Lynch’s father, who is a committed, non-violent Fenian, dies when she is young. Her mother, Anna Theresa Calderwood, is married twice. She grows up in a cultivated, literary, very female household with her mother and ten sisters and half-sisters. Her stepfather is James Cantwell, also a Fenian, who runs the Star and Garter Hotel. From her early childhood she is familiar with many leading political agitators and writers in Dublin. Having been educated at a convent school in France, she considers training as a doctor and later as a concert pianist. However, economic circumstances lead to her to work as a sub-editor for a provincial paper and as a governess in Europe.
A nationalist like her father and stepfather, Lynch is an executive member of the Ladies’ Land League and as a result closely associates with Fanny Parnell. She writes extensively, producing short stories and satirical sketches, as well as Land War fiction, travel writing, translations and literary criticism. Her satirical pieces include “A Dublin Literary Coterie Sketched by a Non-Pretentious Observer” (1888) and “My Friend Arcanieva” (1895). She publishes William O’Brien‘s paper United Ireland from France, after it is suppressed in Ireland. She disagrees with William Butler Yeats on the literary merit of Emily Lawless, calling her work “highly polished literary stories.”
Lynch also writes fiction on the subject of political and cultural affairs in Ireland, sometimes meeting controversy. Her first novel, Through Troubled Waters (1885), is a fictionalised version of a real-life incident in Galway in which the daughters of a prosperous landowning family are murdered to make way for the sons to inherit the land. The novel also depicts the rural clergy as complicit, by denouncing the victims from the pulpit. The newspaper United Ireland strongly criticises the novel, claiming it peddles in anti-Irish stereotypes for a British audience. She responds by stating that she had intended the book for an Irish publisher and audience, and that she should not be asked “to prove my patriotism at the expense of truth.”
Lynch publishes across Ireland, the United Kingdom and from Paris. Her political work eventually leads to a breakdown in her health, after which she spends a period recuperating on the Isle of Wight. By 1896, she has settled in Paris, having also lived in both Spain and Greece. She speaks Greek and French. She then returns to lecture in Ireland and is a part of the salons of Paris in the Belle Époque as well as the Irish Literary Revival in Dublin. She is friends with the historian, biographer and literary critic Arvède Barine (pseudonym of Louise-Cécile Vincens), the writers Mabel and Mary Robinson, and the medievalist Gaston Paris. Her work however does not bring significant income, and she is forced to apply to the Royal Literary Fund for help on multiple occasions. Eventually it takes a toll on her health. She spends time in hospital in Margate, England in 1903.
Lynch dies at 60 Rue de Breteuil in Paris on January 9, 1904, where she spends much of her working life.
Patrick (Pat) James John Eddery, flat racingjockey and trainer, is born on March 18, 1952, in Newbridge, County Kildare, near the Curragh Racecourse. He is the fifth of twelve children of Jimmy Eddery, a jockey who is Irish Flat Champion in 1954 and 1955, and who rides Panaslipper to win the Irish Derby in 1955. His mother, Josephine, is the daughter of Jack Moylan, also a jockey. His brother Paul goes on to become a successful jockey also. He initially attends the Patrician Brothers’ Primary School in Newbridge, later enrolling in Oatlands Primary School in Stillorgan when the family moves to Blackrock, Dublin.
Devoted from his earliest years to riding horses, Eddery has little interest in school. He begins his career on his fourteenth birthday as an apprentice jockey in Ireland (1966–67) with the stable of Seamus McGrath. In 1967, he moves to England where he is apprenticed to Frenchie Nicholson until 1972. After riding for more than a season without success, he records his first win on April 24, 1969, at Epsom Downs Racecourse on a horse named Alvaro, trained by Major Michael Pope. Alvaro provides Eddery with six wins in succession during the 1969 season.
