Power is born to Henry Power, a watchmaker, and Mary (née Atkins), an embroideress. He has one older brother, and one younger sister. He attends a Christian Brothersnational school in North Brunswick Street. As a child he plays in local clay brickyards and sculpts busts of his friends. After finishing his primary school education, he trains with a firm of sculptors run by Edward Smyth. In 1884, he enrolls as an evening pupil at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA), later attending as a full-time student from 1906 to 1911. During his time at the DMSA he is taught and strongly influenced by John Hughes, Oliver Sheppard and William Orpen. He wins a number of prizes during his time at the DMSA, including medals, three scholarships, book prizes, and the national gold medal for the best modeling of a nude figure, in Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands in 1911.
Power marries Agnes Kelly in 1903. The couple has ten children, four daughters and six sons, including May and James who also become sculptors.
Power establishes his own stone-carving business in 1912 from his new home at 18 Geraldine Street, Phibsborough, Dublin. As the firm grows, it moves to premises nearby at 15 Berkeley Street from 1930. He executes a wide range of works, including monuments and architectural features in bronze, marble, and stone. Among his notable works are the figure of “Science” designed by Sheppard from the façade of the new Royal College of Science for Ireland (later Government Buildings) on Merrion Street, Dublin, carved motifs and sphinxes for the Gresham Hotel, O’Connell Street, and four statues on the dome of Christ the King church, Carndonagh, County Donegal.
Power is considered the leading Irish sculptor of the 1920s and 1930s. He is a nationalist and promotes the use of Irish materials such as limestone from Durrow and Connemara marble. He is noted for his academic realist style. He exhibits regularly with the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1906, becoming an associate member in 1911, and a full member in 1919. Among those he models sculptures for are James Stephens (1913), W. B. Yeats (1918), and Lord Dunsany (1920). Among his patrons are Oliver St. John Gogarty, and through Gogarty he is commissioned to model a number of prominent Irish nationalists. Gogarty asks him to carve a portrait of Terence MacSwiney in 1920, while MacSwiney is on hunger strike in HM Prison Brixton, London. Smuggled into the prison to do a thumbnail sketch, Power then carves a portrait in the form of a life mask.
On Gogarty’s recommendation, Power is commissioned by the Irish Free State government to create portraits of a number of leading politicians including Arthur Griffith (1922), Michael Collins (1936), and Austin Stack (1939). He is also privately commissioned to execute a portrait of Éamon de Valera in 1944. Among his monumental works are sculptures of Tom Kettle (1919) at St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Christ the King in Gort, County Galway, (1933), Pádraic Ó Conaire (1935) at Eyre Square, Galway, and W. B. Yeats (1939) at Sandymount Green, Dublin. He is one of the artists invited to submit designs for the new coinage of the Irish Free State in 1928.
Power dies in Dublin on July 10, 1945, following complications from a double hernia. His is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, 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)
She is born Helen Mary Sybil Staunton on December 21, 1892, in Herbert Street, Dublin, to Dorothy Eleanor Redington and Peter Maurice Staunton. Her father is a barrister who later becomes a solicitor. Though he moves to Aram Lodge, Castlerea, County Roscommon where he practises law, she grows up in Dublin and Howth, going to secondary school in Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham, and later at Loreto Convent, St. Stephen’s Green. She goes on to study German and singing in Koblenz. She marries Albert le Brocquy on December 30, 1915, and settles in Dublin. They have three children, Louis, Noel and Melanie.
Le Brocquy becomes involved in various women’s movements, helping to organise the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in July 1926. She is involved with the League of Nations Association as well as helps to establish Irish Civil Rights, PEN International, and Amnesty International in Ireland. She is an active member of Old Dublin Society and for a time president of the Irish Women Writers’ Society. She acts with the Drama League appearing as Helen Staunton. She writes plays and dramatic pieces which are staged by the Drama League at the Abbey Theatre and broadcast by Radio Éireann.
