Deane is the fourth child of Frank Deane and Winifred (Doherty) and is brought up as part of a Catholicnationalist 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.”
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.
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 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.
Flanagan also plays senior Gaelic football for Mayo. He captains the All-Ireland final-winning sides of 1950 and 1951 and wins five Connacht senior championship medals in all. He also wins two National Football League titles in 1949 and 1954. While still a footballer, he enters into a career in politics.
Flanagan comes from a Fianna Fáil family and is recruited into the party in east Mayo. He is elected a Fianna Fáil TD for Mayo South at the 1951 Irish general election and then wins a seat from 1969 in Mayo East at each subsequent election until he loses his seat at the 1977 Irish general election.
Flanagan rises rapidly through the party ranks and is appointed a Parliamentary Secretary under TaoiseachSeán Lemass in 1959. In the 1966 Fianna Fáil leadership election he supports Jack Lynch. When Lynch becomes Taoiseach, he is promoted to the Cabinet as Minister for Health. Three years later in 1969, he becomes Minister for Lands. He loses his seat at the 1977 Irish general election and effectively retires from domestic politics. However, he is elected to the European Parliament in the first direct elections in 1979. He is re-elected in 1984 and retires from politics in 1989.
Flanagan marries Mary Patricia Doherty in 1950. They have two sons and five daughters, including Dermot, who also plays All-Ireland senior football for Mayo.
Flanagan dies at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin on February 5, 1993, at the age of 71. Following his death, a Mayo sports journalist comments, “Above all, we’ll miss that noble link with an era when, as children, Seán Flanagan was our second God.”
Gearóid O’Sullivan, soldier and politician, is born on January 28, 1891, at Coolnagrane, near Skibbereen, County Cork, fourth son among six sons and three daughters of Michael O’Sullivan, farmer, of Loughine, and Margaret Sullivan (née McCarthy) of Coolnagrane.
Christened Jeremiah but known in later life as Gearóid, O’Sullivan is an outstanding pupil at national school and secondary school in Skibbereen. Encouraged by his teachers, he acquires a love of the Irish language. Not yet ten, he joins the Gaelic League in Skibbereen in October 1900. He takes part in the Oireachtas debates of 1909. In 1911 he qualifies at St. Patrick’s College, Dublin, as a national schoolteacher and teaches at Kildorrery, County Cork, but returns to Dublin in 1912 to take up a post at St. Peter’s National School, Phibsborough. He takes an honours degree in Celtic studies at University College Dublin (UCD) (1913), an H.Dip.Ed. (1914), and an M.Ed. (1915). At the same time, he is an organiser and teacher with the Gaelic League, a member of its Keating branch at Parnell Square, Dublin, and a founder of the League’s “fáinne” proficiency badge.
O’Sullivan joins the F Company, 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers at their foundation in November 1913, is aide-de-camp to Seán Mac Diarmada during the 1916 Easter Rising and is ordered by Patrick Pearse to raise the flag of rebellion over the General Post Office (GPO) stronghold in Dublin. Interned at Frongoch internment camp in Wales after the rising, he belongs to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) group of prisoners closely linked with Michael Collins, a proximity that continues throughout the crisis years to follow. Released in the amnesty of December 1916, he intensifies his Volunteer activity, playing a prominent role in Carlow Brigade, for which he is briefly detained while working as a teacher at St. Mary’s Knockbeg College, County Carlow. When the Irish Volunteers become the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1919, he is arrested again and goes on hunger strike at Mountjoy Prison, which leads to his release. Active throughout the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) and narrowly avoiding recapture during meetings with Collins, he joins the supreme council of the IRB in November 1921, remaining there for the remainder of his military career.
From February 1920, O’Sullivan replaces Collins as adjutant general of the IRA, a position he retains until the Anglo–Irish Treaty of December 1921 (which he supports), resuming it a month later as a lieutenant general of the new National Army, responsible for personnel and promotions. He is also elected to Dáil Éireann for Carlow–Kilkenny in 1921 and again in 1922, retiring in 1923. His intellectual and organisational abilities guarantee that his position within the army is safe after the death in August 1922 of Collins, to whom he owes much for his initial rise to prominence. On August 28 he is appointed to the newly created army council, whose most draconian prerogative becomes the military execution of republican prisoners.
