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Death of Charles Donnelly, Poet & Republican Political Activist

Charles Patrick Donnelly, Irish poet, republican and left-wing political activist, is killed on February 27, 1937, fighting on the republican side during the Spanish Civil War.

Donnelly is born in Killybrackey, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, on July 10, 1914, into a family of cattle breeders. His father, Joseph Donnelly, sells his farm in 1917 and the family moves to Dundalk and opens a greengrocer‘s shop. Joseph Donnelly becomes quite prosperous, running his shop, dealing cattle and buying and selling property in the Dundalk area. In addition to Charles, the Donnellys have five other sons and two daughters. His mother, Rose, dies in 1927, when he is 13 years old.

Donnelly receives his early education in the Christian Brothers school in Dundalk. When he is fourteen in 1928, the family moves again, this time to Dublin, where his father purchases a house on Mountjoy Square in the north inner city. He enrolls in O’Connell School on North Frederick Street but is expelled after only a few weeks. He spends the next few months wandering the streets of Dublin during school time before his father discovers what had happened. Also at this time, he meets and is befriended by radical political activists from the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Communist Party of Ireland and the left-Republican group Saor Éire.

Donnelly’s father and aunts get him an apprenticeship with a carpenter, but he gives this up after a year to enroll in University College Dublin (UCD) in 1931, where he studies Logic, English, History and the Irish language. In university he begins writing poetry and prose for student publications but fails his first-year examinations. At this time, he also becomes deeply involved in radical left-wing and republican politics. He drops out of university in 1934, having failed his first-year exams three times and joins the radical group, the Republican Congress. There he befriends veteran republicans Frank Ryan and George Gilmore. He also becomes involved in a romantic relationship with another republican activist, Cora Hughes, Éamon de Valera‘s goddaughter and later partner of George Gilmore. In July 1934, he is arrested and imprisoned for two weeks for his role in picketing a Dublin bakery with other Congress members. After this, his father expells him from the family home and he spends a period sleeping in parks around Dublin.

The Republican Congress splits at its first annual meeting in September 1934, but the 20-year-old Donnelly is elected to the National Executive of the truncated organisation. Thereafter, he writes for the Congress newspaper on political and social questions. In January 1935, he is again arrested for assaulting a Garda at a Congress demonstration and is imprisoned for a month. In February 1935, he leaves Ireland for London. In the British capital he forms the first Republican Congress branch in London and becomes its first chairman. He finds employment variously as a dishwasher in pubs and cafes and as a reporter with an international news agency. While in London he remains a regular contributor to the Republican Congress newspaper and various left-wing publications. Together with two other poets, Leslie Daiken and Ewart Milne, he is one of the founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front, the London journal of the Republican Congress. Daiken admits that many of the Irish Front editions are written almost entirely by Donnelly.

Eoin McNamee recalls Donnelly as “a frail looking Dublin man with a Tyrone background…he was something of an intellectual and clearly the theorist of the Irish Republican Congress in London at that time. He was well versed in Marxism, wrote for the Congress and Communist press, and frequently appeared on left-wing public platforms.”

In July 1936, on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Donnelly urges the Republican Congress to send fighters to the International Brigades. He himself returns to Dublin with the intention of organising such a force. By the end of 1936, he has gone again to London and joins the Brigades. He reaches Spain on January 7, 1937, and at Albacete, meets up with an Irish contingent, led by Frank Ryan, known as the Connolly Column, who had come to Spain to fight on the Republican side. He and his comrades are attached to the American Lincoln Battalion. On February 15, after receiving only rudimentary military training, the Lincoln Battalion is thrown into the Battle of Jarama, near Madrid. Donnelly reaches the front on February 23, where he is promoted to the rank of field commander. On February 27, his unit is sent on a frontal assault on the Nationalist positions on a hill named Pingarrón. The object of the attack is to take the enemy trenches and ultimately to drive them across the Jarama River. He and his unit are pinned down by machine gun fire all day. In the evening, the Nationalists launch a counterattack.

A Canadian veteran recalls, “We ran for cover, Charlie Donnelly, the commander of an Irish company is crouched behind an olive tree. He has picked up a bunch of olives from the ground and is squeezing them. I hear him say something quietly between a lull in machine gun fire: Even the olives are bleeding.” The line later becomes famous.

