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Tag Archives: The Irish Times (newspaper)


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Birth of Kevin Myers, Journalist & Writer

Kevin Myers, English-born Irish journalist and writer, is born in Leicester, England on March 30, 1947. He has contributed to the Irish Independent, the Irish edition of The Sunday Times, and The Irish Times‘s column An Irishman’s Diary. He is known for his controversial views on a number of topics, including single mothers, aid for Africa, and the Holocaust.

Myers grows up in England. His father, an Irish GP, dies when he is 15 and away at Ratcliffe College, a Catholic boarding school. His father’s early death creates financial difficulties, though he manages to stay at the school with the help of both the school and the Local Education Authority (LEA). He moves to Ireland to go to university, and graduates from University College Dublin (UCD) in 1969.

Myers subsequently works as a journalist for Irish broadcaster RTÉ, and reports from Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles. He later works for three of Ireland’s major newspapers, The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Irish edition of The Sunday Times. In 2000, a collection of his An Irishman’s Diary columns is published, with a second volume following in 2007. He is also a presenter of the Challenging Times television quiz show on RTÉ during the 1990s.

In 2001, Myers publishes Banks of Green Willow, a novel, which is met with negative reviews. In 2006, he publishes Watching the Door, about his time as a journalist in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. The book receives positive reviews in The Times, The Guardian, and the New Statesman, while The Independent publishes a more mixed review that wonders whether there is “an element of hyperbole” in Myers’ account.

Myers is a regular contributor to radio programmes on News Talk 106, particularly Lunchtime with Eamon Keane and The Right Hook. He regularly appears on The Last Word on Today FM. He is also a member of the Film Classification Appeals Board, formerly known as the Censorship Board.

Myers is a fervent critic of physical-force Irish republicanism. In 2008, he writes a column condemning the anniversary commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising. He describes the Larne gun-running by Ulster Volunteers in 1914 as “high treason, done in collaboration with senior figures in the British army and the Conservative Party.” He has also written that it is a “myth” to say, when discussing Irish republicanism and Ulster loyalism, that “one side is as bad as the other.”

In 2005, Myers attracts considerable criticism for his column, An Irishman’s Diary, in which he refers to children of unmarried mothers as “bastards.” Former Minister of State Nuala Fennell describes the column as “particularly sad.” She says the word “bastard” is an example of pejorative language that is totally unacceptable. Myers issues an unconditional apology two days later. The Irish Times editor, Geraldine Kennedy, also apologises for having agreed to publish the article.

In July 2008, Myers writes an article arguing that providing aid to Africa only results in increasing its population, and its problems. This produces strong reactions, with the Immigrant Council of Ireland making an official complaint to the Garda Síochána alleging incitement to hatred. Hans Zomer of Dóchas, an association of NGOs, and another complainant, take a complaint to the Press Council on the grounds that it breaches four principles of the Council’s Code of Practice: accuracy, fairness and honesty, respect for rights, and incitement to hatred.

At the end of July 2017, Myers contributes an article entitled “Sorry, ladies – equal pay has to be earned” to the Irish edition of The Sunday Times about the BBC gender-pay-gap controversy. He further alleges that Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz are higher paid than other female presenters because they are Jewish. The editor of the Irish edition, Frank Fitzgibbon, issues a statement saying in part “This newspaper abhors anti-Semitism and did not intend to cause offence to Jewish people.” Martin Ivens, editor of The Sunday Times, says the article should not have been published. Ivens and Fitzgibbon apologise for publishing it. After complaints from readers and the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the article is removed from the website. The newspaper announces that Myers will not write for The Sunday Times again. Myers is defended by the chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, Maurice Cohen, who states, “Branding Kevin Myers as either an antisemite or a Holocaust denier is an absolute distortion of the facts.”

Myers is married to Rachel Nolan and lives in County Kildare. He is the brother-in-law of TV presenter, producer and UK Big Brother housemate Anna Nolan.


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Birth of Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Short Story Writer & Translator

Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Irish short story writer and translator, is born in Ireland on March 23, 1968. He wins the 2006 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and is shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He speaks six languages.

