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 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.
Dickey is the son of Edward O’Rorke Dickey. He later marries Eunice Emmeline Howard and they have one son, Daniel. He is educated at Wellington College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He studies painting under Harold Gilman at the Westminster School of Art.
Dickey becomes the first curator of The Minories in Colchester, Essex, a post he holds for five years from 1957 to 1962.
Dickey is a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1920, and exhibits with them from 1920 to 1924. He is at his most active in the early 1920s and virtually all his engravings date from this period.
In 1922 Dickey contributes a wood engraving to Contemporary English Woodcuts, an anthology of wood engravings produced by Thomas Balston, a director at Gerald Duckworth and Company and an enthusiast for the new style of wood engravings. Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, writes about him in his introduction to the book Mr. Hagreen and Mr. Dickey are among the engravers who rely very much upon the effective use of white lines and spaces. This is a limited edition of 550 copies, as is the only book that he illustrates with wood engravings, Workers by the Irish writer Richard Rowley, published by Balston at Duckworth in 1923.
O’Grady’s father is the Reverend Thomas O’Grady, the scholarly Church of Ireland minister of Castletown Berehaven, County Cork, and his mother Susanna Doe (or Dowe). The Glebe, his childhood home, lies a mile west of Castletownbere near a famine mass grave and ruined Roman Catholic chapel. He is a cousin of Standish Hayes O’Grady, another noted figure in Celtic literature, and of Standish O’Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore. After a rather severe education at Tipperary Grammar School, he follows his father to Trinity College, Dublin, where he wins several prize medals and distinguishes himself in several sports.
O’Grady is a paradox for his times, proud of his Gaelic heritage, he is also a member of the Church of Ireland, a champion of aristocratic virtues (particularly decrying bourgeois values and the uprooting cosmopolitanism of modernity) and at one point advocates a revitalised Irish people taking over the British Empire and renaming it the Anglo-Irish Empire.
O’Grady proves too unconventional of mind to settle into a career in the church, and takes a job as a schoolmaster at Midleton College, then in a period of expansion. He also qualifies as a barrister, while earning much of his living by writing for the Irish newspapers. Reading Sylvester O’Halloran’s A general history of Ireland (1778) sparks an interest in early Irish history. After an initial lukewarm response to his writing on the legendary past in History of Ireland: The Heroic Period (1878) and Early Bardic Literature of Ireland (1879), he realises that the public wants romance, and so follows the example of James Macpherson in recasting Irish legends in literary form, producing historical novels including Finn and his Companions (1891), The Coming of Cuculain (1894), The Chain of Gold (1895), Ulrick the Ready (1896) and The Flight of the Eagle (1897), and The Departure of Dermot (1913).
O’Grady also studies Irish history of the Elizabethan period, presenting in his edition of Sir Thomas Stafford‘s Pacata Hibernia (1896) the view that the Irish people had made the Tudors into kings of Ireland to overthrow their unpopular landlords, the Irish chieftains. His The Story of Ireland (1894) is not well received, as it sheds too positive a light on the rule of Oliver Cromwell for the taste of many Irish readers. He is also active in social and political campaigns in connection with such issues as unemployment and taxation.
Until 1898, O’Grady works as a journalist for the Daily Express of Dublin, but in that year, finding Dublin journalism in decline, he moves to Kilkenny to become editor of the Kilkenny Moderator, which is printed at 28 High Street. It is here he becomes involved with Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart, and Captain Otway Cuffe. He engages in the revival of the local woolen and woodworking industries. In 1900 he founds the All-Ireland Review and returns to Dublin to manage it until it ceases publication in 1908. He also contributes to James Larkins‘ The Irish Worker paper.
O’Grady’s influence crosses the divide of the Anglo-Irish and Irish-Ireland traditions in literature. His influence is explicitly stated by the Abbey Theatre set with Lady Gregory, W. B. Yeats and George William Russell attributing their interest in the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic tradition in part to him. This leads to him being known as the “Father of the Celtic Revival.” Some of the figures associated with the political party Sinn Féin, including its founder Arthur Griffith, have positive things to say about his efforts in helping to retrieve from the past the Gaelic heroic outlook.
O’Grady marries Margaret Allen Fisher, daughter of William Allen Fisher, and they have three sons. Advised to move away from Ireland for the sake of his health, they leave Ireland in 1918. After living in the north of France and Northamptonshire, they move to the Isle of Wight. He is working on a final exposition of his ideas when he dies suddenly on May 18, 1928.
