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Tag Archives: World War II


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The Execution of William Joyce

William Brooke Joyce, an American-born fascist and Nazi propaganda broadcaster during World War II, is hanged in Wandsworth Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on January 3, 1946, making him the last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom.

Joyce is born on April 24, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of three sons of Michael Joyce, an Irish Catholic from a family of tenant farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, and his wife, Gertrude (née Brooke), who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, is from a well-off Anglican Anglo-Irish family of physicians associated with County Roscommon. The Joyces return to Ireland in 1909. William, a precocious child, attends Coláiste Iognáid SJ, a Jesuit school in County Galway, from 1915 to 1921. At the age of fourteen, he abandons Catholicism for Anglicanism, apparently after being told that all non-Catholics, including his mother, would be damned. In adult life he is nominally anglican, though his adherence to Christianity is tenuous.

The Joyces are unionists and teach their children fervent imperialism. During the Irish War of Independence, Joyce openly associates with the Black and Tans and acts as a scout for them. An acquaintance claims that his views are so extreme even loyalists dislike him. On December 9, 1921, he flees to England to join the Worcestershire Regiment and is followed to England in 1923 by the rest of the family. When he enlists, he claims to be eighteen, but after he contracts rheumatic fever, his age is discovered, and he is discharged in March 1922. For a time, he studies mathematics and chemistry at Battersea Polytechnic Institute as a pre-medical student (1922–23), but he leaves of his own accord, with a reputation for laziness and violent political views. His studies in English and history at Birkbeck College are more successful. He is a brilliant linguist and mathematician and graduates BA with first-class honours in 1927. He publishes an academic article on philology and considers progressing to an MA. He later falsely claims that his research had been plagiarised by a Jewish academic. In 1932, he enrolls at King’s College, London, for a Ph.D. in educational psychology.

Joyce is disturbed by the difference between depressed post-war Britain and the imperial ideal that he had imbibed in Galway and is mocked for his outspoken patriotism and obvious Irishness. He identifies strongly with Thomas Carlyle, an earlier angry anti-liberal from the provinces. His life is marked by repeated episodes of hero worship, followed by disillusion and bitter denunciation. In 1923, he joins the British Fascists, an organisation that has a significant Irish loyalist membership, and in 1924 he allies himself with a militant splinter group, the National Fascists. Most British fascists see themselves as Tory auxiliaries, and they often provide a security presence at conservative meetings. On October 22, 1924, while stewarding a meeting addressed by a Jewish conservative candidate, he has his face slashed and is left with a prominent scar across his right cheek. He joins the Conservative Party in 1928 and is active in the Chelsea constituency until 1930, when he is forced out because of his eccentricities and sexual misbehaviour. On April 30, 1927, he marries Hazel Kathleen Barr. They have two daughters but separate in 1935, largely because of his infidelities, heavy drinking, and temper. The marriage is dissolved in 1937.

In November 1933, Joyce abandons his Ph.D. studies to work for Sir Oswald Mosley‘s British Union of Fascists (BUF). By early 1934 he has become its paid publicity director, traveling throughout Britain to organise meetings. He is a powerful, rabble-rousing speaker, driven by an instinctive awareness that vitriolic verbal abuse gives speaker and audience a sense of power and solidarity. MI5 sees him as a compelling, though deranged, personality. On February 8, 1937, he marries Margaret Cairns White, a BUF activist from Lancashire, with whom he had cohabited since 1936.

Joyce leads a BUF faction that favours a recruitment strategy based on uncompromising ideological assertion. This is challenged by populists who prioritise marches and displays and hold that indoctrination should follow membership. In February 1937, he is BUF candidate for the London County Council in Shoreditch. The party wins 14 per cent of the vote. In March 1937, he, along with many full-time BUF staff, are sacked when the BUF cuts expenses. But his dismissal also reflects Mosley’s awareness that his obsessive rhetoric repels “respectable” recruits and that he is no longer a biddable, slavish admirer of “the Leader.” He later falsely claims near-exclusive credit for the BUF’s escalating antisemitism, a view that Mosley eventually finds it convenient to adopt in order to evade his own responsibility.

In April 1937, Joyce founds the National Socialist League, helped by a wealthy patron. He supports himself as a private tutor, refusing to take Jewish pupils. He is active in various antisemitic and pro-Nazi groups such as the Right Club and engages in “peace” campaigns based on the view that British interests lay with Germany against Russia. Political marginalisation intensifies his admiration for Nazi Germany and hero worship of Adolf Hitler. By the time of the Munich crisis in 1938, he has decided that if war comes, he will go to Germany, though he also considers moving to Ireland. He renews his British passport for one-year terms in August 1938 and August 1939.

On August 26, 1939, Joyce and his wife leave London for Berlin. He is allegedly tipped off about his impending arrest and internment by an MI5 officer, to whom he had supplied information on communists. His siblings, whom he recruited into his fascist organisations, are variously penalised for his activities. At a loose end in Berlin, he is persuaded by a British associate to become a radio announcer with the English-language service of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG). He makes his first broadcast on September 6, 1939, and receives a contract in October. He finds in radio an outlet for his forceful style and delight in saying the unsayable, and in the early years of the war takes an exultant pride in recounting Nazi victories. His performances are admired by Joseph Goebbels, whom Joyce, to his regret, never meets. On September 26, 1940, he acquires German citizenship.

The novel experience of hearing the enemy in one’s own living room attracts wide audiences in Britain. Joyce’s practice of naming newly captured prisoners of war in his broadcasts is also a compelling motive for listening. In fact, he tries to recruit British prisoners of war as collaborators. The name “Lord Haw-Haw,” invented by the Daily Express radio critic in September 1939, initially applies to several English-language broadcasters but in time becomes associated with Joyce. He is initially a figure of fun, imitated by comedians, but there are sinister undercurrents of terrifying omnipotence, intensified by his sneering, gloating delivery and his delighted deployment of the “big lie” technique. It is widely believed that British-based fifth columnists supply him with information, that he predicts air raids, and shows minute local knowledge. In time, fear and his growing notoriety feed popular hatred of him in Britain, though his anti-British taunts allegedly win appreciative Irish audiences. He exults that he is daily committing treason and rendering himself liable to the death penalty.