After the Irish Civil War (1922–23), wholesale demobilisation of officers and other ranks takes place, but O’Sullivan and his council colleagues Richard Mulcahy, Seán Mac Mahon, and Seán Ó Murthuile survive the fiscal axe. Their privileged position angers some officers, led by Major GeneralLiam Tobin, alarmed at the rate of demobilisation and the state’s apparent abandonment of Collins’s republican ideals. Through the Irish Republican Army Organisation, they deplore the devaluation of their pre-treaty IRA service and the retention of certain former British Army officers and instructors. O’Sullivan’s brief time as adjutant general places him in the role of personnel manager. As the Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1923, transforms the National Army into the defence forces of an Irish dominion, he is clearly in the sights of those who disagree with how these forces took shape.
As demobilisation continues and former British personnel become more evident, O’Sullivan and his colleagues become targets of suspicion that a hostile IRB clique had controlled the army council since its formation after the death of Collins. Exaggerated or not, such claims precipitate the army crisis of March 1924, in which O’Sullivan personally orders a raiding party under Colonel Hugo MacNeill to arrest its leaders. To defuse the crisis, he and his army council colleagues are forced to stand down, while the arrested dissidents are summarily retired. The subsequent army inquiry (April–June 1924) absolves him and his colleagues of any wrongdoing, but their active military careers are over. O’Sullivan, however, is for some time secretary of the military service pensions board.
Civilian life treats O’Sullivan well, as he enters a legal career and in 1926 is called to the bar. In 1927 he is appointed Judge Advocate General and remains so until 1932. After the assassination of Minister for JusticeKevin O’Higgins in July 1927, he fills the vacated Dublin County seat in a by-election in August, retaining it at subsequent elections until 1937. In August 1928 he is a Free State delegate to the Empire Parliamentary Association conference in Canada. Openly supporting Gen. Eoin O’Duffy and the short-lived ‘Blueshirts’ vanguard of the fledgling Fine Gael party during 1933–34, he pointedly refuses to surrender his legally held revolver when gardaí demand it as a precaution against a feared Blueshirt coup d’étât. In 1937 he becomes a barrister on the western circuit, and in 1940 commissioner for special purposes of the income tax acts, a post he holds for life.
O’Sullivan lives at St. Kevin’s Park, Dartry, Dublin, where he dies at the age of 57 on March 26, 1948. His military funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery, with his coffin draped in the same flag that had covered the coffin of Michael Collins, reflects his high national profile.
In 1922, O’Sullivan marries Maude Kiernan, sister of Kitty Kiernan and daughter of Peter and Bridget Kiernan, whose family is closely involved with the Irish political leadership, notably Michael Collins and Harry Boland. After Maude’s death he marries Mary Brennan of Belfast. They have three daughters and a son, all of whom survive him. O’Sullivan is commemorated in County Cork by a plaque at Skibbereen town hall.
McCarthy is the second child of John George McCarthy of Cork, plumber, and Agnes Abina McCarthy (née O’Donoghue). He is educated at Presentation Brothers College, Cork, University College Dublin (UCD), and King’s Inns, where he enrolls in 1948. He is called to the bar in 1956.
After graduating from UCD McCarthy briefly works as a clerk on a building site and as an insurance agent before becoming an actor with the Radio Éireann Repertory in 1947. During his time with Radio Éireann he also writes four plays, one of which, entitled Jericho’s trumpets, is based on his experiences in the insurance industry. He is later employed as a speech and drama teacher by Cork vocational educational committee. At the same time, he develops an interest in industrial relations as treasurer of the actors’ trade union Equity and then as secretary of the Civil Service Alliance. In 1956 he becomes full-time general secretary of the Vocational Teacher’s Association, which later becomes the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI). Through this post he eventually becomes president (1963–64) of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and sits on the executive committee for ten years. As secretary to the International Committee of Technical Teachers he organises conferences around the world and develops countless international contacts.