Her writings and work are often historically investigative, finding W. B. Yeats’s birthplace and arguing that Jonathan Swift had a child by Vanessa. She is involved in the Swift Tercentenary celebrations with Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh. As a result of her work, including with Trinity College Dublin Library and representing the Library on the Royal Irish Academy’s National Committee for Anglo-Irish Literature, she is co-opted to the Cultural Committee of the Department of External Affairs and appointed a Trustee of the National Library of Ireland. She is an excellent organiser and fundraiser and is heavily responsible for securing money for the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 1970. She also initiates the literary prize, the Book of the Year award.
Le Brocquy becomes ill with an undiagnosed illness and dies on September 4, 1973, at the Meath Hospital, Dublin.
William George Digges La Touche, diplomat and banker, is born in Dublin on August 28, 1747, the third son of James Digges La Touche and his second wife, Martha (née Thwaites) of St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. He is admitted to St. Paul’s School, London, on August 30, 1757. In 1764, he accompanies “Mr. Moore,” the British resident at Basra, to the Persian Gulf. La Touche acts as personal secretary to Moore for a number of years before succeeding him as British resident. Basra is then one of the key trading places for the East India Company, and both the British and Dutch governments have official representation there. La Touche obtains the respect of both Arabs and Europeans. At the siege of Basra in 1775, he gives refuge to prominent citizens of the city and their families. When Az Zubayr is captured by the Persians in the same year, La Touche allegedly ransoms all of the inhabitants at his own expense to save them from slavery.
While serving in the east for twenty years, La Touche collects illuminated Persian manuscripts, some of which come from the royal library at Shiraz. A number of these volumes are presented to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1786 and 1787. He returns to London around 1784 and marries Grace, daughter of John Puget, a wealthy London-based banker of Huguenot origins.
By 1786, he settles in Dublin and becomes a partner of the La Touche bank. In the years 1786, 1788, 1790, 1792, 1794, and 1796, he sits on the board of the Bank of Ireland. He is an active opponent of the Acts of Union and chairs a large meeting on the subject in 1798. Like other members of his family, he gives large sums to charity and is a governor of Dr. Steevens’ Hospital and the Lying-in Hospital, Dublin, and a director of the Grand Canal Company. He lives on St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and at Sans Souci, a country estate that he purchases at Booterstown, Dublin.
La Touche dies in Dublin on November 6, 1803, leaving four sons. A small pastel portrait of him, and another of his wife Grace, probably by Hugh Douglas Hamilton is in the Bank of Ireland collection. Lye is known to have had his portrait painted in oils by Gilbert Stuart.
(From: “La Touche, William George Digges,” by Daniel Beaumont, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Ffrench-Mullen is born on December 30, 1880, in Malta, where her father, St. Lawrence ffrench-Mullen, a Royal Navy surgeon, is stationed. She has two brothers, St. Lawrence Patrick Joseph (1890–1891) and Douglas (1893–1943).
Ffrench-Mullen’s interest in politics starts young. Her father is a committed Parnellite and their Dundrum home is a campaign headquarters. She is a radical feminist and republican during her life. Like many others of the time, she regards it as a woman’s right to vote. She joins the suffrage movement, and meets women with a similar worldview and values. The women’s suffrage movement is included in the Movements of Extremists reports of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Ffrench-Mullen goes on to join Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a radical nationalist women’s group founded by Maud Gonne in 1900. The organisation develops into Cumann na mBan in 1913. Suffragist values are central to Cumann na mBan’s goal of standing side-by-side with men in the fight for the Irish Republic. Some members see this as women regaining the rights that had belonged to them in pre-invasion Gaelic civilisation. She is on the socialist wing of the moment, holding to the ideals of universal social equality of the syndicalist James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army (ICA).
During the 1916 Easter Rising, ffrench-Mullen serves as a lieutenant in the Irish Citizen Army. She sees action with the St. Stephen’s Green and Royal College of Surgeons garrison. In St. Stephen’s Green she is in command of the 15 Citizen Army women who set up a medical station and field kitchen. While occupying St. Stephen’s Green, she and her comrades come under sustained heavy fire from the Shelbourne Hotel and buildings on the north side of the Green. After the surrender of the College of Surgeons garrison, ffrench-Mullen is one of the 77 women who had fought in the Rising who are imprisoned, among them her life partner Kathleen Lynn. While in captivity ffrench Mullen is moved three times, spending time in Richmond Barracks, Kilmainham Gaol and Mountjoy Prison. She is released on June 5, 1916.