Eddery finishes the 1971 season as champion apprentice with seventy-one winners, and in 1972 has his first Derby ride, the 50–1 chance Pentland Firth, who finishes third behind Roberto and Rheingold. In 1972 he also has his first victory in a Group 1 race via Erimo Hawk, when awarded the Ascot Gold Cup following the disqualification of Rock Roi for interference.
Eddery rides for the Newmarket trainer Geoffrey Barling in 1972 before becoming the stable jockey for leading trainer, Peter Walwyn, later that year. For Walwyn, he wins his first two English classic races on Polygamy (Oaks) and Grundy (Derby) and is Champion Jockey in four consecutive seasons from 1974 to 1977. While under retainer with Walwyn, he clinches the first of these titles when just twenty-two years old, a record in the post-war era. In 1975, after winning the Irish Derby on Grundy, he rides the horse to a hard-fought victory over Bustino in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot in what is described by many at the time as “the race of the century.”
Eddery remains as stable jockey to Walwyn for eight years, before joining the Ballydoyle racehorse training facility of legendary Irish trainer Vincent O’Brien, for whom he rides a string of big-race winners, including the brilliant Golden Fleece, owned by Robert Sangster, in the 1982 Epsom Derby.
The O’Brien–Eddery combination experiences controversial defeat in the 1984 Epsom Derby when Eddery rides then unbeaten 2000 Guineas Stakes-winner El Gran Senor and seems to be cruising to victory in the final furlong, only to be caught on the line and beaten by a short head by Secreto, trained by O’Brien’s son David. He later admits that he should have won the race, but when the horses in front of him fell away early in the straight he was left in front too soon and was unable to repel Secreto’s late challenge. He later wins the Irish Derby on El Gran Senor, beating the subsequent Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe winner, Rainbow Quest. During 1984, he also partners the O’Brien-trained and subsequent outstanding stallion, Sadler’s Wells, to two of his three Group 1 successes.
The 1980s represent the pinnacle of Eddery’s career and include victories in the 1983 Arlington Million in Chicago on Tolomeo, the 1985 Breeders’ Cup Turf at Aqueduct Racetrack, New York, on Pebbles, and the 1986 Japan Cup on Jupiter Island, the latter two horses being trained by Clive Brittain. He also has four victories in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe: on Detroit in 1980, Rainbow Quest in 1985, the great Dancing Brave, on whom he also wins the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in 1986, and Trempolino in 1987. The field for the 1986 ‘Arc’ is extremely strong and Dancing Brave’s late winning run a thrilling spectacle. The race is voted “the greatest ever horserace” in a poll conducted by the Racing Post in 2022.
Rainbow Quest and Dancing Brave are both owned by the Saudi Prince Khalid Abdullah, whose Juddmonte Farms is by then one of the world’s largest racing and breeding organisations. In 1987, Eddery becomes Abdullah’s retained jockey. Highlights of their association, which lasts until 1994, include Quest for Fame winning the 1990 Epsom Derby, and Zafonic, winner of the 1993 2000 Guineas Stakes.
Meanwhile, Eddery continues to win the jockeys’ championships, a task made easier by being retained by Juddmonte in England rather than commuting regularly to Ireland to ride for Vincent O’Brien. His highest seasonal total of wins is 209 in 1990, which is the first time a jockey has exceeded 200 since Sir Gordon Richards in 1952. His epic battle for the championship in 1987 with American Steve Cauthen is particularly intense, with Cauthen securing the title with 197 winners and Eddery coming close at 195. The title would have been shared at 196 winners apiece but for a successful objection by the rider of the third horse to the winner after the last definitive race between Eddery and Cauthen when they finished first and second, respectively. In 1988, Eddery retains the title with 183 winners from just over 480 rides, a remarkable strike rate of over thirty-eight per cent. He wins the championship for the eleventh and final time in 1996. His final classic win is on Silver Patriarch in the St. Leger Stakes of 1997.