In 1940, Joyce publishes a commissioned self-justifying propaganda work, Twilight over England. His representation of himself echoes that of Hitler in Mein Kampf – the provincial patriot, whose martial sacrifices are betrayed by corrupt elites, learning through poverty the hollowness of bourgeois patriotism and the need to synthesise socialism with nationalism. He shares with his hero a paranoid belief in his own ability to create an alternative reality through language and obstinacy. He dreams of becoming the English Führer.

In Berlin, the Joyces’ marriage comes under increasing strain, marked by drunken rows, domestic violence, and infidelity on both sides, though they retain a fierce mutual fascination. They divorce on August 12, 1941, but remarry on February 11, 1942, while continuing their previous behaviour. As the Axis powers begin to fail, his broadcasts become more defensive, focusing on the Soviet threat. On October 14, 1944, he is awarded the German War Merit Cross, first class. On October 22, he is sworn into the Volkssturm (territorial army) and begins drilling. The Joyces are evacuated from Berlin in March 1945, initially to Apen near the Dutch border and then to Hamburg, where he makes a last, drunken, defiant broadcast on April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler’s death. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Sweden, the Joyces hide at Flensburg near the Danish border. On May 28, 1945, he is shot and captured while gathering firewood.

Joyce is brought back to Britain on June 16 after Parliament passed legislation simplifying treason trial procedures. At his September 17-20 trial, he proves his American citizenship, but the court holds that his illegally acquired British passport incurred duties of allegiance. His appeals are rejected by the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. His fate is influenced by British public opinion, and possibly by a desire to avoid antagonising the Soviet Union. In his death cell he blames the defeat of national socialism on German limitations. He also fantasises that he could have saved Hitler from his incompetent subordinates.

Joyce is hanged at Wandsworth Prison on January 3, 1946. Unlike most of his fellow Nazis, he proclaims to the end his allegiance to national socialism and hatred of Jews. He corresponds cheerfully with Margaret, joking evasively about the death camps and expressing a belief that his spirit will survive, watch over her, and continue his work. To neo-Nazis he becomes a martyr. Even among those to whom his activities had been repellent, a significant body of opinion holds he should not have been condemned on a questionable and innovative technicality. The historian A. J. P. Taylor maintains that Joyce was executed for making a false declaration to obtain a passport, a misdemeanour that normally incurs a £2 fine.

In 1976, Joyce is reinterred in Galway as it is feared that a grave in England might become a fascist shrine. Thomas Kilroy‘s play Double Cross (1986) juxtaposes Joyce and Brendan Bracken as Irishmen who reinvented themselves through fantasies of Britishness. The BBC Sound Archive has recordings of some of Joyce’s broadcasts and transcripts of others, collected during the war as evidence for a future treason trial.

(From: “Joyce, William Brooke (‘Lord Haw-Haw’)” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Sir John Greer Dill, Irish-born British Army Officer

Sir John Greer Dill, senior British Army officer with service in both World War I and World War II, is born on December 25, 1881, at Lurgan, County Armagh. From May 1940 to December 1941, he is the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the British Army, and subsequently serves in Washington, D.C., as Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission and then Senior British Representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS).

Dill is the only son of John Dill, bank manager, and Jane Dill (née Greer). He is educated at Cheltenham College in England before entering the Royal Military College (RMC), Sandhurst. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he joins the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians) in May 1901 and serves in South Africa for the remainder of the Second Boer War. Promoted to captain in 1911, he is a student at the Staff College, Camberley, at the outbreak of World War I. He holds several important staff appointments during the war, including brigade major of 25th Brigade (8th Division) and General Staff Officer (Grade 2) to the Canadian Corps. Present at the battles of Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Arras, and Third Ypres, at the end of the war he is serving as chief of operations branch at GHQ with the temporary rank of brigadier general. He is awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (1915), the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) (1918), the French Legion of Honour and the Belgian Order of the Crown.

Remaining active during the interwar years, Dill serves as chief assistant to the commandant of the Staff College (1919–22) before commanding the Welsh Border Brigade, TA (1922–23), and 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot (1923–26). In late 1926, he is appointed army instructor at the newly established Imperial Defence College. A period in India follows as general staff officer of the Western Command (1929–31), based at Quetta. On return to England, he is promoted to major general and made commandant of the Staff College. Appointments as commander of the British forces in Palestine and Transjordan (1936–37) and the Aldershot Command (1937–39) follow. During this period, he shows a remarkable ability to both train and inspire those under his command. Most of his colleagues expect him to become the new chief of the Imperial General Staff and are surprised when Major General Lord Gort, junior to Dill in both rank and seniority, is appointed to the post.

At the outbreak of World War II Dill commands I Corps British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and is made a full general. In April 1940, he is made vice-CIGS and in May takes over as CIGS. His initial period in office is not a happy one, and he has to inform the public of setbacks in both Norway and France. His workload is enormous, and after the evacuation at Dunkirk in late May he devotes himself to preparing the defences of Britain against invasion. He clashes with Winston Churchill throughout 1941, advocating a more cautious and realistic approach to the situations in North Africa, Greece, and Crete.

The workload begins to affect his health adversely, and in November 1941 it is announced that he will resign as CIGS on reaching the age of 60 and serve as governor-designate of Bombay with the rank of field marshal. He seeks to be more actively involved in the war effort, however, and in December 1941 he visits the United States with Churchill, remaining there as head of the British joint staff mission in Washington, D.C. He plays a significant role in promoting Anglo–American military cooperation and attends the Casablanca, Quebec, and Tehran conferences.

In late 1944 his health again breaks down and he dies from aplastic anemia on November 4, 1944, at the Walter Reed General Hospital, Washington, D.C. After a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral, he is buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia. President Franklin D. Roosevelt later pays tribute to him as a great soldier and friend, “the most important figure in the remarkable accord which has been developed in the combined operations of our two countries.”