Ffrench-Mullen meets Kathleen Lynn through Inghinidhe na h-Éireann. In 1915, she moves into Lynn’s home in Belgrave Road, Rathmines, where they live together for thirty years, until ffrench-Mullen’s death in 1944.
Ffrench-Mullen records in her prison diary in 1916 that she can face prison without fear once Lynn (whom she refers to as “the Doctor”) and she are together. Katherine Lynch of the Women’s Studies Centre at University College Dublin (UCD) describes them as partners, calling them part of a network of lesbians living in Dublin—which includes Helena Molony, Louie Bennett and Elizabeth O’Farrell—who meet through the suffrage movement and later become involved with the national and trade union movement. These women are featured, along with Eva Gore-Booth and others, in a 2023 TG4 documentary about “the radical queer women at the very heart of the Irish Revolution”: Croíthe Radacacha (Radical Hearts).
In 1919, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen and Kathleen Lynn establish Saint Ultan’s Children’s Hospital, also known as Teach Ultan, which is a female-run hospital for infants at 37 Charlemont Street, Dublin. The hospital focuses on children’s health and wellbeing, an area that is perceived at the time as women’s concern. In the aftermath of World War I many health problems have arisen including a rise in venereal diseases such as syphilis, carried from soldiers returning home from war. Many of Ireland’s infants of the time suffer from congenital syphilis (inherited disease from mother at birth), and this is a driving factor in the opening of St Ultan’s hospital. Tuberculosis is endemic in Ireland during its time as a British colony. Against steadfast opposition by the State and the Catholic Church, Lynn and ffrench-Mullen establish a vaccination project, vaccinating thousands of impoverished children who would have died of tuberculosis without their vaccines. Their success leads to the foundation of Ireland’s BCG vaccine programme, which has vaccinated all babies since the 1950s.
Ffrench-Mullen dies at the age of 63 in a Dublin nursing home on May 26, 1944. She is interred with her parents as well as her younger brothers (whom she outlives) in the ffrench-Mullen family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Her funeral takes place on the same day as the 1944 Irish general election.
Goddard Henry Orpen, lawyer and historian, is born in Dublin on May 8, 1852, the fourth son of the five sons and three daughters of John Herbert Orpen, barrister, of Dublin, and Ellen Susanna Gertrude Richards, youngest daughter of Rev. John Richards of Grange, County Wexford.
On August 18, 1880, in St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin, Orpen marries Adela Elizabeth Richards, the daughter and heiress of Edward Moore Richards, engineer and the landlord of Grange, County Wexford. Adela is his first cousin once removed, her great-grandfather and his grandfather being the Rev. John Richards. They live for two decades after their marriage at Bedford Park, Chiswick, London, with their daughter Lilian Iris (b. 1883) and son Edward Richards (b. 1884). Soon after their marriage, he begins taking lessons in the Irish language in line with his passionate interest in Irish historical and antiquarian research, which gradually supplants his languishing legal career. He translates and edits a French rhymed chronicle about the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland, entitled The Song of Dermot and the Earl (1892), the title which he gives it and by which it has since generally been known in English. He also translates Émile de Laveleye‘s Le Socialisme Contemporain (The Socialism of Today, 1884), to which he adds a chapter on English socialism.
After Adela’s father transfers ownership of his estate to her in 1900, now renamed Monksgrange, the Orpens reluctantly leave London to live there, enabling Orpen to devote his time fully to research and writing. His major work is Ireland Under the Normans (Vols. 1–2, 1911; Vols. 3–4, 1920), which argue that the Norman invasion benefited the Irish, leading to advances in agriculture and trade.
