Josephine McNeill, Irish diplomat, dies in Dublin on November 19, 1969. She is the first Irish female diplomat appointed to represent Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity.
McNeill is born Josephine Ahearne on March 31, 1895, in Fermoy, County Cork, the daughter of shopkeeper and hotelier, James Ahearne, and his wife Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She attends the Loretto Convent, Fermoy, and goes on to graduate from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA, H.Dip.Ed. in French and German. With this she begins a teaching career, at St. Louis’ Convent, Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde. Scoil Íde, the female counterpart to St. Enda’s School, had been established by her friend, Louise Gavan Duffy. She is fluent in the Irish language and takes an active part in the cultural elements of the Irish independence movement, such as literature and music. She is a member of Cumann na mBan, serving as a member of the executive committee in 1921.
After the death of her husband in 1938, McNeill becomes the honorary secretary of the council of the Friends of the National Collections, as well as serving as chair of the executive committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1950. As a member of the Department of External Affairs advisory committee on cultural relations, she writes on economic, social and cultural issues. She represents Ireland at the UNESCO general assembly in Paris in 1949.
McNeill is an active member of Clann na Poblachta from its foundation in 1946. She is appointed the minister to the Netherlands in 1950 by Seán MacBride, making her the first Irish female diplomat to represent the Republic of Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity. This appointment is not well received by diplomats in the Department of External Affairs. Her reports from The Hague focus on the issues the Netherlands faces with decolonisation. In 1955, she becomes the minister to Sweden, going on to hold the joint appointment to Austria and Switzerland from 1956 to 1960, after which she retires. While serving in Switzerland she puts aside the resentment she feels towards Éamon de Valera based on how he had treated her husband, to sit with him during a convalescence while de Valera recovers from an eye operation.
McNeill is an amateur pianist and collects paintings and porcelains. In 1933, she publishes the Irish language book, Finnsgéalta ó India.
Josephine McNeill, Irish diplomat, is born on March 31, 1895, in Fermoy, County Cork. She is the first Irish female diplomat appointed to represent Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity.
McNeill is born Josephine Ahearne, the daughter of shopkeeper and hotelier, James Ahearne, and his wife Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She attends the Loretto Convent, Fermoy, and goes on to graduate from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA, H.Dip.Ed. in French and German. With this she begins a teaching career, at St. Louis’ Convent, Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde. Scoil Íde, the female counterpart to St. Enda’s School, had been established by her friend, Louise Gavan Duffy. She is fluent in the Irish language and takes an active part in the cultural elements of the Irish independence movement, such as literature and music. She is a member of Cumann na mBan, serving as a member of the executive committee in 1921.
After the death of her husband in 1938, McNeill becomes the honorary secretary of the council of the Friends of the National Collections, as well as serving as chair of the executive committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1950. As a member of the Department of External Affairs advisory committee on cultural relations, she writes on economic, social and cultural issues. She represents Ireland at the UNESCO general assembly in Paris in 1949.
McNeill is an active member of Clann na Poblachta from its foundation in 1946. She is appointed the minister to the Netherlands in 1950 by Seán MacBride, making her the first Irish female diplomat to represent the Republic of Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity. This appointment is not well received by diplomats in the Department of External Affairs. Her reports from The Hague focus on the issues the Netherlands faces with decolonisation. In 1955, she becomes the minister to Sweden, going on to hold the joint appointment to Austria and Switzerland from 1956 to 1960, after which she retires. While serving in Switzerland she puts aside the resentment she feels towards Éamon de Valera based on how he had treated her husband, to sit with him during a convalescence while de Valera recovers from an eye operation.
McNeill is an amateur pianist and collects paintings and porcelains. In 1933, she publishes the Irish language book, Finnsgéalta ó India.
Buckley grows up in a rural environment and is introduced to traditional music learning the button accordion from the local player Liam Moloney when he is 9 years of age. In 1969 he moves to Dublin to study for the Teacher’s Diploma at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. Here he has his first opportunity to hear live classical and modern music including contemporary and avantgarde works by Irish composers including Aloys Fleischmann, Brian Boydell, John Kinsella, and Seóirse Bodley, as well as works by international composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki. He becomes a student at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin (1969–74), studying the flute with Doris Keogh and composition with A. J. Potter and James Wilson. He continues his musical studies with Alun Hoddinott in Cardiff, Wales (1978–82), Aloys Fleischmann in Cork (M.A. in composition, 1980), and briefly with John Cage during a summer school for composers and choreographers at Guildford, Surrey, in 1981. Initially working as secondary school teacher, from 1982 he is able to work independently as a composer.