One of Ó Ceallaigh’s classmates in school is Sinéad O’Connor. He once tells an interviewer, “She told me she wanted to become famous and I tried to talk her out of it.”

Ó Ceallaigh graduates from University College Dublin (UCD) with a degree in philosophy. After receiving his degree, he travels the world, doing a variety of jobs, including waiter, newspaper editor, freelance journalist and volunteer for clinical trials. He moves to Bucharest, Romania, so that he can live cheaply and pursue his desire to write.

Ó Ceallaigh has spent much of his adult life in Eastern Europe, starting in Russia in the early 1990s. Since 1995 he has lived mostly in Bucharest, Romania. He has also lived for a while in the United States.

Ó Ceallaigh has published over 40 short stories, as well as essays and criticism. His work has appeared in Granta, The Irish Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2010, he edits Sharp Sticks, Driven Nails, an anthology of new short stories by twenty-two Irish and international writers, for The Stinging Fly Press. He translates Mihail Sebastian‘s autobiographical novel For Two Thousand Years. It tells the story of the author’s early years as a Jew in Romania during the 1920s. It is published in 2016.

Ó Ceallaigh has written an unpublished novel but reduces it to a long short story and believes “if you’ve got something to say and you can say it with less, that’s the way to go.”

The first story in Ó Ceallaigh’s third collection, Trouble, involves a security guard and the theft of sum of money from a gangster. He uses time he spent as a security guard in Dublin to form the basis of this fiction.

Ó Ceallaigh eschews the prevailing style of Irish short story writing in that his works are rarely set in Ireland, and instead are set in a variety of locations across the world, predominately in Romania. His stories generally feature solitary men, with women playing more incidental roles. He acknowledges being influenced in his writing style by Charles Bukowski, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Ivan Turgenev.

Ó Ceallaigh wins the Hennessy Award for his first published work in 1998. He wins the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award for his collection Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse in 2006. His second collection, The Pleasant Light of Day, is shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He is the first Irish writer to receive this honour.


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Death of Supreme Court Judge Adrian Hardiman

Adrian Hardiman, Irish judge who serves as a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ireland from 2000 to 2016, dies in Portobello, Dublin, on March 7, 2016. He writes a number of important judgments while serving on the Court. He also presides, as does each Supreme Court judge on a rotating basis, over the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Hardiman is born on May 21, 1951, in Coolock, Dublin. His father is a teacher and President of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI). He is educated at Belvedere College, Dublin, and University College Dublin, where he studies history, and the King’s Inns. He is president of the Student Representative Council at UCD and Auditor of the Literary and Historical Society (UCD) and wins The Irish Times National Debating Championship in 1973.

Hardiman is married to Judge Yvonne Murphy, from County Donegal, a judge of the Circuit Court between 1998 and 2012, who conducts important inquiries relating to sex abuse including the Murphy Report and the Cloyne Report. She serves as chair of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. They have three sons, Eoin, who is a barrister and has been a member of the Mountjoy Prison Visiting Committee, Hugh, who is a personal assistant to Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell, and Daniel, a doctor.

Hardiman joins Fianna Fáil while a student in University College Dublin and stands unsuccessfully for the party in the local elections in Dún Laoghaire in 1985. In 1985, he becomes a founder member of the Progressive Democrats but leaves the party when he is appointed to the Supreme Court. He remains very friendly with the former party leader and ex-Tánaiste, Michael McDowell, who is a close friend at college, a fellow founding member of the party, and best man at his wedding.

Hardiman is called to the Irish Bar in 1974 and receives the rare honour of being appointed directly from the Bar to Ireland’s highest court. Prior to his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2000, he has a successful practice as a barrister, focusing on criminal law and defamation.

Politically, Hardiman supports the liberal side in Ireland’s debates over abortion, being active in the “anti-amendment” campaign during the 1982 Abortion Referendum and later represents the Well Woman Centre in the early 1990s. After his death, he is described by Joan Burton as a liberal on social issues. But he could be an outspoken opponent of Political Correctness, such as when he rejects the Equality Authority‘s attempt to force Portmarnock Golf Club to accept women as full members. He also believes that certain decisions, such as those involving public spending, are better left to elected politicians rather than unelected judges, regardless of how unpopular that might sometimes be in the media (which he tends to hold in low esteem) and among what he describes as the “chattering classes.”