Eddery rides major winners outside Europe and the United States, including Jupiter Island in the 1986 Japan Cup, and French Glory in the Canadian International Stakes. He teams up with Lester Piggott, Joe Mercer and French jockeys Freddie Head and Yves Saint-Martin to take part in a series of challenge races under the Ritz Club Challenge Trophy at Singapore and other Asian cities starting in 1983 for several years. His overall total of winners in the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe and overseas, exceeds 6,000. Although fiercely competitive on the racetrack, he is popular with fellow jockeys, trainers, owners and racegoers, who respond to his good-natured personality, courtesy and sense of humour.
Eddery has a distinctive riding style that is not classically elegant but undoubtedly effective and strong in a finish. He rides a number of truly outstanding racehorses including Dancing Brave, El Gran Senor and Pebbles, but maintains that the brilliant and undefeated Derby winner, Golden Fleece, is the greatest of all the horses he partnered throughout his career.
Eddery continues to ride into his fifties, finally retiring in 2003. He is appointed an honorary Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2005. He sets up an owners’ syndication business and takes out a training licence but has difficulty adjusting to life out of the saddle and becomes increasingly dependent upon alcohol. His training career meets with limited success, though he does train Hearts of Fire to win the Group 1 Gran Criterium of Italy in 2009.
Eddery marries Carolyn Mercer in November 1978. She is the daughter of flat jockey Manny Mercer, niece of jockey Joe Mercer, and granddaughter of jockey Harry Wragg. They have two daughters, Nichola and Natasha, and a son Harry. He has a son from an extramarital relationship, Toby Atkinson, who also becomes a jockey. The marriage with Carolyn breaks down in 2008 and the couple divorces in 2009.
Shortly after his marriage breaks down, Eddery begins living with Emma Owen, a former stable employee, at his 100-acre Musk Hill stud farm near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. He becomes progressively estranged from his children due to his continued alcoholism.
Eddery dies of a heart attack at the age of 63 on November 10, 2015. He leaves his £1.3 million estate to Emma Owen. His funeral takes place on December 8, 2015, and his remains are cremated at Oxford. Throughout his career, Eddery rode the winners of 4,632 British flat races, a figure exceeded only by Sir Gordon Richards and was UK Champion Jockey on eleven occasions and Irish Champion Jockey once. A plaque in his honour is unveiled by his children Nichola, Natasha and Harry at Ascot Racecourse in 2016, where he had been champion jockey at the Royal meeting on six occasions. He is inducted into the Qipco British Champions Series Hall of Fame in 2021, the second jockey after Lester Piggott to be so honoured.
(From: “Eddery, Patrick (Pat) James John” by P. Gerry McKenna, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, September 2022)
Byrne is born on March 17, 1882, the second of seven children born to Thomas Byrne, an engineer, and Fanny Dowman. His childhood home is at 36 Seville Place, a terraced house with five rooms just off the North Strand in Dublin. He drops out of school at the age of thirteen and is soon juggling jobs as a grocer’s assistant and a bicycle mechanic. Eventually he uses his savings to buy a pub on Talbot Street. He marries Elizabeth Heagney in 1910.
Byrne becomes an Alderman on Dublin Corporation in 1914. He is a member of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, a significant position for a politician from the Dublin Harbour constituency. In the records of the Oireachtas his occupation is given as company director. He is elected as MP for Dublin Harbour as a candidate of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in a by-election on October 1, 1915, following the death of William Abraham. The Easter Rising in 1916 is followed by the rapid decline of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the rise of Sinn Féin. At the 1918 Irish general election he is defeated by a Sinn Féin candidate, Philip Shanahan.
Byrne is elected as an Independent TD supporting the Anglo-Irish Treaty for the Dublin Mid constituency at the general election to the Third Dáil in 1922. From 1923 to 1928 he represents Dublin City North. In 1928 he is elected for a six-year term as a member of Seanad Éireann. He vacates his Dáil seat on December 4, 1928. He resigns from the Seanad on December 10, 1931, and returns to the Dáil in 1932. He remains a TD until his death in 1956, representing Dublin City North (1932–37) and Dublin North-East (1937–56). In several elections he secures more votes than any other politician in the country.