Both before and after his death Orpen’s work is the subject of hostile criticism from those with more nationalist inclinations, starting with Eoin MacNeill in a series of lectures delivered in 1917. Despite his own eminence as a scholar of medieval Ireland, MacNeill resorts to unfair polemic in his attack on Orpen, caricaturing his account of pre-Norman Irish society and disregarding the more subtle nuances in his views of the English Irish relationship. In this he has been followed by generations of other scholars and readers, overlooking the depth of Orpen’s research, the perceptiveness of his interpretations, and the extent of his fieldwork on the archaeological evidence from the medieval period. Orpen takes the study of Anglo-Norman Ireland out of the realm of vague antiquarianism and professionalises it. His standards are not those of “the gentleman-amateur” as might be expected from his background, but of the twentieth century “scientific” historian, and he is therefore now widely regarded as the founder of the professional study of Anglo-Norman Ireland. Perhaps the most striking evidence of the continued validity and relevance of his work is that his four-volume Ireland Under the Normans has been twice republished in more recent years, in 1968 by Oxford University Press and in 2002 in a one-volume version by Four Courts Press.
Orpen is elected a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI), serving as president in 1930–32), and the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) (1911), and contributes historical articles to their journals as well as to periodicals such as The American Historical Review (1913–14) and The Cambridge Medieval History (1932, 1936). A lecture to the New Ross Literary Society is later published as New Ross in the Thirteenth Century (1911). He also contributes a major chapter on the medieval church to the second volume of Walter Alison Phillips‘s History of the Church of Ireland (1934). Though his literary work is recognised by an honorary doctorate from TCD in 1921, he feels increasingly isolated as Monksgrange is targeted during the Irish Civil War and raided on several occasions. On religion he lists himself as an agnostic in the 1911 census.
Orpen’s final work is The Orpen Family, a personal family history printed for private circulation in 1930. A portrait of Orpen (above) by Seán O’Sullivan hangs in Monksgrange.
Orpen dies on May 15, 1932, at Monksgrange, and is buried alongside his wife Adela in St. Anne’s Churchyard, Killanne, County Wexford. His very extensive papers, including correspondence, manuscripts and drawings, as well as records and papers of the Orpen family, are held at Monksgrange. Included there is a very large collection of his photographs, a skill in which he notably distinguishes himself. A small collection of his correspondence is also held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI).
(From: “Orpen, Goddard Henry” by Philip Bull, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised March 2021 | Pictured: Portrait of Goddard Henry Orpen by Seán O’Sullivan)
Thomas “Tom” Michael Kettle, parliamentarian, writer, and soldier, is born on February 9, 1880, in Artane, Dublin, the seventh among twelve children of Andrew Kettle, farmer and agrarian activist, and his wife, Margaret (née McCourt). His father’s record in nationalist politics and land agitation, including imprisonment in 1881, is a valuable political pedigree.
The family is prosperous. Kettle and his brothers attend Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School in Richmond Street, Dublin, before being sent to board at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare. Popular, fiery, and something of a prankster, he soon proves to be an exceptional scholar and debater, as well as a keen athlete, cyclist, and cricketer. He enrolls in 1897 at University College Dublin (UCD), his contemporaries including Patrick Pearse, Oliver St. John Gogarty and James Joyce. He thrives in student politics, where his rhetorical genius soon wins him many admirers and is recognised in his election as auditor of the college’s Literary and Historical Society. He also co-founds the Cui Bono Club, a discussion group for recent graduates. In 1899, he distributes pro-Boer propaganda and anti-recruitment leaflets, arguing that the British Empire is based on theft, while becoming active in protests against the Irish Literary Theatre‘s staging of The Countess Cathleen by W. B. Yeats. In 1900, however, he is prevented from taking his BA examinations due to a mysterious “nervous condition” – very likely a nervous breakdown. Occasional references in his private diaries and notes suggest that he is prone to bouts of depression throughout his life. He spends the following two years touring in Europe, including a year at the University of Innsbruck, practising his French and German, before taking a BA in mental and moral science of the Royal University of Ireland (RUI) in 1902. He continues to edit the college newspaper, remaining active in student politics. He participates, for example, in protests against the RUI’s ceremonial playing of “God Save the King” at graduations as well as its senate’s apparent support for government policy, threatening on one occasion to burn publicly his degree certificate.