A few minutes later, as his unit retreats, Donnelly is caught in a burst of gunfire. He is struck three times, in the right arm, the right side and the head. He collapses and dies instantly. His body lay on the battlefield until it is recovered by fellow Irish Brigadier Peter O’Connor on March 10. He is buried at Jarama in an unmarked grave with several of his comrades.

Written by Donnelly’s brother Joseph, a collection of his work, Charlie Donnelly: the Life and Poems, is published in 1987 by Dedalus Press. On the eve of the 71st anniversary of his death, February 26, 2008, he is commemorated with the unveiling of a plaque at his alma mater, UCD, attended by 150 people. The commemoration, organised jointly by a group of UCD students and the Donnelly family, is hosted by the School of English and also includes a lecture by Gerald Dawe on Donnelly’s life and poetry. In April 2008, the UCD branch of the Labour Party is renamed the Charlie Donnelly Branch in his honour.

Donnelly’s friend Blanaid Salkeld commemorates him in her poem “Casualties,” writing “That Charlie Donnelly small and frail/ And flushed with youth was rendered pale/ But not with fear, in what queer squalor/ Was smashed up his so-ordered valour.” A 1976 documentary about the Civil War by Cathal O’Shannon is entitled Even the Olives are Bleeding.

Donnelly is survived by a brother, Joseph, who manages to get many of his poems published in 1987; only five or six are published during his lifetime. Discussing his work, Colm Tóibín says it “mixed an Audenesque exactitude with a youthful romanticism… his poem “The Tolerance of Crows” belongs in any anthology of modern poetry.” In 1992, Donnelly has work included in Dedalus Irish Poets: An Anthology from Dedalus Press.

In 1992 New Island Books publishes Even the Olives Are Bleeding: The Life and Times of Charles Donnelly by Joseph O’Connor. The book is launched by future Irish President Michael D. Higgins.

Donnelly is commemorated in the Christy Moore song Viva La Quinta Brigada.


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Death of Valerie Place, Nurse & Overseas Aid Worker

Valerie Place, Irish nurse and overseas aid worker, is killed on February 22, 1993, while serving in Somalia. She is the second western aid worker to be killed there during the conflict and famine in the early 1990s.

Place is born at 20 St. Brendan’s Crescent, Walkinstown, Dublin, on March 24, 1969. She is the third child of Patrick Place, coachbuilder, and his wife Margaret (née Byrne). She has three brothers and two sisters. She attends St. Paul’s secondary school, Greenhills, Dublin, and is trained as a nurse at St. James’s Hospital, Dublin, from 1987 to 1990. She works for a period with Caring and Sharing Association (CASA).

Place goes to Somalia in September 1992 as a volunteer worker on a two-year contract with Concern Worldwide, Ireland’s largest aid and humanitarian agency. Concern has been part of the international emergency response in Somalia since May 1992. She is one of seventy Irish aid workers based in seventeen locations across Somalia. She is the supervisor of a feeding station for 2,500 children and an adjoining school in Mogadishu. The aid workers work with local guards, and later the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) of 30,000 troops to secure the areas for the distribution of humanitarian relief. The task force struggles to protect the aid convoys from attacks from armed groups.

Place is traveling in a party, which includes Rev. Aengus Finucane, on February 22, 1993, to attend the opening of a school in Wanlewein for 1,200 when the party is ambushed. She is fatally wounded when her car, the last in the convoy, is ambushed at Afgooye. She is airlifted to a military hospital in Mogadishu by a United States Air Force helicopter but dies within minutes of her arrival there. Her funeral at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Greenhills, Dublin, is attended by 2,000 people, including Irish President Mary Robinson, who had met Place during her visit to Somalia in October 1992.

At the time of her death, Place is the second western aid worker killed in Somalia, after the death of Sean Devereux in January 1993. Her death causes demands that the task force do more to protect aid workers and to disarm the Somali factions, as well as prompting fresh criticism of the United Nations mandate in its failure to support military intervention with political initiatives. As the situation worsens, American troops withdraw in March 1994, and the United Nations disengages in March 1995.

The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs founds the Valerie Place commemorative scholarship in March 1993, which brings Somali teachers and nurses to train in Ireland. In June 1997, St. James’s Hospital school of nursing unveils a portrait and a classroom dedicated to her memory. There is also a mural to Place in Mogadishu (pictured above).