Hardiman’s concern for individual rights is not confined to Ireland. In February 2016, he criticizes what he describes as the radical undermining of the presumption of innocence, especially in sex cases, by the methods used in the UK‘s Operation Yewtree inquiry into historical sex allegations against celebrities, and he also criticizes “experienced lawyer” and then United States presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for allegedly declaring in January that “every accuser was to be believed, only to amend her view when asked if it applied to women who had made allegations against her husband”, former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

In a tribute following his death in 2016, President Michael D. Higgins says Justice Hardiman “was one of the great legal minds of his generation”, who was “always committed to the ideals of public service.” He is described as a “colossus of the legal world” by Chief Justice Susan Denham.

One commentator writes that “Hardiman’s greatest contribution …was the steadfast defence of civil liberties and individual rights” and that “He was a champion of defendants’ rights and a bulwark against any attempt by the Garda Síochána to abuse its powers.”


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Birth of Miriam Gallagher, Playwright & Author

Miriam Gallagher, Irish playwright and author whose works have been performed globally and translated into numerous languages, is born in Waterford, County Waterford, on February 11, 1940.

Born Miriam O’Connor to Michael O’Connor, a bank manager with five children including Valerie, Michael and Fidelma, she goes to school in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roscrea, County Tipperary, and in Bregenz, Austria. She goes to college at both the University of London and University College Dublin (UCD). After college she works initially as a speech and language therapist, an occupation which leads to the publication of one of her non-fiction books. She also studies drama in London, at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) under Frieda Hodgson.

Gallagher is commissioned to write essays for The Irish Times, the Irish Medical Times and various journals. She takes up writing screenplays and stage plays. The result is a prolific list of productions which have been staged around the world as well as broadcast by RTÉ and the BBC.

Gallagher varies work from plays to speech therapy, as well as working with prisoners, and this leads her to be a visiting lecturer at universities across the globe. She is deeply involved in the organisations of her craft, leading her to being a member of Irish PEN, both on its committee and as vice president, on the Irish Writers’ Union committee as well as a council member of the Society of Irish Playwrights. Over the years she wins a number of awards including the Arts Council and European Script Fund Awards, the MHA TV Script Award, and the EU Theatre Award.

Gallagher’s husband is Gerhardt Gallagher. They live in Dublin and have three children, Mia, Donnacha, and Etain. In 2012 she is diagnosed with cancer and kidney disease. She dies on January 15, 2018.


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Birth of Seamus Deane, Poet, Novelist, Critic & Historian

Seamus Francis Deane, Irish poet, novelist, critic, and intellectual historian, is born in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland on February 9, 1940. He is noted for his debut novel, Reading in the Dark, which wins several literary awards and is nominated for the Booker Prize in 1996.

Deane is the fourth child of Frank Deane and Winifred (Doherty) and is brought up as part of a Catholic nationalist family. He attends St. Columb’s College in his hometown, where he befriends fellow student Seamus Heaney. He then attends Queen’s University Belfast (BA and MA) and Pembroke College, Cambridge (PhD). Although he too becomes noted for his poetry, he chooses to go into academia instead. He workws as a teacher in Derry, with Martin McGuinness being one of his students. McGuinness later recalls how Deane was “gentle, kind and never raised his voice at all, an ideal teacher who was very highly thought of.”

After graduating from Cambridge, Deane teaches at the Reed College in Portland, Oregon during the 1960s and the University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s. Over the next two decades, he teaches American college juniors part-time at the School of Irish Studies in the Ballsbridge section of Dublin. He is a professor of Modern English and American Literature at University College Dublin (UCD) until 1992. He subsequently relocates to the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, as the Donald and Marilyn Keough Chair of Irish Studies, from which he retires as professor emeritus.

Deane is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a founding director of the Field Day Theatre Company, together with Heaney, Tom Paulin, and David Hammond.