In 1903, Kettle is admitted to the Honourable Society of King’s Inns to read law and is called to the bar two years later. Nonetheless, he soon decides on a career in political journalism. Like his father, he is a keen supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and in 1904 is a co-founder of the resonantly titled Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League. Here he comes to the notice of John Redmond, who offers him the prospect of a parliamentary seat, but he chooses instead to put his energies into editing the avowedly pro-Irish-party paper, The Nationist, in which he promises that a home rule administration will uphold women’s rights, industrial self-sufficiency, and Gaelic League control of Irish education. He hopes that the paper will offer a corrective alternative to The Leader, run by D. P. Moran, but in 1905 he is compelled to resign the editorship due to an article thought to be anti-clerical. In July 1906, he is persuaded to stand in a by-election in East Tyrone, which he wins with a margin of only eighteen votes. As one of the youngest and most talented men in an ageing party, he is already tipped as a potential future leader. His oratory is immediately put to good use by the party in a propaganda and fund-raising tour of the United States, as well as on the floor of the House of Commons, where his oratorical skills earn him a fearsome reputation. He firmly advocates higher education for Catholics and the improvement of the Irish economy, while developing a close alliance with Joseph Devlin and the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH).
Kettle meanwhile makes good use of his connections to ArchbishopWilliam Walsh, the UCD Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Catholic Graduates and Undergraduates Association, as well as political support, to secure the professorship of national economics. T. P. Gill, of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, exceptionally acts as his referee. His detractors regard the appointment as a political sinecure and Kettle as a somewhat dilettantish “professor of all things,” who frequently neglects his academic duties. However, he takes a keen interest in imperial and continental European economies. He does publish on fiscal policy, even if always taking a pragmatic interest in wider questions, greatly impressing a young Kevin O’Higgins, later Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. He has little time for what he regards as the abstract educational and economic idealism of D. P. Moran. He acknowledges that the “Hungarian policy” of Arthur Griffith has contributed significantly to a necessary debate about the economy, but argues that the Irish are “realists,” that Ireland’s natural resources ought to be scientifically measured, and that the imperial connection is crucial to Ireland’s future development. The achievement of home rule would, he asserts, encourage a healthy self-reliance as opposed to naive belief in self-sufficiency.
Kettle is encouraged by the heightened atmosphere of the constitutional crisis over the 1909 David Lloyd Georgebudget, culminating in the removal of the House of Lords veto, which has been an obstacle to home rule. He is also a supporter of women’s enfranchisement, while stressing that the suffragist cause should not delay or deflect attention from the struggle for home rule. He holds his East Tyrone seat in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election but decides not to stand at the general election in December of the same year. Returning to an essentially journalistic career, he publishes a collection of essays outlining his constitutional nationalist position. He opposes suffragette attacks on private property, but, in contrast, supports the Dublin strikers in 1913, highlighting their harsh working and living conditions. He tries without success to broker an agreement between employers and workers though a peace committee he has formed, on which his colleagues include Joseph Plunkett and Thomas P. Dillon. His efforts are not assisted, however, by an inebriated appearance at a crucial meeting. Indeed, by this time his alcoholic excesses are widely known, forcing him to attend a private hospital in Kent.
In spite of deteriorating health, Kettle becomes deeply involved in the Irish Volunteers formed in November 1913 to oppose the Ulster Volunteers. His appraisal of Ulster unionism is somewhat short-sighted, dismissing it as being “not a party [but] merely an appetite,” and calling for the police to stand aside and allow the nationalists to deal with unionists, whose leaders should be shot, hanged, or imprisoned. These attitudes are mixed in with a developing liberal brand of imperialism based on dominion federalism and devolution, warmly welcoming a pro-home-rule speech by Winston Churchill with a Saint Patrick’s Day toast to “a national day and an empire day.” Nevertheless, he uses his extensive language skills and wide experience of Europe to procure arms for the Irish Volunteers. He is in Belgium when the Germans invade, and the arms he procured are confiscated by the Belgian authorities, to whom they were donated by Redmond on the outbreak of war.