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Death of Christopher Nolan, Irish Poet & Author

Christopher Nolan, Irish poet and author, dies of asphyxiation in Dublin on February 20, 2009.

Nolan is born to parents Joseph and Bernadette Nolan in Mullingar, County Westmeath on September 6, 1965. Due to asphyxiation at birth, he is born with permanent impairment of his nerve-signaling system, a condition now labelled dystonia. Because of these complications, he is born with cerebral palsy and can only move his head and eyes. Due to the severity of the cerebral palsy, he uses a wheelchair. In an interview, his father, Joseph, explains how, at the age of 10, he is placed on medication that “relaxed him so he could use a pointer attached to his head to type.” To write, he uses a special computer and keyboard. In order to help him type, his mother holds his head in her cupped hands while he painstakingly picks out each word, letter by letter, with a pointer attached to his forehead.

Nolan communicates with others by moving his eyes, using a signal system. When he is young, his father tells him stories and reads passages from James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and D. H. Lawrence to keep his mind stimulated. His mother strings up letters of the alphabet in the kitchen, where she keeps up a stream of conversation. His sister, Yvonne, sings songs and acts out skits. His mother states that “he wrote extensively since the age of 11 and went on to write many poems, short stories and two plays, many of which were published.” Many of the writings are compiled for his first publication, the chapbook Dam-Burst of Dreams.

Upon becoming a teenager, Nolan receives his education from the Central Remedial Clinic School, Mount Temple Comprehensive School and at Trinity College, Dublin. His first book is published at the age of fifteen. He is also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in the UK, the medal of excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers, and a Person of the Year award in Ireland. He writes an account of his childhood, Under the Eye of the Clock, published by St. Martin’s Press, which wins him the UK’s Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1987 at the age of 21. He soon drops out of Trinity College to write a novel entitled The Banyan Tree (1999).

Nolan spends more than a decade writing The Banyan Tree. According to The New York Times, the book is a multigenerational story of a dairy-farming family in Nolan’s native county of Westmeath. The story is seen through the eyes of the aging mother. It is inspired, he tells Publishers Weekly, by the image of “an old woman holding up her skirts as she made ready to jump a rut in a field.” A review of the book is done in The New York Times by Meghan O’Rourke. She reviews the book and relates it to James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; in the story the protagonist leaves his mother in Ireland while he moves on to travel the world. Nolan, however, gives the reader a version of the mother’s story. “And so, in the end, one suspects that he wants Minnie’s good-natured, commonplace ways to stand as their own achievement, reminding us that life continues in the places left behind.”

At the age of 43, while working on a new novel, Nolan dies in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin at 2:30 a.m. on February 20, 2009. His death is the result of a piece of salmon becoming trapped in his airway. Nothing from the novel he was working on has been released since his death.

Upon hearing the news of Nolan’s death, President of Ireland Mary McAleese says, “Christopher Nolan was a gifted writer who attained deserved success and acclaim throughout the world for his work, his achievements all the more remarkable given his daily battle with cerebral palsy.”


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Birth of Monica Barnes, Fine Gael Politician

Monica Barnes (née MacDermott), Fine Gael politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 1982 to 1992 and 1997 to 2002, is born at Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, on February 12, 1936. She is a Senator for the Labour Panel from February 1982 to November 1982 and a Member of the Council of State from 1991 to 1995.

Barnes is educated at the Louis Convent, Carrickmacross, County Monaghan. After the birth of her first child, she later says she suffers from postpartum depression, a condition largely unrecognised in Ireland at the time. She is told by her doctor to “pull yourself together,” and subsequently she sets up a support group for women suffering from the condition and begins to take an interest in equality and women’s rights. She is a co-founder of the Council for the Status of Women (now the National Women’s Council of Ireland) in 1973, a move which prompts her to fully commit herself to politics.

Barnes unsuccessfully contests the 1981 Irish general election in the Dún Laoghaire constituency, and after a further defeat at the February 1982 Irish general election she is elected to the 16th Seanad as a Senator for the Labour Panel.