In 1968 McCarthy publishes his first book, The distasteful challenge. A damning indictment of the static nature of Irish society at the time, it stresses the need to face up to change, particularly in the areas of education, the civil service, and local government. This is followed in 1971 by Industrial democracy. The following year he takes a leave of absence from the TUI to become a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). In 1973 his dedication to the arts is rewarded with a seat (1973–76) on the RTÉ Authority and in the same year he publishes Decade of upheaval, which documents the experiences of the trade union movement during the turbulent era of the 1960s. In 1977 he becomes a lecturer in industrial relations at TCD and his 670-page magnum opus, Trade unions in Ireland, 1894–1960, is published to critical acclaim. In 1979 he is appointed to the chair in industrial relations at TCD and becomes head of the school of business and administrative studies. He is later appointed dean of the faculty of economic and social studies and made a fellow of TCD.
McCarthy is a firm believer in resolving industrial relations problems through negotiation. Both unions and management alike respect his views and abilities and he is frequently called on by the private and public sectors, as well as governments, to use his expertise to bring an end to protracted disputes. He sits on numerous public bodies including the National Industrial & Economic Council and the Irish National Productivity Committee. In 1985 his ability to bridge the divide between management and unions is recognised with his election to the council of the Irish Management Institute. Despite his career in industrial relations he maintains his interest in drama and is an original shareholder in the new Abbey Theatre. In 1973 he is appointed to the board of the theatre, serving as chairman from 1982–85. He is also a member of the board of governors and guardians of Dr. Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin.
Cowen is exposed to politics at a young age. His grandfather was a councillor in the Fianna Fáil party, and his father, Bernard Cowen, held a seat in Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament). He is an exemplary debater in school and often speaks at his father’s election rallies. He studies at University College Dublin and at the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland, where he is trained as a solicitor. His father’s death in 1984 prompts a by-election for the seat he had held in the Dáil. At the age of 24, he captures the seat, becoming one of the youngest members ever to sit in the Dáil.
Cowen’s political mentor is Albert Reynolds, who becomes Taoiseach in 1992 when Fianna Fáil is in a coalition government with the Progressive Democrats. He is an outspoken critic of the coalition, famously stating about the Progressive Democrats, “When in doubt, leave them out!” He serves as Minister for Labour (1992–93), and in 1993, after the breakup of the Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats government, he helps to negotiate the short-lived coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party. He then serves as Minister for Transport, Energy, and Communications (1993–94), leaving office after Fianna Fáil is forced into opposition by the formation of a Fine Gael–Labour–Democratic Left coalition.
During Fianna Fáil’s years out of government, Cowen serves successively as opposition Spokesperson for Agriculture, Food, and Forestry (1994–97) and Spokesperson for Health (1997). Following elections in 1997, Fianna Fáil leader Bertie Ahern forms a coalition government with the Progressive Democrats, and the party once again returns to power. Cowen serves as Minister for Health and Children (1997–2000), Minister for Foreign Affairs (2000–04), and Minister for Finance (2004–08). In June 2007 he was appointed Tánaiste.
Cowen is known for his sharp tongue and sometimes rough-hewn manner, but he is also recognized for his fierce intelligence, wit, and jovial demeanour. A combative politician and loyal party member, he is for many years seen as an obvious successor to Ahern. In April 2008, amid an investigation into possible past financial misconduct, Ahern announces that he will resign as Taoiseach and Leader of Fianna Fáil the following month. Cowen, who had remained supportive of Ahern throughout, is elected Leader of Fianna Fáil in April 2008. He becomes Taoiseach the following month and is faced with leading the country amid the global financial crisis that creates Ireland’s worst economy since the 1930s.
Cowen’s government oversees the bailout of Ireland’s banking system, which had been thrown into crisis by the collapse of the housing market, but the rescue comes at the cost of a skyrocketing deficit. As the country’s economic difficulties deepen, he seeks a cure that he hopes would obviate the need of foreign intervention, proposing an increase in income taxes and cuts in services. In November 2010, however, as concern for Ireland’s financial stability grows among its eurozone partners, he agrees to accept a bailout of more than $100 million from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. There is concern in Ireland that one condition for foreign aid might be an increase in Ireland’s comparatively low corporate taxes. The Green Party, Fianna Fáil’s junior partner in the governing coalition, responds to the situation by calling for early elections.