On his return to Dublin, Kettle follows Redmond’s exhortation to support the war effort. He is refused an immediate commission on health grounds, but is eventually granted the rank of lieutenant, with responsibilities for recruitment in Ireland and England. He makes further enemies among the advanced nationalists of Sinn Féin, taunting the party for its posturing and cowardly refusal to confront Ulster unionists, the British Army, and German invaders alike. Coming from a staunchly Parnellite tradition, he is no clericalist, yet he is a devout if liberal Catholic, imbued by his Jesuit schooling with a cosmopolitan admiration for European civilisation which has been reinforced by his European travels, and in particular has been outraged by the German destruction of the ancient university library of Louvain. Despite a youthful flirtation with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, he comes to regard “Prussianism” as the deadliest enemy of European civilisation and the culture of the Ten Commandments, there not being “room on earth for the two.” He increasingly believes that the German threat is so great that Irish farmers’ sons ought to be conscripted to defend Ireland. He also believes that considerable good might come out of the conflict, exhorting voters in East Galway to support what is practically a future home rule prime minister, cabinet, and Irish army corps. He unsuccessfully seeks nomination as nationalist candidate in the 1914 East Galway by-election in December. Nevertheless, he continues to work tirelessly on behalf of the party, publishing reviews, translations, and treatises widely in such journals as the Freeman’s Journal, The Fortnightly Review, and the Irish Ecclesiastical Record.
As a recruiting officer based far from the fighting, Kettle is stung by accusations of cowardice from advanced nationalists. He had tried repeatedly to secure a front-line position, but was rejected, effectively because of his alcoholism. He is appalled by trench conditions and the prolongation of the war, a disillusionment further encouraged by the Easter Rising, in which his brother-in-law, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, is murdered by a deranged Anglo-Irish officer, J. C. Bowen-Colthurst. He senses that opinion in Ireland is changing, anticipating that the Easter insurgents will “go down in history as heroes and martyrs,” while he will go down, if at all, as “a bloody British officer.” Nevertheless, he regards the cause of European civilisation as greater than that of Ireland, remaining as determined as ever to secure a combat role. Despite his own poor health and the continuing intensity of the Somme campaign, he insists on returning to his unit, the 9th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
Kettle’s writings demonstrate the mortal danger he is placing himself in, evident not least in his frequently quoted poem, “To my daughter, Betty, the gift of God,” as well as letters settling debts, apologising for old offences, and providing for his family – his wealth at death being less than £200. He has no death wish, wearing body armour frequently, but as Patrick Maume notes, “As with Pearse, there is some self-conscious collusion with the hoped-for cult.” He is killed on September 9, 1916, during the Irish assault on German positions at Ginchy.
Kettle marries Mary Sheehy, alumna of UCD, student activist, suffragist, daughter of nationalist MPDavid Sheehy, and sister-in-law of his friend Francis Sheehy Skeffington, on September 8, 1909. In 1913 the couple has a daughter, Elizabeth.
Kettle is commemorated by a bust in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and in the House of Commons war memorial in London. He is a man of great passions and proven courage. George William Russell put his sacrifice on a par with Thomas MacDonagh and the Easter insurgents:
“You proved by death as true as they, In mightier conflicts played your part, Equal your sacrifice may weigh, Dear Kettle, of the generous heart (quoted in Summerfield, The myriad minded man, 187).
(From: “Kettle, Thomas Michael (‘Tom’)” by Donal Lowry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Tom Kettle as a barrister when called to the Irish law bar in 1905)
When appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Lower Connello in the County of Limerick, in the Peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the Peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy in 1793 and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
As Lord Chancellor for Ireland, FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).
FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 personally but apparently recommends its acceptance in the House of Lords, being forced out of necessity when that Act had been recommended to the Irish Executive by the British Cabinet led by William Pitt the Younger. Pitt expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and allow Catholics to vote again and hold public offices. At the same time, FitzGibbon apparently denounces the policy this Act embodies, so it is probably safe to say that FitzGibbon’s own beliefs and principles conflict with his obligations as a member of the Irish executive of the time.
FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is apparently recalled, because of his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is likely what leads to his recall. Thus, if anyone is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother George Ponsonby — not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.
Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon apparently agree on one point – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon is a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.
In the end, FitzGibbon’s views wins out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority, or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom. He later claims that he has been duped by the way in which the Act is passed and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.
FitzGibbon’s role as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the 1798 rebellion is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the Sheares brothers on July 14, 1798.
In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. Fitzgibbon ss inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and in October 1798 he expressed his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he had been granted a trial and his belief that Tone should have been hanged as soon as he set foot on land.
FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”
FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might have been interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.
FitzGibbon dies at his home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in the churchyard at St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and there is a widespread story that a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.
(Pictured: “Portrait of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare,” painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1789)
Funded by public subscription, the arch is designed by John Howard Pentland and built by Henry Laverty and Sons. Thomas Drew consults on the design and construction.
The proportions of the structure are said to be modelled on the Arch of Titus in Rome. It is approximately 8.5 m (28 ft.) wide and 10 m (33 ft.) high. The internal dimensions of the arch are 5.6 m high and approximately 3.7 m wide (18 by 12 ft.). The main structure of the arch is granite, with the inscriptions carried out in limestone and a bronze adornment on the front of the arch.
The arch is commissioned to commemorate the four battalions (two regular and two militia) of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers that served in the Second Boer War. The names of 222 dead are inscribed on the underside of the arch.
The construction of the arch coincides with a time of political and social change in Ireland, and the colonial and imperial background to the dedication are anathema to a burgeoning nationalist movement – who label the structure “Traitor’s Gate.” Though damaged in a crossfire between the Irish Citizen Army and British forces during the 1916 Easter Rising, the arch remains “one of the few colonialist monuments in Dublin not blown up” in Ireland’s post-independence history.
Engraved on the western face of the monument is the Latin text, Fortissimis suis militibus hoc monumentum Eblana dedicavit MCMVII, “To its strongest soldiers, Dublin dedicates this monument, 1907.” (Eblana is a name that appears on Ptolemy‘s 2nd century AD map of Ireland, traditionally taken as a Latin name for Dublin, although it more likely refers to a site further north, around Loughshinny.) Six battlefields are inscribed on the arch:
Dunphy grows up in Drumcondra, Dublin, in what he describes as “a one-room tenement flat [with] no electricity, no hot water.” He attends Saint Patrick’s National School, Drumcondra. In 1958, he gets a one-year government scholarship to Sandymount High School but has to work as a messenger at the tweed clothing shop Kevin and Howlin.
A promising footballer, Dunphy leaves Dublin while still a teenager to join Manchester United as an apprentice. He does not break into the first team at United, and subsequently leaves to play for York City, Millwall, Charlton Athletic, Reading and Shamrock Rovers. It is at Millwall that he makes the most impact. He is considered an intelligent and skillful player in the side’s midfield. He is a member of “The Class of ’71,” the Millwall side that fails by just one point to gain promotion to the Football League First Division.
Dunphy accompanies Johnny Giles back to Ireland to join Shamrock Rovers in 1977. Giles wants to make the club Ireland’s first full-time professional club and hopes to make Rovers into a force in European football by developing talented young players at home who would otherwise go to clubs in England. Dunphy is originally intended to be in charge of youth development. However, despite an FAI Cup winners medal in 1978, his only medal in senior football, and two appearances in the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, he becomes disillusioned with the Irish game and drops out of football altogether to concentrate on a career in journalism.
Since the 1980s, Dunphy has written a number of books. His first and most widely praised book is Only a Game? The Diary of a Professional Footballer, which is an autobiographical account of his days playing for Millwall. Written in diary form, it records events from the dressing room of his 1973–74 season, which begins well for him at Millwall but subsequently ends in disillusionment: after being substituted in an October 27, 1973, home loss to eventual league winners Middlesbrough, he does not play another game all season, the club finishing mid-table.
In 1985, rock band U2 and manager Paul McGuinness commission Dunphy to write the story of their origins, formation, early years and the time leading up to their highly successful album The Joshua Tree. His book Unforgettable Fire – Past, Present, and Future – The Definitive Biography of U2 is published in 1988. It receives some favourable reviews, but critics close to the band speak of many inaccuracies. A verbal war erupts in the press during which he calls lead singer Bono a “pompous git.”