Byrne is elected as Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1930, serving in the post for nine consecutive years. When cycling or walking around the city he dispenses lollipops to children, who are often seen chasing him down the street. With a handshake and a few words for all, his eternal canvassing soon earns him the first of his nicknames: the Shaking Hand of Dublin. Married with eight children, he treats the people of Dublin as his second family. Every morning, he finds up to fifty people waiting for him in the Mansion House. None have appointments. All are met. He answers 15,000 letters in his first year as Lord Mayor. Many are from Dubliners looking for a job, a house, some advice or a reference. One morning in 1931 a journalist watches the Lord Mayor attend to his correspondence. Within an hour he accepts “seventeen invitations to public dinners, one invitation to a public entertainment and eight invitations to public functions.” Then he dictates forty-three sympathetic letters to men and women looking for employment.
In 1937, children between the ages of eight and eleven years old are being sentenced to spend up to five years in Industrial Schools. Their crime is stealing a few apples from an orchard. When Byrne says such sentences are “savage,” a judge responds with a defence of the Industrial School system, urging an end to “ridiculous Mansion House mummery.” He stands firm: “For the punishment of trifling offences the home of the children is better than any institution.” In 1938, he is favoured by the press for the presidency of Ireland, a ceremonial role created in the new Constitution, but he is outgunned by the political establishment.
When, in 1935, Byrne becomes the first Lord Mayor of Dublin to visit North America in 40 years, he is granted the freedom of Toronto, and The New York Times hails the arrival of a “champion showman.” He often extends a hand of friendship to Britain. He also improves relations between Dublin, until recently the centre of British authority, and the rest of the country. One night Dublin Fire Brigade gets an urgent call for assistance from Clones, County Monaghan. As Lord Mayor, he feels obliged to join the men on top of the fire engine as they set off on the 85-mile journey in the middle of the night.
In August 1936, Byrne addresses the inaugural meeting of the anti-communistIrish Christian Front, some of whose members later express anti-Semitic views. In 1938, as Lord Mayor, he presents a gift of a replica of the Ardagh Chalice to Italian naval cadets visiting Dublin on board two warships, who had been welcomed by the Irish government despite the protests of Dubliners. A photograph exists of Byrne giving a fascist salute along with Eoin O’Duffy, commander of the Blueshirts, around 1933.
In 1954, Byrne is elected as Lord Mayor for a record tenth time. This time he does not live in the Mansion House, but stays in Rathmines with his family, taking the bus to work each morning. He is just as devoted to the job. When flooding damages 20,000 houses in Fairview and North Strand, he rises from his sick bed to organise a relief fund. His final term as Lord Mayor comes to an end in 1955. Shortly afterwards, Trinity College Dublin awards him an honorary Doctor of Law, describing him as a “champion of the poor and needy, and a friend of all men.”
Byrne dies on March 13, 1956. His funeral is the largest seen in Dublin for many years. TheEvening Herald reports that “Traffic in O’Connell Street was held up for almost 20 minutes to allow the cortege of over 150 motor cars to pass, and at all the junctions along the route to Glasnevin people silently gathered to pay tribute to one of Dublin’s most famous sons.” The members of the Dáil stand and observe a short silence as a mark of respect. A telegram is sent to his widow from the Mayor of New York City, Robert F. Wagner Jr., expressing deepest sympathy, and stating “that Ald. Byrne had attained high office of Lord Mayor many times, but he never lost contact with the poor and the underprivileged, whose champion he was.”