In mid-January 2011 Cowen’s leadership of Fianna Fáil is challenged by Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, partly in response to rumours that had swirled of a golf course meeting that had taken place between the Taoiseach and the former head of the Anglo Irish Bank before the government’s bailout of the Irish banking industry. He survives a leadership vote, but about one-third of the party’s parliamentary bloc votes against him. In a rapid succession of events that occur over the course of a few days, an unsuccessful reshuffle of the cabinet follows the resignation of six cabinet ministers, after which Cowen calls for an election to be held on March 11 and then announces that he will step down as party leader but continue as caretaker Taoiseach until the election. The Green Party then withdraws from the ruling coalition, forcing an even earlier election. Waiting until the parliament passes a finance bill that is necessary to meet the conditions of an International Monetary Fund–European Union loan but which imposes austerity measures that had proved very unpopular with much of the Irish public, he officially calls the election for February 25. Martin takes over as the Leader of Fianna Fáil, which suffers a crushing defeat in the election at the hands of Fine Gael.
In May 2014, Cowen becomes part of the board of Topaz Energy. He is appointed to the board of Beacon Hospital in February 2015. In July 2017, he is conferred with an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland. During his 50-minute acceptance speech he criticises the EU for its behaviour towards Ireland during the financial crisis and expresses regret that so many jobs were lost during the recession. Following the conferring ceremony, the NUI faces considerable public criticism for deciding to make the award to Cowen. Former (and founding) President of the University of Limerick, Edward M. Walsh, announces that he will hand back his own honorary doctorate in protest, and does so on November 14, 2018.
On July 5, 2019, Cowen is admitted to Beacon Hospital after suffering a major brain hemorrhage. He is then transferred to St. Vincent’s University Hospital where he spends five months before transferring to a physical rehabilitation facility. As of late 2020, while he is still in hospital following a stroke the previous year, he has been making steady progress.
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 journalistVeronica Guerin. His role in its development is later acknowledged by then Minister for JusticeNora 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.
Patrick Anthony HennessyRHA, Irish realist painter known for his highly finished still lifes, landscapes and trompe-l’œil paintings, dies in London on December 30, 1980. The hallmark of his style is his carefully observed realism and his highly finished surfaces, the result of a virtuoso painting technique.
Hennessy is born in Cork, County Cork, on August 28, 1915. The son of John Hennessy an army sergeant major from County Kerry and Bridget Hennessy from Cork. His father is killed in World War I at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. In 1921, when he is five years old, his mother remarries in Cork. Her second husband is a Scot named John Duncan and shortly afterwards the whole family moves to Arbroath, Scotland, where Duncan has relatives.
Hennessy is educated in Arbroath at St. Thomas RC Primary School followed by secondary education at Arbroath High School, where he begins to show an aptitude for art, leaving in 1933 with the Dux for Art and an accompanying medal. In the autumn of 1933 he enrolls at the Dundee of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, for a four-year Diploma course in Drawing and Painting under James McIntosh Patrick and Edward Baird. Here he meets Harry Robertson Craig who becomes his lifelong companion. He plays a full part in the social activities of the college, winning a fancy dress award at the Christmas revels in 1935 and producing a ballet “Paradise Lost” the following year. He gains a First Class Pass in each year of the course along with winning first prize in 1934 and 1936 for work done during the summer vacation. He graduates with a First Class Distinction in 1937.
Having gained a scholarship, Hennessy continues his studies at the Dundee of Jordanstone College of Art & Design for a further year by doing a Post-Graduate Diploma course in Drawing and Painting. Within a month of gaining his Post-Graduate Diploma he holds his first joint exhibition at the Art Galleries in Arbroath. In June 1938 he is awarded the Annual Travelling Scholarship for further studies in Paris and Italy. In Paris he meets up with the artists Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, whom he had met the previous year, the three travelling south together to Marseilles towards the end of that year. On his return to Scotland he is selected for the residential summer school course at Hospitalfield House near Arbroath under James Cowie. Two of his paintings, a still life and a self-portrait, are accepted that year by the Royal Scottish Academy for their Annual Exhibition. However, by the autumn of 1939 with war looming and feeling somewhat disenchanted on his return to Scotland, he decides to return to Ireland.