Dunphy also writes a biography of long-serving Manchester United manager Matt Busby and in 2002 ghost writes the autobiography of Republic of Ireland and Manchester United player Roy Keane.
Since the mid-1980s, Dunphy has regularly appeared as an analyst during football coverage on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). Since RTÉ acquired the rights to show English football, he has been a regular contributor to Premier Soccer Saturday. He also contributes to analysis of UEFA Champions League games and, in international football, RTÉ’s coverage of FIFA World Cups, UEFA European Football Championships and qualifying matches involving the Republic of Ireland national football team.
In 2001, Dunphy becomes the first male host of the quiz show The Weakest Link, which airs on TV3, for just one series. In 2003, he is hired again by TV3 to host their new Friday night chat show, entitled The Dunphy Show. Pitted head-to-head with RTÉ’s long-running flagship programme, The Late Late Show, Dunphy’s show loses what is a highly publicised “ratings war,” and is cancelled before its original run concludes.
Dunphy is the first presenter of a made-for-mobile television show on the 3 mobile network in Ireland. His rants and “Spoofer of the Week” are watched by thousands of 3 Mobile customers. The shows are awarded “Best Entertainment Show” at Ireland’s Digital Media Awards. He admits he never uses a mobile himself but enjoys filming for a mobile audience from his living room in Ranelagh.
In July 2018, Dunphy announces that he is leaving RTÉ after 40 years with the broadcaster, and that he intends to focus on his podcastThe Stand with Eamon Dunphy.
Dunphy has also has a prominent radio career with several stations, including Today FM, Newstalk and RTÉ Radio 1. He is the original host in 1997 of the popular current affairs show The Last Word on Today FM. In September 2004, he takes over The Breakfast Show slot on the Dublin radio station Newstalk 106 from David McWilliams. The show tries to court controversy and listeners in equal measure. He fails to attract the large listenership predicted, with only a few additional thousand tuning in. He announces in June 2006 his intention to leave Newstalk 106, citing an inability to sustain the demands of an early morning schedule. After his departure from Newstalk 106, he confirms he is suffering from a viral illness from which he later recovers.
In July 2006, RTÉ announces that Dunphy will present a new weekly programme as part of the new RTÉ Radio 1 autumn schedule.
Dunphy rejoins Newstalk but leaves again in 2011 “due to interference from management and a push to put a more positive spin on the news.” On his last show he accuses his boss, Denis O’Brien, of “hating journalism.” He quits after Sam Smyth is sacked from Today FM (also owned by O’Brien) and says management at Newstalk is trying to remove “dissenting voices” like Constantin Gurdgiev from the airwaves.
Dunphy is a daily Mass-goer until he is preparing for marriage to his first wife, Sandra from Salford, when he is 21. He is Catholic and she is Protestant. The priest instructing them for marriage disapproves strongly of the mixed couple, saying that he should not marry her because she is “not a proper person.” Dunphy’s observance is already weakening but he quits his daily Mass-going at this point. He and Sandra have two children, a boy and a girl, and he is now a grandfather. His first marriage ends, and he moves to Castletownshend in County Cork for two years in the early 1990s. He lives with another partner, Inge, before meeting his second wife, RTÉ commissioning editor Jane Gogan, in the Horseshoe Bar in Dublin in 1992. They marry at the Unitarian Church on St. Stephen’s Green on September 24, 2009.
In an interview with An Phoblacht, Dunphy, who had previously written highly critical articles on the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, states that he is now a Sinn Féin supporter and declares he had voted for them in the 2011 Irish general election. He describes their representatives as “incredibly hard-working and incredibly intelligent.”
Dunphy publishes his autobiography entitled The Rocky Road in October 2013.
Today, Dunphy generally resides at his home near Ranelagh in Dublin. He also owns a holiday home in Deauville, France.
(Pictured: Éamon Dunphy at the Sinn Féin Summer School, 2013)
seamus dubhghaill 