Barnes is first elected to Dáil Éireann at the November 1982 Irish general election and retains her seat until losing it at the 1992 Irish general election. She is re-elected at the 1997 Irish general election and retires at the 2002 Irish general election.

Barnes also unsuccessfully contests the European Parliament election for the Leinster constituency in 1979 and 1994.

Barnes dies at the age of 82 on May 2, 2018, at Glenageary, Dublin.

Following Barnes’s death, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says in a statement, “Monica Barnes was an inspiration for so many people in the Fine Gael party and beyond. She was particularly inspirational for women and younger members of our party. Monica gave great service to Fine Gael and to the people of Dún Laoghaire, having been encouraged to enter the political arena by [former Taoiseach] Garret FitzGerald, as a result of her work in the women’s movement.”

President Michael D. Higgins says, “I am very saddened to learn of the death of former TD and Senator, Monica Barnes, who provided exceptional public service to the people of Dún Laoghaire and Ireland over many years. Monica was a proud feminist and championed women’s rights throughout her parliamentary career and beyond. She was a pioneer in the struggle for a space for women’s rights to be discussed.”

Barnes is credited as a feminist and an advocate of women’s rights. She is seen as having made a critical intervention that led to the passing of the Health (Family Planning) (Amendment) Bill 1985, which gives Irish adults the right to purchase non-medical contraceptives without having to get a doctor’s prescription, which passed the Dáil by a narrow margin.


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Albert Reynolds Succeeds Charles Haughey as Taoiseach

Albert Reynolds, Fianna Fáil politician and businessman, succeeds Charles Haughey as Taoiseach on February 11, 1992, following Haughey’s retirement as leader of Fianna Fáil.

Reynolds is born in Rooskey, County Roscommon on November 3, 1932. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1977 to 2002, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1979 to 1981, Minister for Transport from 1980 to 1981, Minister for Industry and Energy from March 1982 to December 1982, Minister for Industry and Commerce from 1987 to 1988, Minister for Finance from 1988 to 1991, Leader of Fianna Fáil from 1992 to 1994 and as Taoiseach from 1992 to 1994.

Reynolds is educated at Summerhill College in Sligo, County Sligo and works for a state transport company before succeeding at a variety of entrepreneurial ventures, including promoting dances and owning ballrooms, a pet-food factory, and newspapers. In 1974 he is elected to the Longford County Council as a member of Fianna Fáil. He enters Dáil Éireann, lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, in 1977 as a member representing the Longford-Westmeath parliamentary constituency and becomes Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in Haughey’s Fianna Fáil government (1979–81). He is subsequently Minister of Industry and Commerce (1987–88) and Minister for Finance (1988–91) in Haughey’s third and fourth governments. He breaks with Haughey in December 1991. On January 30, 1992, Haughey retires as leader of Fianna Fáil at a parliamentary party meeting. Reynolds easily defeats his rivals Mary O’Rourke and Michael Woods in the party leadership election and succeeds Haughey as Taoiseach on February 11, 1992.

The Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats coalition that Reynolds inherits breaks up in November 1992 but, after the general election later that month, he surprises many observers by forming a new coalition government with the Labour Party in January 1993. He plays a significant part in bringing about a ceasefire between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and unionist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland in 1994, but he is less effective in maintaining his governing coalition. When this government founders in November 1994, he resigns as Taoiseach and as leader of Fianna Fáil, though he remains acting prime minister until a new government is formed the following month. He unsuccessfully seeks his party’s nomination as a candidate for the presidency of Ireland in 1997. He retires from public life in 2002.

In December 2013, it is revealed by his son that Reynolds is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Reynolds dies on August 21, 2014. The last politician to visit him is former British Prime Minister John Major. His funeral is held at Church of the Sacred Heart, in Donnybrook on August 25, 2014. Attendees include President Michael D. Higgins, Taoiseach Enda Kenny, former British Prime Minister John Major, former Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader and Nobel Prize winner John Hume, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers, former President of Ireland Mary McAleese, former Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and the Lord Mayor of Dublin Christy Burke. An unexpected visitor from overseas is the frail but vigorous Jean Kennedy Smith, former United States Ambassador to Ireland, who is the last surviving sibling of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Reynolds is buried at Shanganagh Cemetery with full military honours.