On arrival in Dublin Hennessy is offered an exhibition in December 1939 at the Country Shop on St. Stephen’s Green which is opened by Mainie Jellett. This attracts favourable attention. During the early 1940s he lives at various addresses in and around Dublin with frequent trips to Cork. In 1940 he is invited to join the Society of Dublin Painters and holds regular annual exhibitions of his work there during the 1940s and early 1950s. These exhibitions are supplemented by an eclectic mix of commissions, mostly portraits which he undertakes during this period. In 1941 he has three of his paintings accepted by the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) for their annual exhibition. This is the beginning of a long relationship with the RHA. He exhibits there virtually every year from 1941 until 1979, the year before his death.
From the early 1940s onwards, Hennessey’s work sometimes incorporates a homosexual visual subtext. He re-unites with Harry Robertson Craig in 1946 and soon after they move to Crosshaven, County Cork, and later to Cobh. In 1947, Time magazine selects him as one of Ireland’s outstanding painters, in recognition of the important position he has then attained in the art world. In 1948 he has an exhibition at the Victor Waddington Gallery, Dublin, and that same year is elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy and a full member the following year. In 1950 his painting De Profundis is selected for the Contemporary Irish Painting exhibition that tours North America. As a result of this tour, the American public and critics begin to take notice of his work. In 1951 he visits Italy, taking in Venice and Sicily and returning to Dublin with many of his canvases painted abroad. One of these paintings, Bronze Horses of St. Marks, is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1954.
In 1956, a friend of Hennessy, David Hendriks, opens the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery on St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin and it is this gallery that is to be the main outlet for his work over the following 22 years. In October 1956 the Thomas Agnew Gallery in London holds an exhibition of his work comprising 38 of his paintings. However, during the winter of 1959 he becomes seriously ill with pneumonia. As a consequence of this, in the autumn of that year he and Craig decide to winter in Morocco. This is the beginning of a new era in both their lives. They would never again spend a full year in Ireland. His exhibitions at the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery had for many years enjoyed favourable reviews from the art critics but in the 1960s this changes with critics claiming his paintings to be dull, repetitive and suggest he needs to explore new areas. Despite the barrage of criticism, in 1965 the Guildhall Gallery in Chicago offers him a major exhibition. Shortly after this exhibition takes place in 1966 he becomes one of the artists on permanent display at the gallery with an annual exhibition. The North American market is extremely lucrative for him and by the end of the decade he is selling more of his work in the United States than in Ireland. In 1968 he finally moves to Tangier, Morocco on a permanent basis and in 1970 sells his studio on Raglan Lane, Dublin.
In Morocco, Hennessy paints prolifically for nine years to keep up with demand from the Hendriks Gallery and Guildhall Gallery along with the RHA. In 1975 the Guildhall Gallery mounts a highly successful Retrospective of his work. In 1978 he has his last exhibition in Dublin at the Hendriks Gallery. By this time he has moved to the Algarve, Portugal and is beginning to have health problems.
In November 1980, with his health deteriorating, Craig brings Hennessy to a hospital in London for treatment. However, on December 30, 1980 he dies from cancer. Following cremation his ashes are buried in nearby Golders Green Crematorium. He leaves his entire estate to Harry Robertson Craig with the proviso that on Craig’s death the Royal Hibernian Academy should be the beneficiary. This legacy has been used to set up the annual Hennessy Craig Scholarship for aspiring artists.
Hennessy falls into the category of painter who develops a distinctive personal style, labelled at various times in his life as a Traditional Realist, Romantic, Photo Realist, Illusionary and Surrealist. However, he always remains intrinsically himself. His subjects range from still life and interiors to landscapes and portraits.
O’Connell is born to Jeremiah Ambrose and Winifred O’Connell. He is nicknamed “Ginger” because of his red hair. His father is a national school inspector, so the family lives in Sligo, Derry, Longford and Belfast, and he attends a succession of primary schools. He studies at University College Dublin (UCD) where he receives a BA and a first-class MA. He is a member of the Literary and Historical Society at UCD and has an interest in boxing.