The by-election caused by Byrne’s death, is won by his son, Patrick Byrne. Two other sons, A. P. Byrne and Thomas Byrne, are also TDs for various Dublin constituencies. Alfie Byrne Road in Clontarf is named after him. The Dublin Bay North branch of Young Fine Gael is renamed “Alfie Byrne YFG.”
The 1973 Old Bailey bombing, a car bomb attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and dubbed as Bloody Thursday by newspapers in Britain, takes place outside the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey, in London on March 8, 1973. This is the Provisional IRA’s first major attack in England since the Troubles began in the late 1960s. The unit also explodes a second bomb outside the Ministry of Agriculture building near Whitehall at around the same time the bomb at the Old Bailey explodes.
England had been relatively untouched by the violence up until the beginning of 1973, but the IRA Army Council draws up plans for a bombing campaign to take place in England some time early in 1973. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, loyalist paramilitaries had bombed Dublin and other parts of the Republic of Ireland a number of times before the IRA began its bombing campaign in England. Following the Dublin bombings in late 1972 and in January 1973 carried out by Loyalists which killed three people and injured over 150, the media attention these bombings received helped the IRA decide to take its campaign to Britain in return. The arrest of top IRA personnel in both the Republic and Northern Ireland like Máire Drumm, Seán Mac Stíofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Martin McGuinness in late 1972 help to convince the IRA to bomb England to take the heat off of the IRA in Ireland.
The IRA selects the volunteers who constitute the Active Service Unit (ASU) for the England bombing operation, which is scheduled to take place on March 8, 1973, the same day that a border poll, boycotted by Nationalists and Roman Catholics, is being held in Belfast. Volunteers from all three of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade Battalions are selected for the bombing mission. The team includes Gerry Kelly (19), Robert “Roy” Walsh (24), an expert bomb maker from Belfast, Hugh Feeney, a Belfast-born IRA volunteer and explosives expert, and two sisters, Marian (19) and Dolours Price (22) from Belfast and are from a staunchly Republican family, along with five other lesser-known volunteers from Belfast: Martin Brady (22), William Armstrong (29), Paul Holmes (19), William McLarnon (19), and Roisin McNearney (18).
Several days before the bombing, the leaders of the IRA ASU, which includes sisters Marian and Dolours Price, go to London and pick out four targets: the Old Bailey, the Ministry of Agriculture, an army recruitment office near Whitehall and New Scotland Yard. They then report back to their Officer Commanding (OC) in Belfast, and the IRA Army Council gives the go ahead. The bombs are made in Ireland and transported to London via ferry, according to Marian Price.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) warns the British that the ASU is traveling to England, but are unable to provide specifics as to the target.
The drivers and the volunteers who are to prime the bombs wake up at 6:00 a.m. and drive the car bombs to their various targets. Gerry Kelly and Roy Walsh drive their car bomb to the Old Bailey. It is planned that by the time the bombs go off around 3:00 p.m., the ASU will be back in Ireland. The bomb at New Scotland Yard is found at 8:30 a.m. by a policeman who notices a discrepancy in the licence plate. The bomb team starts lifting out 5-pound (2.3 kg) bags of explosives and separates them, so that if the bomb does go off, the force of the explosion will be greatly reduced. The bomb squad eventually finds the detonating cord leads, which run under the front passenger seat of the car. Peter Gurney, a senior member of New Scotland Yard, cuts the detonator cord leads, defusing the bomb.
However, at the Old Bailey the bomb explodes, injuring many and causing extensive damage. Scotland Yard states it had warned the City of London police at 2:01 p.m. to search near the Old Bailey for a green Ford Cortina. The car is not located until 2:35 p.m. and explodes at 2:49 p.m. while police are evacuating the area. Several more people are injured by the car bomb near the Ministry of Agriculture, which brings the total number injured to over two hundred. A British man, Frederick Milton (60), dies of a heart attack. Dolours Price writes in her memoir, “There were warnings phoned in but people had stood about, curious to see… If people ignored the warnings and stood around gawking, they were stupid. The numbers of injured came about through curiosity and stupidity.” The ASU is caught trying to leave the country at Heathrow Airport prior to the explosions, as the police had been forewarned about the bombings and are checking all passengers to Belfast and Dublin. All ten give false names that do not match their documents and they are detained. The IRA Volunteer who gave a warning about the bombs an hour before they exploded is the only one not captured.