Dill first marries (1907) Ada Maud Le Mottée, daughter of Col. William Le Mottée of the 18th Regiment. Their son, Major John de Guerin Dill, serves as an artillery officer throughout World War II. In October 1941, Dill marries Nancy Isabelle Charrington, widow of Brigadier Denis Walter Furlong. Dill’s honours include a GCB (1942), an honorary degree from Princeton University (1944), the Howland Memorial Prize of Yale University (1944), and a posthumous Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) from the United States government. There are portraits of him in Cheltenham College and the Imperial War Museum, and a statue in Washington, D.C.

(From: “Dill, Sir John Greer” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Sir John Greer Dill, bromide print, 1932, by Walter Stoneman, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Birth of Edna O’Brien, Novelist, Playwright & Poet

Edna O’Brien, novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer, is born in Tuamgraney, County Clare on December 15, 1930. Philip Roth describes her as “the most gifted woman now writing in English,” while the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson cites her as “one of the great creative writers of her generation.” Her works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men, and to society as a whole.

O’Brien is the youngest child of “a strict, religious family.” From 1941 to 1946 she is educated by the Sisters of Mercy, a circumstance that contributes to a “suffocating” childhood. “I rebelled against the coercive and stifling religion into which I was born and bred. It was very frightening and all pervasive. I’m glad it has gone.” She is fond of a nun as she deeply misses her mum and tries to identify the nun with her mother.

In 1950, O’Brien is awarded a licence as a pharmacist. In Ireland, she reads such writers as Leo Tolstoy, William Makepeace Thackeray, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1954, she marries, against her parents’ wishes, the Irish writer Ernest Gébler and the couple moves to London. They have two sons, but the marriage is dissolved in 1964. Gébler dies in 1998.

In London, O’Brien purchases Introducing James Joyce, with an introduction written by T. S. Eliot. When she learns that James Joyce‘s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is autobiographical, it makes her realise where she might turn, should she decide to write herself. In London she starts work as a reader for Hutchinson, where on the basis of her reports she is commissioned, for £50, to write a novel. Her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following World War II.

This novel is the first part of a trilogy of novels which includes The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). Shortly after their publication, these books are banned and, in some cases burned, in her native country due to their frank portrayals of the sex lives of their characters. Her novel A Pagan Place (1970) is about her repressive childhood. Her parents are vehemently against all things related to literature and her mother strongly disapproves of her daughter’s career as a writer.

O’Brien is a panel member for the first edition of the BBC‘s Question Time in 1979. In 2017, she becomes the sole surviving member.

In 1980, she writes a play, Virginia, about Virginia Woolf, and it is staged originally in June 1980 at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada and subsequently in the West End of London at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Maggie Smith and directed by Robin Phillips. It is staged at The Public Theater in New York City in 1985.

Other works include a biography of James Joyce, published in 1999, and one of the poet Lord Byron, Byron in Love (2009). House of Splendid Isolation (1994), her novel about a terrorist who goes on the run, marks a new phase in her writing career. Down by the River (1996) concerns an under-age rape victim who seeks an abortion in England, the “Miss X case.” In the Forest (2002) deals with the real-life case of Brendan O’Donnell, who abducts and murders a woman, her three-year-old son, and a priest, in rural Ireland.

O’Brien now lives in London. She receives the Irish PEN Award in 2001. Saints and Sinners wins the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the world’s richest prize for a short story collection. Faber and Faber publishes her memoir, Country Girl, in 2012. In 2015, she is bestowed Saoi by Aosdána.


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Death of Sir James Craig, First Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon PC PC (NI) DL, prominent Irish unionist politician, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1921 until his death, dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down, at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940.

Craig is born at Sydenham, Belfast, on January 8, 1871, the seventh of nine children of James Craig (1828–1900), a wealthy whiskey distiller who had entered the firm of Dunville & Co. as a clerk and by age 40 is a millionaire and a partner in the firm. Craig Snr. owns a large house called Craigavon, overlooking Belfast Lough. His mother, Eleanor Gilmore Browne, is the daughter of Robert Browne, a prosperous man who owned property in Belfast and a farm outside Lisburn. Craig is educated at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, Scotland. After school he begins work as a stockbroker, eventually opening his own firm in Belfast.

Craig enlists in the 3rd (Militia) battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles on January 17, 1900, to serve in the Second Boer War. He is seconded to the Imperial Yeomanry, a cavalry force created for service during the war, as a lieutenant in the 13th battalion on February 24, 1900, and leaves Liverpool for South Africa on the SS Cymric in March 1900. After arrival he is soon sent to the front and is taken prisoner in May 1900, but released by the Boers because of a perforated colon. On his recovery he becomes deputy assistant director of the Imperial Military Railways, showing the qualities of organisation that are to mark his involvement in both British and Ulster politics. In June 1901 he is sent home suffering from dysentery, and by the time he is fit for service again the war is over. He is promoted to captain in the 3rd Royal Irish Rifles on September 20, 1902, while still seconded to South Africa.

On his return to Ireland, having received a £100,000 legacy from his father’s will, Craig turns to politics, serving as Member of the British Parliament for East Down from 1906 to 1918. From 1918 to 1921 he represents Mid Down and serves in the British government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Pensions (1919–20) and Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty (1920–21).

Craig rallies Ulster loyalist opposition to Irish Home Rule in Ulster before World War I, organising the paramilitary Ulster Volunteers (UVF) and buying arms from Imperial Germany. The UVF becomes the nucleus of the 36th (Ulster) Division during World War I. He succeeds Edward Carson as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in February 1921.

In the 1921 Northern Ireland general election, the first ever, Craig is elected to the newly created House of Commons of Northern Ireland as one of the members for Down.

On June 7, 1921, Craig is appointed the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The House of Commons of Northern Ireland assembles for the first time later that day.