O’Connell is living in Cavan with his father, his sister Mary Margaret, his brother John Aloysius and two servants, Mary Burke and Rose Anne O’Reilly, at the time of the 1911 census, when he is 23. He is working as a Solicitor’s Apprentice, can read and write as well as speak both English and Irish, and is single. His mother is not living as it is recorded that his father is a widower.
O’Connell spends some time in the United States Army, serving with the 69th New York Infantry Regiment between 1912 and 1914. He returns to Ireland in 1914 and joins the Irish Volunteers, becoming Chief of Inspection in 1915. He travels the country organising volunteer corps, as well as contributing to the Irish Volunteer’s journal and delivering lectures on military tactics to both the Volunteers and Fianna Éireann. He also delivers a series of lectures about the famous Irish battles to the Gaelic League in Dublin. He is not a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) as he believes that soldiers should not be a part of secret societies.
During the Irish War of Independence, O’Connell is a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) headquarters staff, as Assistant Director of Training and, after the killing of Dick McKee in 1920, as Director of Training. He coordinates, and is the principal lecturer, for a training course for military officers. The course is run clandestinely in the premises of the Topographical Society on Gardiner Street in Dublin. A sympathetic doorkeeper allows the group in at night when the society is not present. Topics delivered by O’Connell include tactics, ordinance and engineering.
In the IRA split after Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty, O’Connell takes the pro-Treaty side. He is made Deputy Chief of Staff in the National Army. On June 26, 1922, he is kidnapped by anti-treaty forces in reprisal for the arrest of an anti-treaty officer. His kidnapping is a precipitating factor in the formal outbreak of the Irish Civil War, when government pro-treaty forces two days later attack anti-treaty forces occupying the Four Courts. He survives the fighting and spends the rest of the civil war as General Officer Commanding the Curragh Command.
Following the Irish Civil War, the National Army is reorganised, and as part of that O’Connell is demoted from general to colonel. He subsequently holds a variety of positions: chief lecturer in the army school of instruction (1924–1929); director of no. 2 (intelligence) bureau (1929–1932); OC Irish Army Equitation School (March–June 1932); quartermaster-general (1932–1935) and director of the military archives (1935–1944). He also publishes articles on Irish and foreign military history and tactics in his time as a military historian. He marries Gertrude McGilligan, and they have two children together – one son and one daughter.
O’Connell dies of a heart attack at the age of 56 on February 19, 1944.
Flood is the son of policeman John Flood and Sarah Murphy. The 1911 census lists the family living at 15 Emmet Street. He is one of ten children consisting of nine brothers and one sister, most of whom are heavily involved in the Independence movement. He attends secondary school at O’Connell School in Dublin and wins a scholarship to study engineering at University College Dublin (UCD) where he is an active member of UCD’s famous debating forum, the Literary and Historical Society. He passes his first- and second-year engineering exams with distinction. At the time of his arrest, he is living with his family at 30 Summerhill Parade, Dublin.
Flood is captured, together with Thomas Bryan, Patrick Doyle, Bernard Ryan and Dermot O’Sullivan, while attacking a lorry-load of Dublin Metropolitan Police at Drumcondra on January 21, 1921. All of the men are found in possession of arms and a grenade is discovered in Flood’s pocket. On February 24, 1921, he is charged by court-martial, with high treason/levying war against the King, and is one of six men executed by hanging on March 14, 1921, in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. At nineteen years of age, he is the youngest of the six. No members of any of the six families are allowed to attend the execution in the yard at Mountjoy Prison.
Flood is a close personal friend of Kevin Barry and asks that he be buried as close as possible to him. He had taken part in the September 1920 ambush during which Barry had been arrested and had been involved in the planning of several aborted attempts to rescue him. He remains buried at Mountjoy Prison, together with nine other executed members of the Irish Republican Army known as The Forgotten Ten, until he is given a state funeral and reburied at Glasnevin Cemetery on October 14, 2001, after an intense campaign led by the National Graves Association.
Students of University College Dublin establish the Frank Flood Shield, an annual debating competition, in his memory. Flood and the other five men executed on March 14, 1921, are commemorated in Thomas MacGreevy‘s poem “The Six who were Hanged.”
The bridge over the River Tolka in Drumcondra at Millmount Avenue/Botanic Avenue is named Droichead Frank Flood on March 14, 2018.
seamus dubhghaill 