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The 23rd Government of Ireland is Formed

The 23rd Government of Ireland is formed on January 12, 1993, following the 1992 Irish general election to the 27th Dáil held on November 25, 1992. It is a coalition of Fianna Fáil, with leader Albert Reynolds as Taoiseach, and the Labour Party, with leader Dick Spring as Tánaiste. It is the first time that these two parties are in government together. On each previous occasion Labour was in government, it was a junior coalition party with Fine Gael. The government lasts for 675 days from its appointment until its resignation on November 17, 1994, and continues to carry out its duties for an additional 28 days until the appointment of its successor, giving a total of 703 days.

The 27th Dáil lasts until 1997, but the first government falls in 1994 following the breakdown of relations between the two parties. It is succeeded in December 1994 by the 24th Government, a coalition of Fine Gael, with leader John Bruton as Taoiseach, Labour, with Dick Spring serving again as Tánaiste, and Democratic Left, led by Proinsias De Rossa. This is the only time a government with a new coalition of parties is formed within a single Dáil term.

The 27th Dáil first meets on December 14, 1992. In the debate on the nomination of Taoiseach, Fianna Fáil leader and outgoing Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, Fine Gael leader John Bruton and Labour Party leader Dick Spring are each proposed. None of these proposals are passed by the Dáil: Reynolds receives 68 votes in favour with 94 against, Bruton receives 55 in favour to 107 against, and Spring receives 39 in favour to 122 against. Reynolds resigns as Taoiseach and continues in a caretaker capacity.

On January 12, 1993, Albert Reynolds and John Bruton are again proposed for the nomination of the Dáil for the position of Taoiseach, and on this occasion, the nomination of Reynolds is successful by 102 votes to 60. Reynolds is then appointed as Taoiseach by President Mary Robinson.

After his appointment as Taoiseach by the president, Reynolds proposes the members of the government, and they are approved by the Dáil. They are appointed by the president on the same day.

Harry Whelehan SC is appointed by the president as Attorney General on the nomination of the Taoiseach. He resigns as Attorney General on November 11, 1994, on his nomination as President of the High Court, a position he serves in for only two days. Following Whelehan’s resignation, Eoghan Fitzsimons SC is appointed by the president as Attorney General on the nomination of the Taoiseach.

The Government on the nomination of the Taoiseach appoints Noel Dempsey to the post of Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach with special responsibility as Government Chief Whip. The Government on the nomination of the Taoiseach appoints the other Ministers of State as well.

After the sum of European Structural and Investment Funds allocated to Ireland is lower than previously announced, a motion of no confidence is proposed in the government. This is then debated on October 28, 1993, as a motion of confidence in the government, proposed by the Taoiseach. It is approved by a vote of 94 to 55.

In November 1994, following the resignation of Attorney General Harry Whelehan, it emerges that he had failed to expedite the extradition of Fr. Brendan Smyth to Northern Ireland for sexual offences committed against children. The appointment of Whelehan to the court despite this leads to a motion of no confidence in the government. Reynolds responds on November 16 by proposing a motion reaffirming the confidence of the Dáil in the Taoiseach and the Government.

On the following day, November 17, Labour withdraws from the government and Reynolds resigns as Taoiseach. The motion of confidence in the government is withdrawn. Reynolds and the Fianna Fáil ministers continue to carry on their duties until their successors are appointed on December 15.


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The First Irish Expedition Reaches the South Pole

The first Irish expedition arrives at the South Pole on January 8, 2008. Team leader Pat Falvey (50), Dr. Clare O’Leary (35), Jonathan Bradshaw (36) and Shaun Menzies (42) arrive at their destination after covering the final 23 kilometres.

The expedition has been trekking since November through some of the harshest known conditions, battling icy winds, sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms. The squad, who make up the Beyond Endurance expedition, travel approximately 1,100 km (680 miles), with each member hauling a sledge weighing over 150 kg (330 lbs.).

“We’re so happy to be here, we can’t believe it,” says Falvey. “We’re ecstatic but totally exhausted, shattered, and worn away. It’s now -32.5 degrees Celsius (-26.5 F) and I’m chattering from the cold but so excited. All of the meridians and all of the longitudes passed through the point where my hand was. By walking around the South Pole, I could go back in time to yesterday or go a day ahead to tomorrow.”

