April 10, 1886, to a family of Irish emigrants from Nenagh, County Tipperary, Hayes is probably best known for winning the controversial marathon race at the London Olympics. He is one of only three male American athletes to win the Olympic Marathon, the other two being Thomas Hicks in 1904 and  Frank Shorter in 1972.

In 1905, Hayes joins Bloomingdale Brothers as an assistant to the manager of the sporting goods department. At night, he trains on a cinder track on the roof of the Bloomingdale’s building in New York. He is promoted to manager of the department after returning from his Olympic victory.

Hayes starts his athletics career with a fifth-place finish at the 1906 Boston Marathon, running for the St. Bartholemew Athletic Club in a time of 2:55:38. He improves on that the following year by finishing third in Boston with a time of 2:30:38 and winning the inaugural Yonkers Marathon. In 1908, he finishes second, 21 seconds behind Thomas Morrissey in the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:26:04 and thus qualifies for the Olympic Games held in London that same year.

The British Olympic Association wants to start the race in front of Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal reviewing stand at the White City Stadium. As a result, the distance is 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195 km). It takes until 1921 for the IAAF to codify that distance as the official length of the marathon. Prior to this, races are usually about 25 miles (40 km).

At the race itself, Dorando Pietri from Italy is the first to enter the stadium. But Pietri has depleted himself to open a more than 10 minute lead over the field and is suffering extreme fatigue and dehydration. When he enters the stadium, he takes the wrong path, and when umpires redirect him, he falls down for the first time. He gets up with their help in front of 75,000 spectators.

Pietri falls four more times, and each time, the umpires help him up. He manages to finish the race first, with a time of 2 hours, 54 minutes, 46 seconds. During all these stumbles and the direct aid from the officials, Hayes has now entered the stadium, finishing the race second, with a time of 2 hours, 55 minutes, 18 seconds.

Pietri is disqualified after the U.S. officials file a protest. Despite the official result, Pietri achieves much more fame than Hayes when Queen Alexandra awards him a special silver cup.

All of the Olympic officials are British, and the Pietri incident joins a list of other controversial calls in the 1908 Olympics, prompting the International Olympic Committee to start appointing judges from a wide variety of countries instead of only the host country.

After the dramatic Olympic battle between Pietri and Hayes, public interest is such that a match race is organized by professional promoters in November 1908 at Madison Square Garden. Pietri wins the race by 75 yards. A second match race is held on March 15, 1909, and again Pietri wins. Both Pietri and Hayes turn professional after the Olympics and achieve great fame.

Hayes is a trainer for the U.S. team for the 1912 Summer Olympics. He later teaches physical education and is a food broker. Hayes dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey.

The Shore Athletic Club of New Jersey (Shore AC) holds the Johnny Hayes collection as lifetime trustees. Included in the collection are numerous trophies, as well as the 1908 Olympic gold medal for the marathon. This represents the first Olympic gold medal to be won at the modern marathon distance of 26 miles, 385 yards.

Hayes is a guest on the television show I’ve Got a Secret as one of five former Olympic champions, which airs on October 13, 1954.

In 2002, three statues honoring Olympic champions with links to Nenagh, Matt McGrath, Johnny Hayes and Bob Tisdall, are unveiled in front of the Nenagh Courthouse.


by Leave a comment

Death of Liam Ó Briain, Irish Language Expert & Political Activist

Liam Ó Briain, Irish language expert and political activist, dies on August 12, 1974, in Cabinteely, County Dublin.

Christened as William O’Brien, Ó Briain is born at 10 Church Street, North Wall, Dublin, on September 16, 1888, the seventh child of Arthur O’Brien, clerk, and Mary O’Brien (née Christie), who is from County Meath. He 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).

During the 1916 Easter Rising, Ó Briain sees action with the Irish Citizen Army. He comes into conflict with his commander, Michael Mallin, as he wants to pursue a strategy without the Dublin brigade being “cooped up in the city.” However, Mallin overrules him and insists they should focus on taking Dublin Castle. He spends two months in Wandsworth Prison in London and six months in Frongoch internment camp in Wales before being released to discover that he has been fired from his job. However, he quickly obtains a professorship in Romance languages at University College Galway (UCG).

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.


by Leave a comment

Death of Political Economist John Elliott Cairnes

John Elliott Cairnes, Irish-born political economist, dies at the age of 51 at Blackheath, London, England, on July 8, 1875. He has been described as the “last of the classical economists.”

Cairnes is born on December 26, 1823, at Castlebellingham, County Louth, the son of William Elliott Cairnes (1787–1863) of Stameen, near Drogheda, and Marianne Woolsey, whose mother is the sister of Sir William Bellingham, 1st Baronet of Castlebellingham. William decides upon a business career, against the wishes of his mother, Catherine Moore of Moore Hall, Killinchy, and becomes a partner in the Woolsey Brewery at Castlebellingham. In 1825, he starts on his own account in Drogheda, making the Drogheda Brewery an unqualified success. He is remembered for his great business capacity and for the deep interest he takes in charity.