Craig is made a baronet in 1918, and in 1927 is created Viscount Craigavon, of Stormont in the County of Down. He is also the recipient of honorary degrees from Queen’s University Belfast (1922) and the University of Oxford (1926).

Craig had made his career in British as well as Northern Irish politics, but his premiership shows little sign of his earlier close acquaintance with the British political world. He becomes intensely parochial and suffers from his loss of intimacy with British politicians in 1938, when the British government concludes agreements with Dublin to end the Anglo-Irish trade war between the two countries. He never tries to persuade Westminster to protect Northern Ireland‘s industries, especially the linen industry, which is central to its economy. He is anxious not to provoke Westminster, given the precarious state of Northern Ireland’s position. In April 1939, and again in May 1940 during World War II, he calls for conscription to be introduced in Northern Ireland (which the British government, fearing a backlash from nationalists, refuses). He also calls for Winston Churchill to invade Ireland using Scottish and Welsh troops in order to seize the valuable ports and install a Governor-General at Dublin.

While still prime minister, Craig dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940. He is buried on the Stormont Estate on December 5, 1940, and is succeeded as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Minister of Finance, J. M. Andrews.

(Pictured: James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, bromide print by Olive Edis, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Birth of John Cole, Northern Irish Journalist & BBC Broadcaster

John Morrison Cole, Northern Irish journalist and broadcaster best known for his work with the BBC, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on November 23, 1927. He serves as deputy editor of The Guardian and The Observer and, from 1981 to 1992, is the BBC’s political editor. Donald Macintyre, in an obituary in The Independent, describes him as “the most recognisable and respected broadcast political journalist since World War II.”

Cole is the son of George Cole, an electrical engineer, and his wife Alice. The family is Ulster Protestant, and he identifies himself as British. He receives his formal education at the Belfast Royal Academy.

Cole starts his career in print journalism in 1945, joining the Belfast Telegraph as a reporter and industrial correspondent. He subsequently works as a political reporter for the paper. He gains a scoop when he interviews the then Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who is holidaying in Ireland.

Cole joins The Guardian, then The Manchester Guardian, in 1956, reporting on industrial issues. He transfers to the London office in 1957 as the paper’s labour correspondent. Appointed news editor in 1963, succeeding Nesta Roberts, he takes on the task of reorganising the paper’s “amateurish” system for gathering news. He heads opposition to a proposed merger with The Times in the mid-1960s, and later serves as deputy editor under Alastair Hetherington. When Hetherington leaves in 1975, Cole is in the running for the editorship, but fails to secure the post, for reasons which may include his commitment to the cause of unionism in Northern Ireland, as well as what is seen by some as inflexibility and a lack of flair. Unwilling to continue at The Guardian, he then joins The Observer as deputy editor under Donald Trelford, remaining there for six years.

After Tiny Rowland takes over as proprietor of The Observer in 1981, Cole gives evidence against him at the Monopolies Commission. The following day he receives a call from the BBC offering him the job of political editor, succeeding John Simpson. He has little previous television experience but proves a “natural broadcaster.” Reporting through most of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, he becomes a familiar figure on television and radio.

Cole’s health is put under strain by the workload, and he suffers a heart attack in February 1984. Returning to report on that year’s conference season, he covers the Brighton hotel bombing, getting a “memorable” interview with Thatcher on the pavement in its immediate aftermath, in which she declares that the Tory conference will take place as normal. An astute observer of the political scene, he is one of the earliest to forecast Thatcher’s resignation as Prime Minister in 1990, in what colleague David McKie refers to as “perhaps his greatest exclusive.”

Cole establishes a strong reputation for his “gentle but probing” interviewing style, for his political assessments, and for presenting analysis rather than “bland reporting.” Held in enormous affection by viewers, he is trusted by both politicians and the public. He is known for speaking in the language used by ordinary people rather than so-called Westminster experts. His distinctive Northern Irish accent leads the way for BBC broadcasters with regional accents.

Cole retires as political editor in 1992 at the age of 65, compulsory at the time, but continues to appear on television, including making programmes on golf and travel. He also continues to appear on the BBC programme Westminster Live for several years after he retired as political editor.

In addition to his journalistic writing, Cole authors several books. The earliest are The Poor of the Earth, on developing countries, and The Thatcher Years (1987). After his retirement as BBC political editor, he spends more time writing. His political memoir, As It Seemed to Me, appears in 1995 and becomes a best-seller. He also publishes a novel, A Clouded Peace (2001), set in his birthplace of Belfast in 1977.

In 2007, Cole writes an article for the British Journalism Review, blaming both politicians and the media for the fact that parliamentarians are held in such low esteem, being particularly scathing of Alastair Campbell‘s influence during Tony Blair‘s premiership.

In 1966, the Eisenhower Fellowships selects Cole to represent Great Britain. He receives the Royal Television Society‘s Journalist of the Year award in 1991. After his retirement in 1992, he is awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University and receives the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1993. He turns down a CBE in 1993, citing the former The Guardian newspaper rule that journalists can only accept gifts which can be consumed within 24 hours.

In his private life Cole is a supporter of the Labour Party and is a believer in the trades union movement. He considers that the combating of unemployment is one of the most important political issues. He is a British Republican and a committed Christian, associating in the latter part of his life with the United Reformed Church at Kingston upon Thames.

Cole suffers health problems in retirement including heart problems and two minor strokes. In 2009, he is diagnosed with cancer. He subsequently develops aphasia. He dies at his home at Claygate in the county of Surrey on November 7, 2013.

Tributes are paid by journalists, broadcasters and politicians across the political spectrum. Prime Minister David Cameron calls Cole a “titan at the BBC” and an “extraordinary broadcaster.” Labour Party leader Ed Miliband says that “my generation grew up watching John Cole. He conveyed the drama and importance of politics.” The Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond says that Cole is “an extremely able journalist but also extraordinarily helpful and generous to a young politician.” The BBC’s political editor at the time, Nick Robinson, writes that Cole “shaped the way all in my trade do our jobs.”