The IRA volunteers have to be tried at Winchester Crown court in Winchester Castle as the Old Bailey is wrecked by the car bomb. The trial takes ten weeks and is set amid extremely strict security. William McLarnon pleads guilty to all charges on the first day of the trial. On November 14, 1973, a jury convicts six men and two women of the bombings. The jury acquits Roisin McNearney in exchange for information and she is given a new identity. As her verdict is handed down, the other defendants begin to hum the “Dead March” from Saul, and one throws a coin at her, shouting, “Take your blood money with you” as she leaves the dock in tears. Six of the nine people convicted admit to Provisional IRA membership.
The judge sentences the eight to life imprisonment for the bombings and 20 years for conspiracy, while William McLarnon, whose family was forced out of their home in August 1969, is sentenced to 15 years. When his sentence is read he shouts, “Up The Provisional IRA.” As the eight are led to the cells below the court, several give raised fist salutes to relatives and friends in the public gallery. The Price sisters immediately go on hunger strike, soon followed by Feeney and Kelly, for the right not to do prison work and to be repatriated to a jail in Ireland. The bombers on hunger strike are eventually moved to jails in Ireland as part of the 1975 IRA truce agreed with the British. In 1983, Kelly escapes from Maze Prison and becomes part of an IRA ASU in the Netherlands. He is recaptured three years later by the Dutch authorities and extradited.
The Old Bailey bomb is the beginning of a sustained bombing campaign in England. The next major bombing by the IRA in England is the King’s Cross station and Euston station bombings which injured 13 people and do widespread damage. Another significant attack that year is the 1973 Westminster bombing which injures 60 people. Two more people die in England from IRA bombings in 1973, bringing the total to three for the year in that part of United Kingdom. The next year, 1974, is the bloodiest year of the Troubles outside of Northern Ireland with over 70 people being killed in the Republic of Ireland and England combined. Thirty-four are killed in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, 21 from the Birmingham pub bombings, 12 from the M62 coach bombing, and several people are killed by the IRA’s Balcombe Street Gang.
One of the Old Bailey bombers, Marian Price, explains the IRA’s reasoning for bombing England. “It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s Irish people dying.” So if the armed struggle was to succeed then it was necessary to “bring it to the heart of the British Establishment.” Hence symbolic targets such as the Old Bailey “were carefully chosen.”
The Shankill Butchers, a gang of eleven Ulster loyalists, are sentenced to life imprisonment on February 20, 1979, for 112 offences including nineteen murders. Many of the gang are members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) that is active between 1975 and 1982 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The gang is based in the Shankill area and is responsible for the deaths of at least 23 people, most of whom are killed in sectarian attacks. The gang is notorious for kidnapping, torturing and murdering random or suspected Catholic civilians. Each is beaten ferociously and has their throat hacked with a butcher’s knife. Some are also tortured and attacked with a hatchet. The gang also kills six Ulster Protestants over personal disputes, and two other Protestants mistaken for Catholics.
Most of the Butchers are eventually captured and eleven of them come to trial during 1978 and early 1979. On February 20, 1979, the eleven men are convicted of a total of nineteen murders, and the 42 life sentences handed out are the longest combined prison sentences in United Kingdom legal history.
William Moore pleads guilty to eleven counts of murder and Bobby “Basher” Bates pleads guilty to ten counts. The trial judge, Lord Justice Turlough O’Donnell, says that he does not wish to be cast as “public avenger” but feels obliged to sentence the two to life imprisonment with no chance of release. Gang leader Lenny Murphy and his two chief “lieutenants,” however, escape prosecution.