Deane is the co-editor of Field Day Review, an annual journal of Irish studies. He also serves as general editor of the Penguin Classic James Joyce series and of Critical Conditions, a series in Irish Studies which is jointly published by the University of Notre Dame Press and Cork University Press. He co-founds the book series Field Day Files, which contains key works by David Lloyd, Joe Cleary, Marjorie Howes, and Kerby A. Miller.

The first collection of Deane’s poetry, Gradual Wars, is published in 1972 and receives the AE Memorial Award for Literature. His first novel, Reading in the Dark, is published in 1996 and is partly autobiographical. It wins the 1996 Guardian Fiction Prize and the 1996 South Bank Show Award for Literature, is a New York Times Notable Book, wins The Irish Times International Fiction Prize and the Irish Literature Prize in 1997, besides being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1996. The novel is translated into more than twenty languages. He is also the general editor of the monumental Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, which is 4,000 pages long and whose first volumes are released in 1990. It is later criticised for excluding the voices and experiences of Irish women. He responds to this by stating, “To my astonishment and dismay, I have found that I myself have been subject to the same kind of critique to which I have subjected colonialism … I find that I exemplify some of the faults and erasures which I analyse and characterize in the earlier period.”

Deane’s first marriage is to Marion Treacy. Together, they have four children. He is in a civil partnership with Emer Nolan until his death. They have one child together.

Following a short illness, Deane dies at the age of 81 on May 12, 2021 at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.


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Birth of Richard Boyd Barrett, People Before Profit-Solidarity Politician

Richard Boyd Barrett, Irish People Before Profit-Solidarity politician, is born in Dublin on February 6, 1967. He has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency since the 2011 Irish general election.

Boyd Barrett is adopted as a baby and is raised as a Roman Catholic in Glenageary, County Dublin, by his parents, David Boyd Barrett, an accountant, and his wife, Valerie. He attends St. Michael’s College in Dublin. He holds a master’s degree in English literature from University College Dublin (UCD). His birth mother is Sinéad Cusack, with whom he is later reunited in public. Since their reunion, he has had a good relationship with Cusack, her husband Jeremy Irons, and his half-brothers, Sam and Max. In May 2013, he reveals that theatre director Vincent Dowling is his biological father.

Boyd Barrett contests the 2004 Irish local elections for Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council but is not elected. In 2009, he is elected to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, winning 22.8% of the vote and topping the poll.

Boyd Barrett stands in the Dún Laoghaire constituency at the 2002 Irish general election for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and at the 2007 Irish general election for the People Before Profit. This switch of identification is intended to increase his support from non-socialist voters. He loses to Ciarán Cuffe of the Green Party, by 9,910 votes to 7,890 votes on the 10th count.

Boyd Barrett again contests the Dún Laoghaire constituency at the 2011 Irish general election as part of the United Left Alliance. On the ballot paper, he is named a member of People Before Profit, because the United Left Alliance had not yet been registered as a political party. Following a “nail-biting two days” of counting and recounting votes, he is elected on the 10th count without reaching the quota.

As a TD, Boyd Barrett, supports protests against cuts to Dublin Bus services. In Dáil Éireann, he condemns the 2011 murder of PSNI officer Ronan Kerr as “an utterly brutal action, which leads back down a road which has failed.” Marie O’Halloran in The Irish Times describes his “consistently passionate outrage and opposition to the Government’s handling of the financial and banking crisis.”

Boyd Barrett speaks at the Dublin location of the October 15, 2011 global protests, inspired by the Spanish “Indignants” and the Occupy Wall Street movements. The same month he says Enda Kenny‘s government is engaging in “spin and disingenuity” to cover up its austerity policies, decrying the closure of hospital emergency departments around the country for “health and safety” reasons.

On November 2, 2011, Boyd Barrett leads the United Left Alliance TDs out of the Dáil, in protest against the government’s decision not to hold a debate on the payment of more than €700 million to Anglo Irish Bank bondholders. On December 15, 2011, he helps launch a nationwide campaign against a proposed household charge being brought in as part of the 2012 Irish budget. He is part of an Oireachtas delegation that meets the Bundestag‘s Budgetary and European Affairs committees in Berlin in late January 2012.