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The Birmingham Pub Bombings

The Birmingham pub bombings are carried out on November 21, 1974, when bombs explode in two public houses in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people and injuring 182 others. The bombings are one of the deadliest acts of the Troubles, and the deadliest act of terrorism to occur in England between World War II and the 2005 London bombings.

In 1973, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) extends its campaign to mainland Britain, attacking military and symbolically important targets to both increase pressure on the British government, via popular British opinion, to withdraw from Northern Ireland and to maintain morale amongst their supporters. By 1974, mainland Britain sees an average of one attack — successful or otherwise — every three days.

In the early evening hours of November 21, at least three bombs connected to timing devices are planted inside two separate public houses and outside a bank located in and around central Birmingham. It is unknown precisely when these bombs were planted. If official IRA protocol of preceding attacks upon non-military installations with a 30-minute advance warning to security services is followed, and subsequent eyewitness accounts are accurate, the bombs would have been planted at these locations after 7:30 p.m. and before 7:47 p.m.

According to testimony delivered at the 1975 trial of the six men wrongly convicted of the bombings, the bomb planted inside the Mulberry Bush pub is concealed inside either a duffel bag or briefcase, whereas the bomb planted inside the Tavern in the Town is concealed inside a briefcase or duffel bag (possibly concealed within a large, sealed plastic bag) and Christmas cracker boxes. The remnants of two alarm clocks recovered from the site of each explosion leaves the possibility that two bombs had been planted at each public house. The explosion crater at each location indicates that if two bombs had been planted at each public house, they would each have been placed in the same location and likely the same container.

Reportedly, those who plant the bombs then walk to a preselected phone box to telephone the advance warning to security services. However, the phone box has been vandalised, forcing the caller to find an alternative phone box and thus shortening the amount of time police have to clear the locations.

At 8:11 p.m., an unknown man with a distinct Irish accent telephones the Birmingham Post newspaper. The call is answered by operator Ian Cropper. The caller says, “There is a bomb planted in the Rotunda and there is a bomb in New Street at the tax office. This is Double X,” before terminating the call. (“Double X” is an IRA code word given to authenticate any warning call.) A similar warning is also sent to the Birmingham Evening Mail newspaper, with the anonymous caller again giving the code word, but again failing to name the public houses in which the bombs had been planted.

The Rotunda is a 25-story office block, built in the 1960s, that houses the Mulberry Bush pub on its lower two floors. Within minutes of the warning, police arrive and begin checking the upper floors of the Rotunda, but they do not have sufficient time to clear the crowded pub at street level. At 8:17 p.m., six minutes after the first telephone warning had been delivered to the Birmingham Post, the bomb, which had been concealed inside either a duffel bag or briefcase located ner the rear entrance to the premises, explodes, devastating the pub. The explosion blows a 40-inch crater in the concrete floor, collapsing part of the roof and trapping many casualties beneath girders and concrete blocks. Many buildings near the Rotunda are also damaged, and pedestrians in the street are struck by flying glass from shattered windows. Several of the victims die at the scene, including two youths who had been walking past the premises at the moment of the explosion.

Ten people are killed in this explosion and dozens are injured, including many who lose limbs. Several casualties are impaled by sections of wooden furniture while others have their clothes burned from their bodies. A paramedic called to the scene of this explosion later describes the carnage as being reminiscent of a slaughterhouse. One fireman says that, upon seeing a writhing, “screaming torso,” he begs police to allow a television crew inside the premises to film the dead and dying at the scene, in the hope the IRA would see the consequences of their actions. However, the police refuse this request, fearing the reprisals would be extreme.

The Tavern in the Town is a basement pub on New Street located a short distance from the Rotunda and directly beneath the New Street Tax Office. Patrons there hear the explosion at the Mulberry Bush, but do not believe that the sound, described by one survivor as a “muffled thump,” is an explosion.

Police have begun attempting to clear the Tavern in the Town when, at 8:27 p.m., a second bomb explodes there. The blast is so powerful that several victims are blown through a brick wall. Their remains are wedged between the rubble and live underground electric cables that supply the city centre. One of the first police officers on the scene, Brian Yates, later testifies that the scene which greeted his eyes was “absolutely dreadful,” with several of the dead stacked upon one another, others strewn about the ruined pub, and several screaming survivors staggering aimlessly amongst the debris, rubble, and severed limbs. A survivor says the sound of the explosion is replaced by a “deafening silence” and the smell of burned flesh.

Rescue efforts at the Tavern in the Town are initially hampered as the bomb had been placed at the base of a set of stairs descending from the street, the sole entrance to the premises, had been destroyed in the explosion. The victims whose bodies are blown through a brick wall and wedged between the rubble and underground electric cables take up to three hours to recover, as recovery operations are delayed until the power can be isolated. A passing West Midlands bus is also destroyed in the blast.

This bomb kills nine people outright, and injures everyone in the pub, many severely. Two later die of their injuries. After the second explosion, police evacuate all pubs and businesses in Birmingham city centre and commandeer all available rooms in the nearby City Centre Hotel as an impromptu first-aid post. All bus services into the city centre are halted, and taxi drivers are encouraged to transport those lightly injured in the explosions to hospital. Prior to the arrival of ambulances, rescue workers remove critically injured casualties from each scene upon makeshift stretchers constructed from devices such as tabletops and wooden planks. These severely injured casualties are placed on the pavement and given first aid prior to the arrival of ambulance services.

At 9:15 p.m., a third bomb, concealed inside two plastic bags, is found in the doorway of a Barclays Bank on Hagley Road, approximately two miles from the site of the first two explosions. This device consists of 13.5 pounds of Frangex connected to a timer and is set to detonate at 11:00 p.m. The detonator to the device activates when a policeman prods the bags with his truncheon, but the bomb does not explode. The device is destroyed in a controlled explosion early the following morning.