In summing-up, Lord Justice O’Donnell states that their crimes, “a catalogue of horror”, are “a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry.” After the trial, Detective Chief Inspector Jimmy Nesbitt, head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Murder Squad in Tennent Street Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base and the man charged with tracking down the Butchers, comments, “The big fish got away,” a reference to Murphy (referred to in court as “Mr. X” or the “Master Butcher”) and to Messrs “A” and “B.”
Lenny Murphy is assassinated by a Provisional Irish Republican Army hit squad early in the evening of November 16, 1982, outside the back of his girlfriend’s house in the Glencairn estate. The IRA is likely acting with loyalist paramilitaries who perceive him as a threat.
The first of the Butchers to be released from prison is John Townsley, who had been only fourteen when he became involved with the gang and sixteen when arrested. Bobby Bates is released in October 1996, two years after the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994. He reportedly “found religion” behind bars. He is shot and killed in the upper Shankill area on June 11, 1997, by the son of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) man he had killed in the Windsor Bar. “Mr. B”, John Murphy, dies in a car accident in Belfast in August 1998. William Moore is the final member of the gang to be released from prison in August 1998, in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement, after over twenty-one years behind bars. He dies on May 17, 2009, from a suspected heart attack at his home.
The investigations by Martin Dillon, author of The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder (1989 and 1998), suggests that a number of other individuals (whom he is unable to name for legal reasons) escape prosecution for participation in the crimes of the Butchers and that the gang are responsible for a total of at least thirty murders.
The Butchers brought a new level of paramilitary violence to a country already hardened by death and destruction.
Mary Lou McDonald is ratified as the new president of Sinn Féin at a special party Ardfheis on February 10, 2018. Approximately 2,000 party delegates gather for the meeting in Dublin. After almost 35 years, Gerry Adams officially steps down as party leader, a role he has held since November 1983.
McDonald takes the helm with a sweeping speech that touches on everything from abortion to Brexit and promises a united Ireland “in our time.”
McDonald, 48, is the first woman to lead the party, and the first Sinn Féin leader with no direct connection to Ireland’s period of violence known as the Troubles. “We must only agree that the past is never again repeated,” she says. “On other things, we can agree to disagree. The poet Maya Angelou put it well: ‘History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But if faced with courage, need not be lived again.’”
McDonald takes over for Adams, a divisive politician who was the face of the Irish republican movement as it shifted from violence to peace. The end of Adams’ tenure marks a new era for the party, which wants to unite the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to the south.
Adams, who announced in November 2017 he was stepping down after almost 35 years, was the key figure in the peace process that saw the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the formation of a power sharing government between Northern Ireland’s pro-British and republican factions. But many believe Sinn Féin’s popularity among voters has been hindered by the presence of leaders linked to the Troubles, which killed over 3,600 people.
McDonald immediately puts her own stamp on the future, trying to infuse new energy into the movement that has lawmakers on both sides of the Irish border. But she also focuses on Sinn Féin’s founding principle: a united Ireland. “We are the generation of republicans who will see the rising of the moon,” she says. “Sinn Féin in government, both North and South. Irish unity in our time.”
McDonald also lays out her positions on the key issues of the day.
On the United Kingdom’s upcoming departure from the European Union, or Brexit, she says Sinn Féin will not accept any deal that reinstates border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Brexit represents a threat to the prosperity of Ireland as a whole.
McDonald also says the party will campaign for women’s right to an abortion in Ireland’s upcoming referendum on the issue and says she is committed to reaching an agreement that will restore Northern Ireland’s power sharing government on the basis of “respect and integrity for all.”
Northern Ireland’s last government collapsed more than a year earlier amid a corruption scandal.