On March 10, 2016, at the first sitting of the 32nd Dáil, Boyd Barrett is one of four candidates nominated for the position of Taoiseach, all of whom fail to reach a majority. Ruth Coppinger nominates Boyd Barrett for the role, but the nomination is defeated by 9 votes to 111. As well as the six other AAA–PBP TDs, he also has the support of Séamus Healy of the Workers and Unemployed Action, Tommy Broughan of Independents 4 Change, and Independent TD Catherine Connolly.

At the 2020 Irish general election in February 2020, Boyd Barrett is again re-elected, having topped the poll.


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Death of Tony Gregory, Independent Politician & TD

Tony Gregory, Irish independent politician and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Central constituency from 1982 to 2009, dies in Dublin on January 2, 2009.

Gregory is born on December 5, 1947, in Ballybough on Dublin’s Northside, the second child of Anthony Gregory, warehouseman in Dublin Port, and Ellen Gregory (née Judge). He wins a Dublin Corporation scholarship to the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School. He later goes on to University College Dublin (UCD), where he receives a Bachelor of Arts degree and later a Higher Diploma in Education, funding his degree from summer work at the Wall’s ice cream factory in Acton, London. Initially working at Synge Street CBS, he later teaches history and French at Coláiste Eoin, an Irish language secondary school in Booterstown. His students at Synge Street and Coláiste Eoin include John Crown, Colm Mac Eochaidh, Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Liam Ó Maonlaí.

Gregory becomes involved in republican politics, joining Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1964. In UCD he helps found the UCD Republican Club, despite pressure from college authorities, and becomes involved with the Dublin Housing Action Committee. Within the party he is a supporter of Wicklow Republican Seamus Costello. Costello, who is a member of Wicklow County Council, emphasises involvement in local politics and is an opponent of abstentionism. Gregory sides with the Officials in the 1970 split within Sinn Féin. Despite having a promising future within the party, he resigns in 1972 citing frustration with ideological infighting in the party. Later, Costello, who had been expelled by Official Sinn Féin, approaches him and asks him to join his new party, the Irish Republican Socialist Party. He leaves the party after Costello’s assassination in 1977. He is briefly associated with the Socialist Labour Party.

Gregory contests the 1979 local elections for Dublin City Council as a “Dublin Community Independent” candidate. At the February 1982 general election, he is elected to Dáil Éireann as an Independent TD. On his election he immediately achieves national prominence through the famous “Gregory Deal,” which he negotiates with Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey. In return for supporting Haughey as Taoiseach, he is guaranteed a massive cash injection for his inner-city Dublin constituency, an area beset by poverty and neglect.

Although Gregory is reviled in certain quarters for effectively holding a government to ransom, his uncompromising commitment to the poor is widely admired. Fianna Fáil loses power at the November 1982 general election, and many of the promises made in the Gregory Deal are not implemented by the incoming Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition.

Gregory is involved in the 1980s in tackling Dublin’s growing drug problem. Heroin had largely been introduced to Dublin by the Dunne criminal group, based in Crumlin, in the late 1970s. In 1982 a report reveals that 10% of 15- to 24-year-olds have used heroin at least once in the north inner city. The spread of heroin use also leads to a sharp increase in petty crime. He confronts the government’s handling of the problem as well as senior Gardaí, for what he sees as their inadequate response to the problem. He co-ordinates with the Concerned Parents Against Drugs group in 1986, who protest and highlight the activities of local drug dealers and defend the group against accusations by government Ministers Michael Noonan and Barry Desmond that it is a front for the Provisional IRA. He believes that the solution to the problem is multi-faceted and works on a number of policy level efforts across policing, service co-ordination and rehabilitation of addicts. In 1995 in an article in The Irish Times, he proposes what would later become the Criminal Assets Bureau, which is set up in 1996, catalysed by the death of journalist Veronica Guerin. His role in its development is later acknowledged by then Minister for Justice Nora Owen.

Gregory also advocates for Dublin’s street traders. After attending a sit-down protest with Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke, and future Labour Party TD Joe Costello on Dublin’s O’Connell Street in defence of a street trader, he, Burke and four others are arrested and charged with obstruction and threatening behaviour. He spends two weeks in Mountjoy Prison after refusing to sign a bond to keep the peace.