A spokesman for the team confirms their arrival at their destination at around 7:30 p.m. Irish time.

Deputy team leader, Dr. O’Leary, is the first Irish woman to make it to the South Pole. She is also the first Irish woman to climb Mount Everest and the first to complete the Seven Summits Challenge. A specialist in gastroenterology and general internal medicine, she is based in Tipperary University Hospital, Clonmel, where she works as a consultant.

Menzies and Bradshaw are relatively inexperienced high-altitude trekkers who are invited to join the expedition.

“This a very historic occasion. It is very exciting. It shows that Ireland can play its part in polar exploration,” spokesman Niall Foley says from the team’s base in Killarney, County Kerry. The team is in good spirits and resting at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, he adds. “They’re well and being taken care of by the researchers there. They’re having a cup of cocoa I think.”

The team flies from the South Pole back to Ireland, via Chile, arriving on January 16. The Beyond Endurance Expedition begins in 2006 with an ambitious adventure by a group of “ordinary” people aged from 21 to 61 traveling across South Georgia, landing on Elephant Island, a mountainous ice-covered island off the Antarctic coast.

The purpose of the expedition is to give budding explorers the chance to see Antarctica. From this group, Menzies, a Dublin IT consultant, is selected for rigorous training in Greenland for the South Pole expedition. There they meet up with Bradshaw, a budding adventurer who has explored remote parts of the Himalayas, Africa and New Zealand, who is on a separate trek.

The four adventurers retrace the steps of some of the best-known Irish Antarctic explorers, including Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean. In 2004, County Kerry native Mike Barry becomes the first Irish man to trek to the South Pole as part of an international expedition. However, Falvey’s squad has now become the first Irish-led team to perform the feat.

President Mary McAleese says the achievement, which coincides with the one hundredth anniversary of Ernest Shackleton’s first attempt on the South Pole, is “particularly poignant.” “I congratulate Pat Falvey, Clare O’Leary, Jonathon Bradshaw and Shaun Menzies on their remarkable accomplishment, and send my very best wishes to their many supporters in this mammoth undertaking.”

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern says he has been following the team’s expedition since the team set out. “Total admiration is perhaps the best way to sum up my thoughts on what you have achieved,” Ahern says. “You are continuing a proud tradition of Irish adventurers, and you should be very proud of your wonderful achievement.”

(From: “Irish team reaches South Pole” by Paul Anderson, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, January 9, 2008)


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Birth of Edna O’Brien, Novelist, Playwright & Poet

Edna O’Brien, novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer, is born in Tuamgraney, County Clare on December 15, 1930. Philip Roth describes her as “the most gifted woman now writing in English,” while the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson cites her as “one of the great creative writers of her generation.” Her works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men, and to society as a whole.

O’Brien is the youngest child of “a strict, religious family.” From 1941 to 1946 she is educated by the Sisters of Mercy, a circumstance that contributes to a “suffocating” childhood. “I rebelled against the coercive and stifling religion into which I was born and bred. It was very frightening and all pervasive. I’m glad it has gone.” She is fond of a nun as she deeply misses her mum and tries to identify the nun with her mother.

In 1950, O’Brien is awarded a licence as a pharmacist. In Ireland, she reads such writers as Leo Tolstoy, William Makepeace Thackeray, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1954, she marries, against her parents’ wishes, the Irish writer Ernest Gébler and the couple moves to London. They have two sons, but the marriage is dissolved in 1964. Gébler dies in 1998.

In London, O’Brien purchases Introducing James Joyce, with an introduction written by T. S. Eliot. When she learns that James Joyce‘s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is autobiographical, it makes her realise where she might turn, should she decide to write herself. In London she starts work as a reader for Hutchinson, where on the basis of her reports she is commissioned, for £50, to write a novel. Her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following World War II.

This novel is the first part of a trilogy of novels which includes The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). Shortly after their publication, these books are banned and, in some cases burned, in her native country due to their frank portrayals of the sex lives of their characters. Her novel A Pagan Place (1970) is about her repressive childhood. Her parents are vehemently against all things related to literature and her mother strongly disapproves of her daughter’s career as a writer.

O’Brien is a panel member for the first edition of the BBC‘s Question Time in 1979. In 2017, she becomes the sole surviving member.