Salkeld works in tempera and oil, as well as etching and wood engraving. In 1921 he travels to Germany to study under Ewald Dulberg at the Kassell Kunstschule. He attends the Union of Progressive International Artists in Düsseldorf in May 1922, and is exhibited at the Internationale Kunstausstellung. Upon his return to Dublin in 1924, he holds his first solo exhibition in the Society of Dublin Painters gallery. He becomes a member of the Dublin Painters in 1927. With Francis Stuart, he co-edits the first two issues of To-morrow in 1924. His studio is in a converted labourer’s cottage at Glencree, County Wicklow. He also exhibits with the New Irish Salon and the Radical Painters’ Group.
Salkeld wins the 1926 Royal Dublin Society‘s Taylor scholarship, and has his first exhibited work with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1929. He lives in Berlin for a year in 1932. He exhibits in Daniel Egan’s Gallery in Dublin in 1935. He has a wide circle of literary friends, including Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien. In O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, the character of Michael Byrne is designed for Salkeld, reflecting his debilitating alcoholism. He also teaches at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, teaching artists such as Reginald Gray.
From 1937 to 1946 Salkeld runs a private press called Gayfield Press. This is co-founded with his mother, and operates from a garden shed at their home, 43 Morehampton Road. The press is a small Adana wooden hand press. He illustrates her 1938 The Engine Left Running, as well as Ewart Milne‘s Forty North Fifty West (1938) and Liam O’Flaherty‘s Red Barbara and Other Stories (1928). In 1951, he loans the press to Liam and Josephine Miller to found the Dolmen Press.
Salkeld’s most famous public work is his 1942 three-part mural in Davy Byrne’s pub. He is a co-founder of the Irish National Ballet School in the 1940s in his capacity as a pianist. In 1946 he is appointed an associate member of the RHA. In 1953 his play Berlin Dusk is staged at 37 Theatre Club, Dublin. During the 1950s he is a broadcaster with Radio Éireann as well as a director of cultural events for An Tóstal. He dies on May 11, 1969, in St. Laurence’s Hospital, Dublin.
Sackville then enters the army. He is elected Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1751, serving in this post for two years. He marries Diana Sambrooke, daughter of John Sambrooke and Elizabeth Forester, on September 3, 1754. They have two sons and three daughters.
In 1747 and 1748, Sackville again joins the Duke of Cumberland. He becomes colonel of the 7th Irish horse and serves in Holland. There is a break in his military career between wars (1750-1755) when he serves as first secretary to his father.
In June 1758 Sackville is second in command of a British expedition led by Marlborough which attempts an amphibious Raid on St. Malo. While it fails to take the town as instructed, the raid is still considered to be largely successful as a diversion. Follow-up raids are considered against Le Havre, Caen and other targets in Normandy, but no further landings are attempted, and the force returns home. Later in 1758 they join the allied forces of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in Germany. When Marlborough dies, Sackville becomes Commander of the British contingent of the army, although still under the overall command of the Duke of Brunswick.
In the Battle of Minden on August 1, 1759, British and Hanoverian infantry of the centre make an advance on the French cavalry and artillery in that sector. As the disrupted French begin to fall back on Minden, Ferdinand calls for a British cavalry charge to complete the victory, but Sackville withholds permission for their advance repeatedly. For this action, he is cashiered and sent home. John Manners, Marquess of Granby, replaces him as commander of the British contingent for the remainder of the war.
Sackville refuses to accept responsibility for refusing to obey orders. Back in England, he demands a court-martial and makes it a large enough issue that he obtains his demand in 1760. The court finds him guilty, and the verdict not only upholds his discharge, but rules that he is “…unfit to serve His Majesty in any military Capacity whatever.” The king has his name struck from the Privy Council rolls.
Sackville is a Member of Parliament at intervals from 1733. He serves terms in both the Dublin and the Westminster bodies, sometimes simultaneously, but does not take sides in political wrangles. Between 1750 and 1755 he serves as Chief Secretary for Ireland, during his father’s second term as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
On November 10, 1775, Sackville is appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies replacing William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth in the post. He becomes a target for the opposition and is eventually persuaded to step down in exchange for a peerage, and in February 1782 he is made Baron Bolebrooke, in the County of Sussex, and Viscount Sackville, of Drayton in the County of Northamptonshire. His political career ends with the fall of the North government in March 1782.
The controversy over Sackville’s handling of the war continues. Some members are opposed to his taking a seat in the House of Lords, an almost unprecedented incident. In spite of this he is admitted to the Lords, where he is staunchly defended by Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, and his declining health soon makes the issue irrelevant. He retires to his country home at Stoneland Lodge and dies there on August 26, 1785. He maintains to his dying day that he had not been a coward at Minden. Following his death, a defence of his reputation, The character of the late Viscount Sackville, is written by Richard Cumberland.
(Pictured: “George Germain,” 1766 painting by George Romney (1734-1802))
seamus dubhghaill 