In 1983, Buckley is the co-founder, with James Wilson, of the annual Ennis Summer School for composition, which becomes an influential training ground for aspiring young Irish composers; pupils include Michael Alcorn, Rhona Clarke, and Gráinne Mulvey. He becomes a member of Aosdána in 1984. Since 2001 he has been a lecturer in music at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. From the National University of Ireland at Maynooth (now Maynooth University) he receives a PhD in 2002 and a DMus in 2007.
Apart from membership in Aosdána, Buckley is honoured with the Varming Prize (1976), the Macaulay Fellowship (1978), the Arts Council‘s Composers’ Bursary (1982) and the Marten Toonder Award (1991).
Buckley’s output includes many commissions for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choirs, bands and orchestra. His music has been widely performed and broadcast in Ireland and in more than fifty countries worldwide. He has represented Ireland at the UNESCOInternational Rostrum of Composers on five occasions and at the 1990 Prix Italia. His music has also been performed at five International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) festivals.
Buckley’s music does not adhere to any particular compositional school. He acknowledges the influence of Luciano Berio, Witold Lutoslawski,György Ligeti, and Olivier Messiaen. His harmonic approach is freely atonal. Structurally, there is frequently a gradual build-up from initially very limited pitch material to large formal constructions. Many compositions work towards a climax in the fourth quarter of a piece and then return to initial pitch sequences. In a number of early works he explores the Celtic myths of his native Ireland in orchestral scores such as Taller than Roman Spears (1977) and Fornocht do chonac thú (1980) and in small-scale works such as Oileáin (1979) for piano, Boireann (1983) for flute and piano, or I am Wind on Sea (1987) for mezzo-soprano and percussion. Later this aspect becomes less important for him. Works since the late 1980s display “a textural subtlety in marked contrast to the more robust sonorities explored in Buckley’s earlier keyboard works,” a “French refinement of sound, and an elevation of timbre as central characteristics” and “a concern with achieving a greater degree of formal unity” and “an exploration of analogies between sound and light.” O’Leary (2013) describes his style as “characterised by a broad harmonic idiom, contrasting consonance and dissonance in a non-tonal but strongly coloured soundworld.”
In 2010, Buckley arranges a number of Irish traditional songs for flute, some with harp, viola, percussion and string quartet. These are skilled and tasteful settings in a tonal harmonic language, quite unlike his original compositions.
MacBride has nevertheless had a violent past. He is born in Paris on January 26, 1904, the son of Major John MacBride and Maud Gonne. His father is executed by the British in the Irish struggle for liberation from Great Britain. He is only 15 years old when he lies about his age to join the Irish Volunteers, which fight as part of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He takes part in the concluding battles against the British in the Irish War of Independence before the Irish Republic is founded in 1921, and in the Irish Civil War that follows. He backs Éamon de Valera in the latter’s refusal to accept Northern Ireland‘s continuing union with England. In the 1930s, he breaks with the IRA and qualifies in law. He defends IRA prisoners in Irish prisons who had been condemned to death.
In addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, MacBride also receives the Lenin Peace Prize for 1975–1976, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1978, and the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service in 1980.
MacBride dies in Dublin on January 15, 1988, eleven days before his 84th birthday. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in a grave with his mother and his wife, who died in 1976.
O’Callaghan grows up in the village of Douglas, where he still lives today.
His first collection of short stories, In Exile, is published by Mercier Press in 2008. This is followed a year later by a second collection, In Too Deep, also published by Mercier Press. In 2013, his third collection, The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, is published by New Island Books. His short stories have been published in literary journals around the world and translated into several other languages. His work has been broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1‘s The Book On One, Sunday Miscellany and the Francis McManus Short Story Award series.
In 2017, the American literary journalPloughshares publishes O’Callaghan’s story A Death in the Family as a Ploughshares Solo.
His novel, My Coney Island Baby, is published in 2019, by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Harper (USA), as well as in French by Éditions Grasset as Les amants de Coney Island, translated by Carine Chichereau, Dutch by Ambo Anthos as Mijn lief op Coney Island, translated by Lette Vos, German by btb Verlag as Die Liebenden von Coney Island, translated by Sibylle Schmidt, Czech by Nakladatelství Paseka as Náš Coney Island, translated by Petr Eliáš, Catalan by L’Altra Editorial as Els amants de Coney Island, translated by Ferran Ràfols Gesa, Italian by Guanda Editore as My Coney Island Baby, translated by Ada Arduini, Hungarian by Jelenkor as Szerelmem, Coney Island, translated by Zoltán Pék, and in Turkish by Othello Kitap as Coney Island Bebeğim, translated by Serkan Toy.
A new short story collection, The Boatman and Other Stories, is published in January 2020 by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Harper Perennial (USA).
A new novel, Life Sentences, is published in 2021 by Jonathan Cape (UK) and in Czech by Nakladatelství Paseka as Doživotí, translated by Petr Eliáš, and in 2022 in the United States by David R. Godine.