In 1980, she writes a play, Virginia, about Virginia Woolf, and it is staged originally in June 1980 at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada and subsequently in the West End of London at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Maggie Smith and directed by Robin Phillips. It is staged at The Public Theater in New York City in 1985.

Other works include a biography of James Joyce, published in 1999, and one of the poet Lord Byron, Byron in Love (2009). House of Splendid Isolation (1994), her novel about a terrorist who goes on the run, marks a new phase in her writing career. Down by the River (1996) concerns an under-age rape victim who seeks an abortion in England, the “Miss X case.” In the Forest (2002) deals with the real-life case of Brendan O’Donnell, who abducts and murders a woman, her three-year-old son, and a priest, in rural Ireland.

O’Brien now lives in London. She receives the Irish PEN Award in 2001. Saints and Sinners wins the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the world’s richest prize for a short story collection. Faber and Faber publishes her memoir, Country Girl, in 2012. In 2015, she is bestowed Saoi by Aosdána.


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Birth of Mick Lally, Stage, Film & Television Actor

Michael “Mick” Lally, Irish stage, film and television actor, is born in the Gaeltacht village of Toormakeady, County Mayo, on November 10, 1945. He departs from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s. Though best known in Ireland for his role as Miley Byrne in the television soap Glenroe, his stage career spans several decades, and he is involved in feature films such as Alexander and the Academy Award-nominated The Secret of Kells. Many reports cite him as one of Ireland’s finest and most recognisable actors.

Lally is the eldest of a family of seven children. He goes to the local national school in Toormakeady and then to St. Mary’s College, Galway. After studying at University College Galway, he teaches history and the Irish language for six years in Archbishop McHale College in Tuam from 1969 to 1975 but quits teaching to pursue his career as a stage actor.

Lally begins his acting career with Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, Ireland’s national Irish language theatre, and is a founding member of the Druid Theatre Company. He receives an Irish Times/ESB Theatre Award Nomination for Best Actor for his role in Druid’s production of The Dead School. He also becomes a member of the Field Day Theatre Company, and stars in the company’s 1980 premiere of Brian Friel‘s play Translations. He first plays at the Abbey Theatre in 1977 in a production of Wild Oats and goes on to perform in many other Abbey productions.

In 1982, Lally stars in the TV series The Ballroom of Romance alongside Brenda Fricker. From 1983 he plays the role of Miley Byrne in the RTÉ soap Glenroe, reprising the character that he played earlier in Bracken in 1978. In 1979, he wins a Jacob’s Award for his performance as Miley in Bracken. He also has some musical success when “The By-road to Glenroe” goes to the top of the Irish charts in 1990. He is also involved in voice-over work, including a noted advertisement for Kilmeaden Cheese during the 1990s. Other TV appearances include roles in Tales of Kinvarna, The Year of the French and Ballykissangel.

In 1994, Lally plays the character Hugh in The Secret of Roan Inish, and in 1995 portrays Dan Hogan in the film adaptation of Maeve Binchy‘s Circle of Friends. Other film roles included Poitín, Our Boys, The Outcasts, A Man of No Importance and others. In later years, he provides the voice of Brother Aidan in the Academy Award-nominated The Secret of Kells, an animated film directed by Tomm Moore.

Lally appears in several TV advertisements encouraging elderly people to “release the equity tied up in their homes” during the Celtic Tiger.

Mick Lally dies in Dublin on the morning of August 31, 2010, after a short stay in the hospital. The cause of death is reported as heart failure, arising from an underlying emphysema condition. His funeral takes place in Dublin on September 2, 2010. The Irish Examiner comments that the “nation has lost one of its favourite uncles.” Personalities from TV, film, theatre and politics attend, while President of Ireland Mary McAleese sends a letter and Lally receives a standing ovation at the end.


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The State Funeral of Garda Tony Golden

On October 15, 2015, President Michael D. Higgins and Taoiseach Enda Kenny join thousands of mourners and gardaí in Blackrock, County Louth, for the State funeral of Garda Tony Golden. Garda Golden, a father of three, is shot dead on the evening of October 11 as he goes to the aid of Siobhan Phillips, who is the victim of domestic violence.

Among the thousands paying their respects are 4,000 serving and retired gardaí, over 2,000 in uniform. Garda Golden is remembered as a happy man, proud to serve, a role model for the community – and by his brother Patrick as a “big gentle giant.”