The bombings stoke considerable anti-Irish sentiment in Birmingham, which then has an Irish community of 100,000. Irish people are ostracised from public places and subjected to physical assaults, verbal abuse and death threats. Both in Birmingham and across England, Irish homes, pubs, businesses and community centres are attacked, in some cases with firebombs. Staff at thirty factories across the Midlands go on strike in protest of the bombings, while workers at airports across England refuse to handle flights bound for Ireland. Bridget Reilly, the mother of the two Irish brothers killed in the Tavern in the Town explosion, is herself refused service in local shops.

The bombings are immediately blamed on the IRA, despite the organisation not having claimed responsibility. Due to anger against Irish people in Birmingham after the bombings, the IRA Army Council places the city “strictly off-limits” to IRA active service units. In Northern Ireland, loyalist paramilitaries launch a wave of revenge attacks on Irish Catholics and within two days of the bombings, five Catholic civilians have been shot dead by loyalists. The Provisional IRA never officially admits responsibility for the Birmingham pub bombings.

Six Irishmen are arrested within hours of the blasts and in 1975 are sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombings. The men, who become known as the Birmingham Six, maintain their innocence and insist police had coerced them into signing false confessions through severe physical and psychological abuse. After 16 years in prison, and a lengthy campaign, their convictions are declared unsafe and unsatisfactory, and quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1991. The episode is seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

In 2001, each of the Birmingham Six is subsequently paid between £840,000 and £1.2 million in compensation.

(Pictured: The Mulberry Bush pub after the November 21, 1974, bombing)


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Birth of Liam Tobin, Irish Army Officer

Liam Tobin, officer in the Irish Army and the instigator of the Irish Army Mutiny in March 1924, is born William Joseph Tobin at 13 Great Georges Street in Cork, County Cork, on November 15, 1895. During the Irish War of Independence, he serves as an Irish Republican Army (IRA) intelligence officer for Michael Collins‘ Squad.

Tobin is the eldest son of Mary Agnes (nee Butler) and David Tobin, a hardware clerk. He has two younger siblings, Katherine and Nicholas Augustine Tobin, also born in Cork. His family moves to John Street in Kilkenny and then to Dublin. He goes to school in Kilkenny and is an apprentice in a hardware shop at the time of the 1916 Easter Rising. As a participant in the Rising, he fights in the Four Courts garrison under Edward Daly. He is arrested, court martialed, and sentenced to death but his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. He is a prisoner in Kilmainham, Mountjoy, Lewes, Dartmoor, Broadmoor and Pentonville prisons. He is released in June 1917.

In early 1919 Tobin becomes Collins’ chief executive in the Intelligence Directorate handling the many spies in Dublin Castle, including double agent David Neligan. Nancy O’Brien works for Under-Secretary for Ireland James Macmahon, decoding messages sent from London. Each day between 2:30 and 3:30 she passes any information acquired to either Tobin, Joseph McGrath, or Desmond FitzGerald. Tobin is involved in planning the assassinations of British soldiers, informants, members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and operatives of MI5. He constructs detailed profiles of everyone remotely connected to the British government, often using Who’s Who, The Morning Post, and The Times, a newspaper that describes him as “one of the most formidable of [the] Twelve Apostles.”

In October 1921, Tobin travels with the Irish Treaty Delegation as part of Collins’ personal staff.

Tim Pat Coogan and James Mackay have examined Tobin’s involvement in the assassination of British Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. Wilson’s public tirades about Collins is evidence of mutual personal dislike between the two men. In May 1922 Collins tells Tobin “We’ll kill a member of that bunch” to the news of “bloody pogroms” in Belfast. Wilson is intimately involved with the Ulster loyalist cause, including the Curragh Mutiny and the establishment of the Ulster Special Constabulary. Just before the shooting, Coogan places Tobin in London. He meets courier Peig Ni Braonain at Euston Station collecting a document that has been sent from Dublin. Returning to Dublin before the incident, he is jubilant when he tells defence minister Richard Mulcahy about Wilson’s death. Mulcahy is appalled and threatens to resign.

Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Tobin is appointed deputy director of intelligence in the new state and assigned to the Criminal Investigation Department based at Oriel House. However Collins soon replaces him with Joseph McGrath. Tobin is placed on the Army Council and is Director of Intelligence from September 1922 until his appointment as Senior Aide-de-Camp to the new Governor–General of the Irish Free State, Tim Healy, in November 1922. The position provides an apartment in Viceregal Lodge.

In October 1922, Tobin’s brother Nicholas, a Free State captain, is accidentally shot dead by his own troops during the raid and capture of a bomb making factory at number 8 Gardiner’s Place, Dublin.

Tobin believes in the steppingstone doctrine which sees the Treaty as a stage towards full independence. With the outbreak of the Irish Civil War he remains loyal to Collins and takes the Pro-Treaty side. He leads in the fight against the Anti-Treaty IRA in the south. Disillusioned with the continuing hostilities and in the aftermath of the death of Collins, he forms an association called the IRA Organisation (IRAO) or “Old Irish Republican Army” to distinguish themselves from the anti-treaty insurgents.

Richard Mulcahy, the new Irish defence minister, proposes to reduce the army from 55,000 to 18,000 men in the immediate post- Civil-War period. Tobin knows his own position is to be affected and shares the perception that the Irish Army treats former British officers better than former IRA officers. On March 7, 1924, Tobin, together with Colonel Charlie Dalton, sends an ultimatum to President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State W. T. Cosgrave demanding an end to the army demobilisation. The immediate response is an order for the arrest of the two men on a charge of mutiny. The cabinet, already wary of the Irish Army, orders an inquiry and appoints Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy to the army command.

On March 18, the mutineers assemble with hostile intent at a Dublin pub. An order is made to arrest the mutineers and the cabinet demands the resignation of the army council. The generals resign, affirming the subservience of the military to the civilian government of the new state.

In later years, Tobin rebuilds relations with his Civil War foes and joins Éamon de Valera‘s Anti-Treaty Fianna Fáil party. He joins up with Joseph McGrath to form the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake in the 1930s. Many other former army comrades find work in this lottery. He leaves the Sweep in 1938. After World War II, he becomes Superintendent of the Oireachtas for the Irish Dáil.