In November 2013, The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind wins the inaugural Short Story of the Year Award at the 2013 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award. Down by the River is selected in 2014 as Ireland’s representative in the ongoing UNESCOCity of Literature project. The Boatman is a finalist for the 2016 Costa Short Story Award. In June 2020, My Coney Island Baby is shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award.
De Bromhead’s compositions include works for solo guitar as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. His Symphony No. 1 (1986) represents Ireland at the International Rostrum of Composers at UNESCO‘s headquarters in Paris. He describes his style as “neither a Postmodernist nor a deaf-as-a-postmodernist. Above all I am suspicious of anything that seems like dogma.”
According to guitarist John Feeley, de Bromhead’s solo guitar composition Gemini (1970) is “a sophisticated work, both technically and compositionally. It has the dynamism of youth, with a sense of freshness and it projects an attractive, driving energy […] It is an effective concert work, which speaks well on the instrument and is particularly gratifying for the performer.”
De Bromhead works at RTÉ as a television news director and announcer, as well as a senior music producer for radio, until a serious accident forces him to retire in 1996. He currently lives in Dublin.
The Contemporary Music Centre (www.cmc.ie) provides scores and sample recordings of a selection of de Bromhead’s works, available here.
Kelly’s father, Irish AmericanJohn B. Kelly, Sr., wins three Olympic gold medals for sculling, and owns a successful brickwork contracting company that is well known on the East Coast. As Democratic nominee in the 1935 election for Mayor of Philadelphia, he loses by the closest margin in the city’s history. In later years he serves on the Fairmount Park Commission and, during World War II, is appointed by PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt as National Director of Physical Fitness. Her mother, Margaret Majer, has German parents. She teaches physical education at the University of Pennsylvania and is the first woman to coach women’s athletics at Penn. She also models for a time in her youth. After marrying John Kelly in 1924, she focuses on being a housewife until her four children are of school age, following which she begins actively participating in various civic organizations.
Kelly receives her elementary education in the parish of Saint Bridget’s in East Falls. While attending Ravenhill Academy, a reputable Catholic girls’ school, she models fashions at local charity events with her mother and sisters. In 1942, at the age of 12, she plays the lead in Don’t Feed the Animals, a play produced by the Old Academy Players also in East Falls. In May 1947, she graduates from Stevens School, a socially prominent private institution in nearby Chestnut Hill, where she participates in drama and dance programs. Owing to her low mathematics scores, she is rejected by Bennington College in July 1947. Despite her parents’ initial disapproval, she decides to pursue her dreams of becoming an actress.
Kelly retires from acting at age 26 to marry Rainier and begins her duties as Princess of Monaco. Hitchcock hopes that she will appear in more of his films which require an “icy blonde” lead actress, but he is unable to coax her out of retirement. The Prince and Princess have three children: Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stéphanie. Princess Grace retains her link to America by her dual U.S. and Monégasque citizenship. Her charity work focuses on young children and the arts, establishing the Princess Grace Foundation-USA to support local artisans in 1964. Her organization for children’s rights, World Association of Children;s Friends (AMADE), gains consultive status within UNICEF and UNESCO. Her final film contribution is in 1977 to documentary The Children of Theatre Street directed by Robert Dornhelm, where she serves as the narrator. The documentary is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
On September 13, 1982, Princess Grace suffers a small stroke while driving back to Monaco from her country home in Roc Agel. As a result, she loses control of her 1971 Rover P6 3500 and drives off the steep, winding road and down the 120-foot mountainside. Her teenage daughter Stéphanie, who is in the passenger seat, tries but fails to regain control of the car. The Princess is taken to the Monaco Hospital (later named the Princess Grace Hospital Centre) with injuries to the brain and thorax and a fractured femur. She dies the following night at 10:55 PM after Rainier decides to turn off her life support. Stéphanie suffers a slight concussion and a hairline fracture of a cervical vertebra and is unable to attend her mother’s funeral.
MacBride is born in Paris on January 26, 1904. He is the son of Major John MacBride and Maud Gonne. After his father’s execution for his participation in the Easter Rising of 1916, MacBride is sent to school at Mount St. Benedict’s, Gorey, County Wexford in Ireland. In 1919, at the age of 15, he joins the Irish Volunteers, which fights as part of the Irish Republican Army, and takes part in the Irish War of Independence. He is imprisoned by the Irish Free State but is released in 1924 and resumes his IRA activities. He returns to Dublin in 1927 and becomes the Director of Intelligence of the IRA.
Toward the end of the 1920s, after many supporters have left the IRA to join Fianna Fáil, some members start pushing for a more left-wing agenda. After the IRA Army Council votes down the idea, MacBride launches a new movement, Saor Éire (“Free Ireland”), in 1931. Although it is a non-military organisation, Saor Éire is declared unlawful along with the IRA, Cumann na mBan, and nine other organizations.