In his homily, chief celebrant parish priest Father Pádraig Keenan tells the congregation that the killing of Garda Golden was “cold-blooded murder.” He reminds the mourners that Garda Golden is the 88th garda to die in the line of duty. He says, “It is 88 members too many. He like all the others is mourned by the entire nation.”

“His murder brings to mind once again all the families and communities that have been affected on our island.”

Fr. Keenan says, “Garda Tony’s death once again reflects how north Louth and the Cooley Peninsula have been affected by the tragic history of the Troubles on the island of Ireland, and especially the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe, three years ago at Lordship Credit Union in Bellurgan.”

He says that too many hearts have been broken, and too many lives shattered. There is no place for violence in our society, violence is wrong, always wrong. He refers to Garda Golden as one of life’s gentlemen.

Fr. Keenan begins the funeral mass by saying that Garda Golden quietly let “his light shine in so many ways through his life in a very humble way. Amidst our sadness may we be thankful for the charisma of his beautiful but too short life.”

The stillness of the water across from the churchyard in Dundalk Bay mirrors the silence and sadness that has unfolded on everyone since the weekend, he tells the congregation.

“Tony was so proud to serve the community of Omeath,” he says. “As one person from Omeath put it to me in recent days, he was ‘our garda’, and to a person amongst his family and colleagues, all are immensely proud of Garda Tony and his selfless nature. Proud of everything he lived for, worked for and stood for. Tony Golden was a much-loved role model in our community.”

Symbols including a family photograph are taken to the altar in memory of Garda Golden. A club jersey and hurley from the Stephenites GAA club in his native Ballina, County Mayo, represent his roots and love of sport. A television remote control, a soft drink, a bar of chocolate and packet of crisps were offered to recall his cherished “time out.”

Garda Golden’s final journey begins at the home in the village of Blackrock he shared with his wife Nicola and their three young children, Lucy, Alex and Andrew. The funeral cortège is led by the Garda Commissioner, while thousands of gardaí escort their colleague into his parish church, St. Oliver Plunkett’s, for the funeral mass at noon.

Other dignitaries attending Garda Golden’s funeral are Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton, as well as political representatives from all parties.

Fr. Keenan is joined on the altar by the vicar general of the Armagh diocese Dean Colum Curry, who represents the Primate of All Ireland, Bishop Eamon Martin. As well as the chaplains to the Garda and the Defence Forces, Bishop John Fleming and Father Gerard O Hora travel to the funeral from Golden’s home county of Mayo.

Screens are erected in the grounds and the village to relay the service to those outside.

Businesses shut down along the route as a mark of respect during the funeral. Roads around the village are sealed off for several hours. Garda Golden is laid to rest at St. Paul’s Cemetery Heynestown.

Golden is killed as he is bringing Siobhan Phillips to her home to retrieve her personal possessions. Phillips is also shot in the incident and is in a critical condition in hospital with her family at her bedside at the time of Garda Golden’s funeral.

President of the Garda Representative Association, Dermot O’Brien, says members of the gardaí from all corners of Ireland traveled to County Louth to pay their respects to their colleague. He says they are grief-stricken and numb.

O’Brien says everyone will reflect in their own way and that the realisation has struck that Garda Golden was murdered doing “a bread-and-butter type call.”

“They are going to ask themselves, those that attended the same type of call on Sunday that it could have been them. These are very similar calls that a lot of members did on Sunday, and they will sit back and reflect on what happened to Tony as they responded to a similar call.”

O’Brien says he had spoken to Garda Golden’s unit in the days leading to the funeral and, while they are coping, they are not well. “They are angry, grieving and disillusioned because today they have to bury a second friend, a murdered friend, a second murdered colleague.”

Father Michael Cusack also speaks of the pain and anger expressed by members of the garda force he met following Garda Golden’s death. Speaking on RTÉ‘s Today with Sean O’Rourke, Fr. Cusack says it is a very difficult day and week for gardaí. He says a lot of care needs to be offered to the members of the force and that there needs to be appropriate follow-up care given.

(From: “Garda Tony Golden ‘mourned by entire nation’,” RTÉ News, http://www.rte.ie, October 15, 2015)