On October 14, 1929, Tobin marries Monica “Mona” Higgins at the Church of the Holy Family, Aughrim Street, Dublin. They have two daughters, Máire and Anne Tobin. Following the death of his father, David, in 1956, Tobin’s health declines, resulting in his death in Dublin on April 30, 1963.

Tobin is portrayed by actor Brendan Gleeson in Neil Jordan‘s biopic Michael Collins.


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Birth of Reg Ryan, Irish Footballer

Reginald Alphonso Ryan, Irish footballer also referred to as Paddy Ryan, is born in Dublin, County Dublin, on October 30, 1925. He plays for West Bromwich Albion F.C., Derby County F.C. and Coventry City F.C. He is also a dual international, playing for both Ireland teams – the FAI XI and the IFA XI. He is the last player to represent both teams. He is considered more of a goal creator then a goalscorer.

Ryan initially plays Gaelic football for the Marino School in Dublin while growing up, but then switches to soccer after moving to Blackpool, Lancashire, England, during the early years of World War II. He then plays with Claremount School, Blackpool Boys, various factory teams and has trials with both Sheffield United F.C. and Nottingham Forest F.C. before joining Nuneaton Borough F.C.

Ryan has two spells with Coventry City. In April 1943, he signs for the club as an amateur and during the 1942–43 season he plays two games in wartime regional leagues. He then turns professional in August 1944 and makes a further four appearances for the club during the 1944–45 wartime season. After playing for West Bromwich Albion and Derby County, he returns to City in September 1958. He then helps the club win promotion from the newly formed Football League Fourth Division, after they finish as runners-up in 1959. During his second spell with City he plays 70 times in all competitions.

In April 1945, Ryan signs for West Bromwich Albion and, during the 1945–46 season, makes 17 appearances in the Football League South. He makes his debut for the club against Millwall F.C. in November 1945. Together with Davy Walsh and Jackie Vernon, he helps West Brom gain promotion to the Football League First Division in 1949. In 1954, together with Ronnie Allen and Frank Griffin, he is also a member of the West Brom team that finishes as First Division runners-up and FA Cup winners. He also helps West Brom gain a share of the FA Charity Shield when he scores in a 4–4 draw against Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C.

Ryan signs for Derby County in June 1955 for a fee of £3,000. He is appointed team captain by manager Harry Storer, Jr., and during his three seasons with the club misses only three matches – two because of injury and one because of international duty. He is a member of the side promoted as champions of the Third Division North to the Football League Second Division in 1956–57. In 1955 he also plays for an English Division Three North XI against an English Division Three South XI. He plays 133 league games for County, scoring 30 goals. He also plays a further six games for the club in the FA Cup, scoring a further goal.

When Ryan begins his international career in 1949 there are, in effect, two Ireland teams, chosen by two rival associations. Both associations, the Northern Ireland–based Irish Football Association (IFA) and the Republic of Ireland–based Football Association of Ireland (FAI) claim jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and select players from the whole island. As a result, several notable Irish players from this era, including Ryan, play for both teams.

Between 1949 and 1955 Ryan makes 16 appearances and scores 3 goals for the FAI XI. He makes his debut in a 3–1 defeat to Sweden on November 13, 1949, in a qualifier for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. He scores his first two goals for the FAI XI in October 1953 during the qualifiers for the 1954 FIFA World Cup, one against France in a 5–3 defeat and the second, a penalty, against Luxembourg in 4–0 win. On November 7, 1954, in a friendly against Norway, he scores his third goal, again from the penalty spot, and earns the FAI XI a 2–1 victory. He makes his last appearance for the FAI XI on November 27, 1955, in a 2–2 draw with Spain.

Ryan makes his one and only appearance for the IFA XI in a 0–0 draw with Wales on March 8, 1950. As well as being part of the 1950 British Home Championship, the game also doubles up as a qualifier for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. Ryan, together with Con Martin, Davy Walsh and Tom Aherne, is one of four players born in the Irish Free State, included in the IFA XI that day. He earlier plays for the FAI XI in the same competition, and as a result, plays for two different teams in the same FIFA World Cup tournament. This situation eventually leads to intervention by FIFA and, as a result, Ryan becomes one of the last four Irish Free State–born players to play for the IFA XI.

After retiring as a player in November 1960, Ryan works as a pools supervisor for both Coventry City (1960–1961) and West Bromwich Albion (1961–1962). Between September 1962 and October 1976, he is chief scout for West Brom. He later works as a scout for various clubs including Aston Villa F.C., Derby County F.C., Hereford United F.C. and Leeds United F.C. before retiring in 1994.

Ryan dies at the age of 71 on February 13, 1997, at Sheldon, West Midlands, England.


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Birth of Irish Writer Gabriel Rosenstock

Gabriel Rosenstock, Irish writer who works chiefly in the Irish language, is born in Kilfinane, County Limerick, on September 29, 1949. A member of Aosdána, he is poet, playwright, haikuist, tankaist, essayist, and author/translator of over 180 books, mostly in Irish.

Rosenstock’s father, George, is a doctor and writer from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, who serves as a medical officer with the Wehrmacht in World War II. His mother is a nurse from County Galway. He is the third of six children and the first born in Ireland. He is educated locally in Kilfinane, then in Mount Sackville, County Dublin.

Rosenstock exhibits an early interest in anarchism and is expelled from Gormanston College in County Meath and exiled to Rockwell College near Cashel, County Tipperary. Later, he attends University College Cork (UCC).

Rosenstock works for some time on the television series Anois is Arís on RTÉ, then on the weekly newspaper Anois. Until his retirement he works with An Gúm, the publications branch of Foras na Gaeilge, the North-South body which promotes the Irish language.

Although he has worked in prose, drama and translation, Rosenstock is primarily known as a poet. He has written or translated over 180 books.