After leaving school, Cairnes spends some years in the counting house of his father at Drogheda. His tastes, however, lay altogether in the direction of study, and he is permitted to enter Trinity College Dublin, where he takes the degree of BA in 1848, and six years later that of MA. After passing through the curriculum of Arts, he engages in the study of Law and is called to the Irish bar. But he lacks a desire to pursue the legal profession, and over some ensuing years, he devotes himself to writing in various publications about social and economic questions and treatises that relate to Ireland. He focuses mostly on political economy, which he studies thoroughly.

While residing in Dublin, Cairnes makes the acquaintance of the Archbishop of Dublin Richard Whately, who conceives a very high respect for Cairnes’ character and abilities. In 1856, a vacancy occurs in the chair of political economy at Dublin, founded by Whately, and Cairnes receives the appointment. In accordance with the regulations of the foundation, the lectures of his first year’s course are published. The book appears in 1857 with the title Character and Logical Method of Political Economy. It follows up on and expands John Stuart Mill‘s treatment in the Essays on some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy and forms an admirable introduction to the study of economics as a science. In it the author’s peculiar powers of thought and expression are displayed to the best advantage. Logical exactness, precision of language, and firm grasp of the true nature of economic facts, are the qualities characteristic of this as of all his other works. If the book had done nothing more, it would still have conferred inestimable benefit on political economists by its clear exposition of the true nature and meaning of the ambiguous term law. To the view of the province and method of political economy expounded in this early work the author always remains true, and several of his later essays, such as those on Political Economy and Land, Political Economy and Laissez-Faire, are but reiterations of the same doctrine. His next contribution to economical science is a series of articles on the gold question, published partly in Fraser’s Magazine, in which the probable consequences of the increased supply of gold attendant on the Australian and Californian gold discoveries are analysed with great skill and ability. And a critical article on Michel Chevalier‘s work, On the Probable Fall in the Value of Gold, appears in the Edinburgh Review for July 1860.

In 1861, Cairnes is appointed to the professorship of jurisprudence and political economy in Queens College Galway, and in the following year he publishes his admirable work The Slave Power, one of the finest specimens of applied economic philosophy. The inherent disadvantages of the employment of slave labour are exposed with great fullness and ability, and the conclusions arrived at have taken their place among the recognised doctrines of political economy. The opinions expressed by Cairnes as to the probable issue of American Civil War are largely verified by the actual course of events, and the appearance of the book has a marked influence on the attitude taken by serious political thinkers in England towards the Confederate States of America.

During the remainder of his residence at Galway, Cairnes publishes nothing beyond some fragments and pamphlets, mainly upon Irish questions. The most valuable of these papers are the series devoted to the consideration of university education. His health, at no time very good, is still further weakened in 1865 by a fall from his horse. He is ever afterwards incapacitated from active exertion and is constantly liable to have his work interfered with by attacks of illness.

In 1866, Cairnes is appointed professor of political economy in University College, London. He is compelled to spend the session 1868–1869 in Italy, but on his return continues to lecture until 1872. During his last session he conducts a mixed class, ladies being admitted to his lectures. His health soon renders it impossible for him to discharge his public duties. He resigns his post in 1872 and retires with the honorary title of professor emeritus of political economy. In 1873 his own university confers on him the degree of LL.D.

Cairnes dies at the age of 51 at Blackheath, London, England, on July 8, 1875.


by Leave a comment

Death of Paolo Tullio, Writer & Award-Winning Chef

Paolo Luigi Mario Tullio, one of Ireland’s best-known chefs and food critics, dies in Dublin on June 5, 2015, following an illness. He is a writer and a Michelin star-winning head chef of the former restaurant Armstrong’s Barn in Annamoe, County Wicklow.

Tullio comes to Ireland in 1968 to study English, arts and philosophy at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he obtains a Master of Arts degree. After his study he holds several jobs, working as a clinical psychologist in St. Brendan’s Hospital, an interpreter and as a cattle-agent.

In 1977, Tullio takes over Armstrong’s Barn, serving food in a traditional Irish style. The restaurant closes in 1988. He does not sell the building when he closes the restaurant, instead he changes it into a recording studio. It is not a big hit so he holds several other jobs to pay the bills such as acting as a voice-over artist for commercials. After the demise of the studio, he renovates the building and turns it into a house.

Tullio sells “Annaglen,” the dwelling house attached to Armstrong’s Barn, and moves into Armstrong’s Barn itself. Before selling off Armstrong’s Barn in 2003, he builds a smaller house in a field close by.

Tullio receives several culinary awards for his cooking. In 1978, Armstrong’s Barn is awarded one Michelin star. The Michelin Guide awards the restaurant the “Red M,” indicating “good food at a reasonable price,” in 1980 and 1981.

He marries watercolour artist Susan Morley in 1975 after they meet each other at Trinity College Dublin. They have two children, but separate in 2004.

Tullio becomes a familiar face on television and even movies, acting as a guest critic on the popular RTÉ series The Restaurant. He writes restaurant reviews for the Irish Independent up until late 2014.

As an author, he pens North of Naples, South of Rome (1994), a book about where he is from in Italy and Mushroom Man (1998). He is also a frequent guest on Newstalk radio with Seán Moncrieff.

Tullio’s press manager, Noel Kelly, speaks of his passing: “The world is missing an incredible chef and culinary expert. He was one of life’s true gentlemen, a word overused but not in this case as Paolo was a gentleman to the core.”