In 1936, MacBride becomes Chief of Staff of the IRA after Moss Twomey is sent to prison for three years. At the time, the movement is in a state of disarray, with conflicts between several factions and personalities. In 1937, he is called to the bar and then resigns from the IRA when the Constitution of Ireland is enacted later that year. As a barrister, he frequently defends IRA political prisoners, but is not unsuccessful in stopping the execution of Charlie Kerins in 1944 who is convicted of killing Garda Detective Dennis O’Brien in 1942. In 1946, during the inquest into the death of Seán McCaughey, he embarrasses the authorities by forcing them to admit that the conditions in Portlaoise Prison are inhumane.
In 1946, MacBride founds the republican/socialist party Clann na Poblachta, hoping it would replace Fianna Fáil as Ireland’s major political party. In October 1947, he wins a seat in Dáil Éireann at a by-election in the Dublin County constituency. However, at the 1948 Irish general election Clann na Poblachta wins only ten seats.
Clann na Poblachta is reduced to only two seats after the 1951 Irish general election. MacBride keeps his seat and is re-elected again at the 1954 Irish general election. Opposing the internment of IRA suspects during the Border Campaign (1956–62), he contests both the 1957 and 1961 Irish general elections but fails to be elected both times. He then retires from politics but continues practicing as a barrister. He expresses interest in running as an independent candidate in the 1983 Irish presidential election, but does not receive sufficient backing and ultimately does not enter the contest.
Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, MacBride works tirelessly for human rights worldwide. He is a founding member of Amnesty International and serves as its International chairman from 1961 until 1975. During the 1980s, he initiates the Appeal by Lawyers against Nuclear War which is jointly sponsored by the International Peace Bureau and the International Progress Organization.
MacBride is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 as a man who “mobilised the conscience of the world in the fight against injustice.” He later receives the Lenin Peace Prize (1975–76) and the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service (1980).
In his later years, MacBride lives in his mother’s home, Roebuck House, that served as a meeting place for many years for Irish nationalists, as well as in the Parisian arrondissement where he grew up with his mother, and enjoyed strolling along boyhood paths. In 1978, he receives the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
MacBride dies in Dublin on January 15, 1988, just eleven days shy of his 84th birthday. He is buried in a simple grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, with his mother, and wife who died in 1976.
Rising from a domestic Irish political career, MacBride founds or participates in many international organisations of the 20th century, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe and Amnesty International. In addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, he receives the Lenin Peace Prize for 1975–76 and the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service in 1980.
MacBride, nevertheless, has had a violent past. His father is executed following the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish struggle for liberation from Great Britain. He is only 13 when he joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He takes part in the concluding battles of the Irish War of Independence against the British before the Irish Republic is founded in 1921, and in the Irish Civil War that follows. He backs Éamon de Valera in the latter’s refusal to accept Northern Ireland‘s continuing union with England. In the 1930s, he breaks with the IRA and qualifies in law. He defends IRA prisoners in Irish prisons who had been condemned to death.
After World War II he is for a few years Minister for External Affairs for Ireland. He plays a leading part in the establishment of the Council of Europe, and in the preparation of the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950.
MacBride dies in Dublin on January 15, 1988, eleven days before his 84th birthday. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in a grave with his mother and wife, who died in 1976.
De Paor is born Máire MacDermott to Eamonn MacDermott and Delia MacVeigh. She is educated in the Convent of Mercy in Buncrana before going to University College Dublin, where she completes a master’s degree and a doctorate on early Christian archaeology and metalwork.
De Paor works in the Department of Archeology at UCD from 1946 to 1958. She marries Liam de Paor in 1946, and they have a daughter and four boys. They collaborate on a number of publications. She publishes her papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Archaeologia, Seanchas Armagh and Comhar. Her husband also works at the university and, as a result of policies about married women, she is forced to leave. Initially she lectures in the United States, Canada, Scandinavia, France and the United Kingdom. She works as lecturer in archaeology at Trinity College, Dublin. The de Paors spend a year in Nepal on a UNESCO project in 1963.
De Paor works as a freelance researcher for Raidió Teilifís Éireann until she is given a full-time position in the 1970s.
De Paor is elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1960 and is a member of the Arts Council from 1973. She becomes a member of Conradh na Gaeilge from 1962. From 1968 she is working with Cumann Merriman, the Irish cultural organisation named after Brian Merriman, working with the group as a director of the schools and spends four years as chairperson. In 1992 she is appointed to the board of Amharclann de hÍde.
Máire de Paor dies on December 6, 1994, at the age of 69.
University College Dublin has created the Dr. Máire de Paor Award for best PhD thesis. Her biographer identifies her as a committed republican, socialist and feminist.
seamus dubhghaill 