Gregory remains a TD from 1982 and, although he never holds a government position, remains one of the country’s most recognised Dáil deputies. He always refuses to wear a tie in the Dáil chamber stating that many of his constituents could not afford them.

Gregory dies on January 2, 2009, following a long battle with cancer. Following his death, tributes pour in from politicians from every party, recognising his contribution to Dublin’s north inner city. During his funeral, politicians from the Labour Party, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are told that although they speak highly of Gregory following his death, during his time in the Dáil he had been excluded by many of them and that they were not to use his funeral as a “photo opportunity.” He is buried on January 7, with the Socialist Party‘s Joe Higgins delivering the graveside oration.

Colleagues of Tony Gregory support his election agent, Dublin City Councillor Maureen O’Sullivan, at the 2009 Dublin Central by-election in June. She wins the subsequent by-election.


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Birth of Roy McFadden, Poet, Editor & Lawyer

Roy McFadden, Northern Irish poet, editor, and lawyer, is born in Downpatrick, County Down, on November 14, 1921.

McFadden is born to Roland Victor MCFadden and his wife Maud Steele. A short time after his birth the family relocates to Belfast. He is educated at Knock Grammar School, Regent House School in Newtownards, and later graduates in Law from Queen’s University Belfast in 1944. He becomes a prominent lawyer and an influential figure in the Belfast literary scene.

McFadden’s first poem is published before he is thirteen. His earliest influences are from magazines and journals that his father brings home, and by Francis Turner Palgrave‘s Golden Treasury. He first comes to prominence as a promoter of Ulster literature in the 1940s when he edits two anthologies of poetry, Ulster Voices and Irish Voices in 1943. In 1948, he co-founds with Barbara Edwards (née Hunter) the Northern Irish poetry magazine Rann and then, co-edits it with her during its whole run, until 1953. Like its predecessor Lagan, it is unapologetically regionalist.

McFadden is the author of nine volumes of poetry, from Swords and Ploughshares (1943) to the posthumously published Last Poems (2002). Among his poems are “Saint Francis and the Birds” and “Independence”. His book, The Garryowen, is published by Chatto & Windus in the Phoenix Living Poets series. Most recently, his poem “Post-War” has been anthologised in Armistice: A Laureate’s Choice of Poems of War and Peace (Faber Poetry) (2018). There is a long gap between 1947 and 1971 when he publishes no collections of his work, however he continues to write and publishes in periodicals and newspapers such as The Irish Times where in that time he has sixty poems printed. His voice is well known on local BBC Radio through the Poetry Notebooks series, and he also has several verse-plays broadcast.

In 1952 McFadden marries Margaret Ferguson. Together they produce three sons and two daughters. He lives for a number of years in Lisburn, County Antrim. Inspired by Herbert Read and Alex Comfort, he describes himself as a pacifist and an anarchist in 1999. McFadden dies at his Belfast home on September 15, 1999.

The Roy McFadden Papers, comprising the poet’s personal manuscripts and papers, are lodged at Queen’s University Belfast. The Roy McFadden Library at Trinity College Dublin comprises books and journals on Irish and world literature from his collection. A comprehensive collection of his published work is held at the National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, London.


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Death of Tom Clancy of the Irish Folk Group The Clancy Brothers

Thomas Joseph Clancy, a member of the Irish folk group the Clancy Brothers, dies in Cork, County Cork, on November 7, 1990. He has the most powerful voice of the brothers and has previously been an actor in numerous stage productions, appearing with Orson Welles in King Lear. He also performs often on television and occasionally in the movies.

Clancy is born on October 29, 1924, one of eleven children born to Johanna McGrath and Bob Clancy in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. After being apprenticed as a baker, he follows his older brother Patrick “Paddy” Clancy into the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1943 during World War II, despite both having been members of the Irish Republican Army. In the RAF, he works as a radio operator on bombing runs over Germany.