(From: “Mary Lou McDonald takes over as Sinn Féin party leader” by Danica Kirka, AP News, apnews.com, February 10, 2018)
Despite the controversy over the book, people in Frank McCourt‘s hometown of Limerick turn out in huge numbers to attend the sold-out film premiere of Angela’s Ashes on January 12, 2000. A simultaneous premiere takes place in Dublin.
Although set in Limerick, many street scenes are filmed in Cork. For example, the “fleas in the mattress” scene is filmed at Farren Street, Blackpool, and other scenes are shot at Roche’s Buildings, Lower John Street and Barrack Street.
With an estimated $25 million budget, the film grosses only $13,042,112 in the United States, making it a box-office bomb.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 52%, based on reviews from 87 critics, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site’s consensus states: “In spite of its attempts to accurately record Frank McCourt’s memoirs, the onscreen adaptation fails to capture any of the drama or humor of his life.” On Metacritic, the film has a score of 54 out of 100, based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews.”
Michael Legge is praised for his portrayal of the adolescent Frank. In particular, he is said to excel in his role as an innocent teenager growing up with typical coming of age rites involving sexuality, maturity and peer pressure in a Catholic Irish setting.
The INLA is founded by former members of the Official Irish Republican Army who oppose that group’s ceasefire. It is initially known as the “People’s Liberation Army” or “People’s Republican Army.” The INLA wages a paramilitary campaign against the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland. It is also active to a lesser extent in the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and Continental Europe. High-profile attacks carried out by the INLA include the Droppin Well bombing (1982), the Shankill Road killings (1994) and the assassinations of Airey Neave (1979) and Billy Wright (1997). However, the INLA is smaller and less active than the main republican paramilitary group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). It is also weakened by feuds and internal tensions. Members of the group use the covernames People’s Liberation Army, People’s Republican Army, and Catholic Reaction Force for attacks its volunteers carry out but for which the INLA does not want to claim responsibility. The INLA becomes a proscribed group in the United Kingdom on July 3, 1979, under the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act.
After a 24-year armed campaign, the INLA declares a ceasefire on August 22, 1998. In August 1999, it states that “There is no political or moral argument to justify a resumption of the campaign.” On October 11, 2009, speaking at the graveside of its founder Seamus Costello in Bray, the INLA formally announces an end to its armed campaign, stating the current political framework allows for the pursuit of its goals through peaceful, democratic means and begins decommissioning its weapons.
The IRSP supports a “No First Strike” policy, that is allowing people to see the perceived failure of the Northern Ireland peace process for themselves without military actions.
The INLA is a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 and an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland.
(Pictured: INLA logo consisting of the Starry Plough and the Flag of Ireland with a red star and a fist holding an AK-47-derivative rifle)
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.
The Conollys, themselves unhappily childless, at that point take up the welfare of young children from disadvantaged backgrounds as a lifelong project, contributing both money and effort towards initiatives which enable foundlings and vagabonds to acquire productive skills and support themselves. They develop one of the first Industrial Schools where boys learn trades, and she takes active personal interest in mentoring the students. In middle age, she also virtually adopts her niece Emily Napier (1783–1863), the daughter of her sister Lady Sarah Lennox. Emily, who spends long months with her aunt in Kildare, marries Sir Henry Bunbury, 7th Baronet, and moves to Suffolk, although she remains close to her aunt until her death.
Thomas Conolly dies on April 27, 1803. Upon his death, a major part of his estates, which includes Wentworth Castle, passes to a distant relative, Frederick Vernon. Conolly receives the Castletown House and estate, as also certain liquid investments and valuable urban properties, which enable her to live in comfort and continue her activities until her own death on August 6, 1821, of an abscess on her hip. She wills these substantial properties to a great-nephew, Edward Michael Pakenham, grandson of Thomas’ sister Harriet, later the MP for Donegal.
In 1999, a 6-part miniseries called Aristocrats, based on the lives of Conolly and her sisters, airs in the UK.
(Pictured: “Lady Louisa Conolly” by George Romney, 1776)
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