Rosenstock has edited and contributed to books of haiku in Irish, English, Scots and Japanese. He is a prolific translator into Irish of international poetry (among others Ko Un, Seamus Heaney, K. Satchidanandan, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Iqbal, Hilde Domin, Peter Huchel), plays (Samuel Beckett, Max Frisch, W. B. Yeats) and songs (Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, The Pogues, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell). He also has singable Irish translations of Lieder and other art songs. His being named as Lineage Holder of Celtic Buddhism inspires the latest title in a rich output of haiku collections: Antlered Stag of Dawn (Onslaught Press, Oxford, 2015), haiku in Irish and English with translations into Japanese and Scots Lallans.

Rosenstock also writes for children, in prose and verse. Haiku Más É Do Thoil É! (An Gúm) wins the Children’s Books Judges’ Special Prize in 2015.

Rosenstock appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press). He gives the keynote address to Haiku Canada in 2015.

Rosenstock has worked with American photographer Ron Rosenstock, Indian Photographer Debiprasad Mukherjee, Greek photographer Kon Markogiannis, Dublin photographer Jason Symes, French photographer Jean-Pierre Favreau and many more to create the new guise of a photo-haiku (or a haiga) – the interplay of visual aesthetic and literature.

Rosenstock currently resides in Dublin. His son, Tristan, is a member of the Irish traditional music quintet Téada, and impressionist/actor Mario Rosenstock is his nephew.


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Death of Thomas McDowell, Former CEO of “The Irish Times”

Thomas Bleakley McDowell, often called T. B. McDowell or simply “the Major,” dies on September 9, 2009. He is a British Army officer and subsequently chief executive of The Irish Times for nearly 40 years.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 18, 1923, the only child of a Protestant and unionist couple, McDowell finishes school at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in 1941 as World War II is under way. He is dissuaded from enlisting immediately in the British Army by his parents as his father, also named Thomas, had been gassed in World War I and suffers serious lung problems which lead to his early death in 1944. He goes instead to Queen’s University Belfast to study commerce but, a year later and still uncertain about his long-term plans, he joins the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, being commissioned in 1943. He goes on to join the Royal Ulster Rifles.

A knee injury during a night training exercise in Omagh makes McDowell ineligible for active military service and he becomes a weapons instructor. The accident also leads to him meeting his future wife, Margaret Telfer, the physiotherapist who treats him in hospital in Bangor, County Down.

McDowell rises to the rank of major and is part of the Allied forces in occupied Austria following the end of the war, taking part in joint patrols in Vienna with Russian, American and French officers. In the post-war period, he is given two years to finish his college course and spends a summer studying law with a tutor before passing the English bar and returning to the British Army.

After a further military posting to Edinburgh, McDowell’s legal qualification brings him to the army legal service in the War Office in London. With little prospect of further promotion and every chance of being posted abroad without his young family, he decides to leave the army. He is offered a job as legal adviser in London to James North Ltd, a company which makes protective clothing. With no experience of industry, he asks to be given a managerial role at first. The company suggests a managing position in its operations in Dublin. He slots easily into the city’s old business establishment, joining the Kildare Street Club, becoming a director of Pim’s department store, and setting his career firmly on a commercial rather than a legal path.

McDowell’s involvement with newspapers comes about through the recognition of his business acumen. He is asked by some acquaintances to take a look at the financial troubles of the Evening Mail, which is bought subsequently by The Irish Times, adding to the latter’s own financial difficulties.

McDowell is asked later by The Irish Times to see if Roy Thomson, the Canadian-born British press baron whom he had met while they both looked separately at the Evening Mail, might be interested in taking it over. Thomson passes and the company then asks McDowell himself to take charge as chief executive in 1962. Among his first actions are to close the Evening Mail and the Sunday Review, a short-lived tabloid that is ahead of its time. A year later, another problem is resolved when Douglas Gageby, who had been hired as managing director of The Irish Times shortly before McDowell’s arrival, takes over as editor.

Thus, what had begun as a slightly awkward relationship, turns into a highly successful partnership as Gageby sets about broadening the newspaper’s editorial appeal and McDowell sets it on a successful commercial course. McDowell always credits Gageby and his successors as editor with the success of the newspaper. Although he has a close relationship with editors, especially Gageby, he does not interfere in the editorial running of the newspaper.

By the early 1970s, the circulation of The Irish Times has almost doubled in a decade to 60,000 and it is making money. Some of the directors indicate an interest in selling the company. McDowell proposes instead that it be turned into a trust. It is a period when several newspapers in Ireland and Britain have changed hands or are seen as being vulnerable to takeovers. His aims are to protect the newspaper’s independence, make it as difficult as possible for anyone to take over, and formalise its aims in a guiding trust.

McDowell works on the trust document for many months, going through 28 drafts before he is satisfied with the result. The five directors of the company, including McDowell and Gageby, transfer their shares in the company to a solicitor in the autumn of 1973 in anticipation of announcing the trust at the end of that year. Further delays in finalising the trust terms result in its announcement in April 1974, on the eve of the introduction of capital gains tax. The timing gives rise to suggestions that the directors are taking their cash (£325,000 each) out of the company before the new tax takes effect. McDowell always denies that this is the case, maintaining that the timing is coincidental. He is also adamant that the motivation behind the formation of the trust itself is altruistic.

The formation of the trust leaves the newspaper with a large bank debt, used to buy out the directors/shareholders, at what turns out to be a difficult economic period after the first oil crisis hits the western world in the autumn of 1974. McDowell successfully guides The Irish Times‘ financial fortunes through the subsequent recession and into further periods of growth throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

McDowell stands down as chief executive of the company in 1997 and retires from the chairmanship of The Irish Times Trust in 2001. He is given the title President for Life in recognition of his huge contribution to the newspaper.

McDowell is a private person and never seeks or exploits the public status or limelight that goes with being a newspaper publisher. During his visit to the new The Irish Times offices on Tara Street in June 2008 for the unveiling of a portrait of him by Andrew Festing, he describes the newspaper and his family as the two loves of his life.

McDowell dies unexpectedly at the age of 87 on September 9, 2009. His funeral takes place in Whitechurch Parish Church, Rathfarnham, followed by burial in the adjoining churchyard.