Discharged from the RAF at the end of the war, Clancy tours with a British repertory company. In 1947 he and his brother Paddy emigrate to Canada. They then move to New York where he meets his first wife and his oldest daughter is born in 1950. They then soon move to Cleveland, Ohio, to live with relatives. He works for a while as a repertory actor at the Cleveland Play House, before returning temporarily to Ireland. While in Ireland, Clancy works for the Shakespeareana Internationale company run by English actor and manager Geoffrey Kendal. After Paddy sends him extra money, he returns to the United States. The brothers plan to move to California, but their car breaks down. They decide to try New York City instead and find work as actors, both on and off Broadway.

In 1956 their brother Liam Clancy joins them, accompanied by his friend Tommy Makem. Liam and Tommy begin singing together, and in 1959 are joined by the older Clancy brothers as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. The group performs together until Liam leaves in 1976. Makem had left in 1969 to be replaced for a brief time by Bobby Clancy and later Louis Killen.

Clancy continues singing with The Clancy Brothers until 1976, when the group is disbanded. The group reforms in 1977 with a new line-up. Clancy performs with his brothers Paddy and Bobby and their nephew Robbie O’Connell until his death. He also performs with Paddy, Liam, and Tommy Makem during their reunion tour from 1984 to 1985.

Clancy takes the lead vocals on many of the group’s songs, such as “The Rising of the Moon,” “The Moonshiner,” “Haul Away Joe,” “Red Haired Mary,” “The Barnyards of Delgaty,” “Carrickfergus,” “I Once Loved a Lass,” “The Bold Fenian Men,” among others.

Clancy continues to act during his singing career, appearing in the movies The Killer Elite (1975) and Swashbuckler (1976). He also appears on episodes of Little House on the Prairie, Starsky and Hutch, and The Incredible Hulk, among others. He acts in several TV movies as well.

After an absence of fifteen years, Clancy returns to Broadway in May 1974 in Eugene O’Neill‘s A Moon for the Misbegotten. The Irish Times reviews his performance of Phil Hogan: “In ‘Moon’ he deftly measures up to the formidable company in which he finds himself – a wily, sly rogue with a whimsical humour and a genuine concern for his daughter.” The play is a hit and wins three Tony Awards.

Clancy dies from stomach cancer at the age of 66 on November 7, 1990 at Mercy University Hospital in Cork, County Cork. He is survived by his wife Joan and their three daughters, Rayleen, Blawneen and Rosie. Prior to his marriage to Joan, he has children, Eileen and Thomas, with Yvonne Marcus, in Cleveland, Ohio. He also has a daughter, Cait, with his second wife Laine, in the mid-1950s.

Clancy’s last recording is made in 1988 with Robbie O’Connell, Bobby Clancy, and Paddy Clancy at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the recording is marred by unevenly mixed instruments and voices. After his death, Liam returns to the Clancy Brothers to fill in his place.


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Birth of Author Gerard Beirne

Author Gerard Beirne is born on October 30, 1962 in County Tipperary. He attends Trinity College, Dublin and holds Irish and Canadian citizenship.

Beirne is the writer in residence for the 2008-2009 academical year at the University of New Brunswick, where he previously worked in the English Department. He is a Fiction Editor of The Fiddlehead, Canada’s longest surviving literary magazine. He also curates the on-line magazines The Irish Literary Times and The New Brunswick Literary Times.

Beirne’s novel The Eskimo in the Net is published by Marion Boyars in 2003 and is short-listed for the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. It is selected by the Daily Express as Book of the Year.

Beirne’s collection of poetry, Digging My Own Grave, published by Dedalus Press, is runner-up for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. His story, “Sightings of Bono”, is adapted for Irish film and features Bono of the Irish rock band U2. His most recent collection of poems, Games of Chance – A Gambler’s Manual, is published by Oberon Press, Fall 2011.

Beirne’s CD of spoken word poetry, If it’s words you’re after, is released in 2006. He is a past winner of two Sunday Tribune/Hennessey Literary Awards including as New Irish Writer of the Year 1996. His collaboration with classical composer Siobhán Cleary, Hum!, is called “a theatrical tour de force” by The Irish Times.

In 2009, Oberon Press published Beirne’s second novel, Turtle.

Beirne’s first short story collection, In a Time of Drought and Hunger, is published in 2015 and is a shortlisted nominee for the 2016 Danuta Gleed Literary Award.