seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: The Lilliput Press


by Leave a comment

Birth of Paul McGuinness, Former Manager of U2

Paul McGuinness, the founder of Principle Management Limited, a popular music act management company based in Dublin, is born on June 16, 1951, in Rinteln, Westphalia, Germany. He is the manager of the rock band U2 from 1978 to 2013.

McGuinness is born in a British military hospital at Rinteln where his father, Philip McGuinness, a native of Liverpool, is serving with the Royal Air Force. His mother, Sheila McGuinness (née Lyne), is a schoolteacher from County Kerry. There are three children in the family: Paul, Niall, and Katy.

McGuinness receives his early formal education in Ireland at the private Jesuit boarding school, Clongowes Wood College. From there he goes on to Trinity College Dublin, where he directs plays, edits the magazine T.C.D. Miscellany, and promotes gigs, but drops out before obtaining a degree.

Before becoming involved with U2, Guinness works as a film assistant director on productions such as John Boorman‘s Zardoz. For a time, he also manages folk-rock group Spud.

McGuinness first meets U2 at a Dublin gig on May 25, 1978, where they are supporting the Gamblers. Following this meeting, he becomes U2’s manager, having been introduced to the band by Bill Graham, a journalist with Hot Press magazine. His original agreement with the band is that the money is to be split equally five ways, though this is later changed.

McGuinness founds Principle Management Limited on March 29, 1984. He and Bill Whelan set up a music publishing company called McGuinness/Whelan Publishing in the late 1980s. Whelan later composes the music for the theatrical show Riverdance.

In 2002, McGuinness is presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Meteor Music Awards at the Point Theatre in Dublin and U2 wins the best Irish Band Award.

Noted for his business acumen, McGuinness is responsible for U2 3D concert films, U2-branded iPods, sponsorship from BlackBerry and the first-ever concert streamed live on YouTube.

McGuinness is regarded as the fifth member of U2, although in an interview with The Irish Press in 1985, when asked if he is the fifth member of U2, he replies, “The fifth member of U2 is in Adam (Clayton)‘s trousers.” He is also regarded as one of the most successful managers in the music business.

McGuinness steps down as manager of U2 after 34 years on November 13, 2013, with Madonna‘s manager, Guy Oseary, succeeding him in 2014 when he sells Principle Management Limited to Live Nation.

McGuinness is a founding partner of TV3 (Ireland) and is one of the owners of Ardmore Film Studios. He becomes a member of the Arts Council of Ireland on January 1, 1988, having been appointed by Charles Haughey. He serves until February 2000 when he resigns.

McGuinness has been an advocate on behalf of artists, record labels, and music publishers. On January 28, 2008, in a speech at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, he specifically accuses companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook of building “multi-billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it.”

In 2015, McGuinness founds Primo Productions, a film and TV company. Primo produces three seasons of Riviera, a drama set in the South of France. He writes the “list of ingredients” for the show: “Rich people behaving badly in the sun, yachts, Maseratis, great clothes, beautiful women, art fraud, money laundering through the auction houses, Russians, English people, American, French. Murder, adultery.” Everyday life on the Côte d’Azur. His production partner is Kris Thykier of Archery Pictures. The show is originally commissioned by Anne Mensah of Sky Atlantic.

McGuinness marries Kathy Gilfillan in 1977. They meet while he is studying at Trinity. Gilfillan is director of The Lilliput Press. They have two children.


by Leave a comment

Birth of John Jordan, Poet & Writer

john-jordan

John Jordan, Irish poet, short-story writer and broadcaster, is born in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin on April 8, 1930.

Jordan is educated at Synge Street CBS, University College Dublin (UCD) and Pembroke College, Oxford. In his teens he acts on the stage of the Gate Theatre, Dublin, before winning a Scholarship in English and French to the University of Oxford from UCD. In the mid-1950s he returns to UCD as a lecturer in English and teaches there until the end of the 1960s. He also lectures on sabbatical leave at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and briefly at Princeton University in the United States. He is a founding member of Aosdána. He is a celebrated literary critic from the late 1950s until his death on June 6, 1988, in Cardiff, Wales, where he had been participating in the Merriman Summer School.

In 1962 Jordan re-founds and edits the literary magazine Poetry Ireland in hopes of contributing towards the recreation of Dublin as a literary centre. In this journal, he introduces a number of poets who are to become quite famous later, including Paul Durcan, Michael Hartnett and Seamus Heaney. This series of Poetry Ireland lasts until 1968–69.

In 1981 Jordan becomes the first editor of the new magazine published by the Poetry Ireland Society, called Poetry Ireland Review. He serves as a reviewer of novels for The Irish Times, writes a column for Hibernia, contributes to Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art and The Irish Press among others, and serves as a TV presenter and arts interviewer. He is a defender of Gaelic literature, translates Pádraic Ó Conaire, edits The Pleasures of Gaelic Literature (Mercier Press, 1977), and champions the later plays of Seán O’Casey. His translation of one of Aogán Ó Rathaille‘s essays is published in The Pleasures of Gaelic Poetry (London: Allen Lane, 1982).

Jordan’s Collected Poems (Dedalus Press) and Collected Stories (Poolbeg Press) are edited by his literary executor, Hugh McFadden, and published in Dublin in 1991. His Selected Prose, Crystal Clear, also edited by McFadden, is published by The Lilliput Press in Dublin in 2006. His Selected Poems, edited with an introduction by McFadden, is published in February 2008 by Dedalus Press. Uncollected stories appear in Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories, Cyphers, and The Irish Press, among other places.

Jordan’s literary papers and letters are held in the National Library of Ireland. In 1953 the young Irish artist Reginald Gray is commissioned by University College Dublin to design the decor and costumes for their production of “The Kings Threshold” by William Butler Yeats. The leading role is given to Jordan. During the preparations for the production, Gray starts a portrait of Jordan, which he never finishes. This work now hangs in the Dublin Writers Museum.

(Pictured: John Jordan, by Patrick Swift, c. 1950)