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xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_crime-law"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/crime-law/courts" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Courts</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Property</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_property" aria-label="Show Property sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_property"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/residential" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Residential</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/commercial-property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Commercial Property</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/interiors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Interiors</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/food" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Food</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_food" aria-label="Show Food sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_food"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/drink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Drink</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/recipes" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Recipes</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/restaurants" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Restaurants</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/health" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Health</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_health" aria-label="Show Health sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_health"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-family" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Family</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Fitness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-wellness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Wellness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness/get-running" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Get Running</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Life & Style</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_life-style" aria-label="Show Life & Style sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_life-style"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fashion" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fashion</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/tags/beauty/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Beauty</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fine-art-antiques" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fine Art & Antiques</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/gardening" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gardening</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">People</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/travel" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Travel</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/culture" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Culture</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_culture" aria-label="Show Culture sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_culture"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/art" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Art</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Books</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/film" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Film</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/music" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Music</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/stage" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Stage</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/tv-radio" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">TV & Radio</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/environment" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Environment</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_environment" aria-label="Show Environment sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_environment"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/environment/climate-crisis" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Climate Crisis</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/technology" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Technology</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_technology" aria-label="Show Technology sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_technology"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/big-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Big Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/consumer-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Consumer Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/data-security" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Data & Security</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/gaming" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gaming</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/science" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Science</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_science" aria-label="Show Science sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_science"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/science/space" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Space</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/media" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Media</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/abroad" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Abroad</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/obituaries" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Obituaries</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/transport" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Transport</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/motors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Motors</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_motors" aria-label="Show Motors sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_motors"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/motors/car-reviews/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Car Reviews</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/listen/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Listen</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Podcasts</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_podcasts" aria-label="Show Podcasts sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_podcasts"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts/in-the-news" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">In the News Podcast</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts/inside-politics" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Inside Politics Podcast</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts/the-womens-podcast" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">The Women's Podcast</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts/inside-business" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Inside Business Podcast</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts/ross-ocarroll-kelly" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Ross O'Carroll-Kelly</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts/the-counter-ruck" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">The Counter Ruck Podcast</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/podcasts/conversations-with-parents" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Conversations with Parents Podcast</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/video" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Video</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><a class="c-link" href="/photography" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Photography</a></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" 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Forecast</a></li><li class="section-menu--bottom-placeholder"></li></ul></div></div></div></nav></header><section role="main" tabindex="-1" class="b-it-right-rail-advanced__main" id="main"><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__full-width-1" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div id="arcad-feature-f0fVezs2NXf75sB-393f9efd4aed9" class="default__StyledAdUnit-sc-1moicrg-0 gKEhzJ arcad-feature" style="--mobile-display:none;--tablet-display:block;--desktop-display:block"><div class="arcad-container width_100" style="max-width:970px"><div id="arcad_f0fVezs2NXf75sB-393f9efd4aed9" class="arcad ad-970x90"></div></div></div><div class="c-stack b-section-title" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><h1 class="c-heading">Obituaries</h1><div class="b-section-title__links"><a 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data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><h3 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/obituaries/2025/02/01/michael-longley-obituary-award-winning-poet-of-emotional-and-intellectual-depth/">Michael Longley obituary: Award-winning poet of emotional and intellectual depth</a></h3><p class="c-paragraph">He was the last survivor of the Belfast triumvirate of poets which also included Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney</p></div></div></article><hr class="c-divider"/></div></div></div></div></div></div><hr class="c-divider b-it-divider-block"/></div><div class="c-grid b-it-right-rail-advanced__rail-container"><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-interior-item " data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-interior-item-1" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div id="lazy_35352" class="lazy_container"></div></div><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-interior-item-2" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"></div></div><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-right-rail b-it-right-rail-advanced__empty" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-right-rail-top" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="b-it-sticky-chain sticky-chain"><div class="b-it-sticky-chain__container sticky-container"><div><div 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Though his work as a communications and executive coach was never in the spotlight, his influence extended across secretaries general of government departments, CEOs of our largest state agencies and Education and Training Boards, and leaders of some of the highest performing companies in the energy, legal, pharma, technology and financial sectors. Many senior people in these organisations, responsible for billions in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs, were shaped in part by Joe’s steady hand and sharp mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CKLWZNLXHBGR7EEIG65W3IWNZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159680},"content":"As the founder of Frontline Communications, he was a mentor, a strategist, and a trusted confidant to his clients, developing their communication and influencing skills. As Andrew Brownlee, CEO of Solas, puts it: “Joe was in many ways, a ‘horse whisperer’ for leadership, guiding countless individuals to positions where they could drive real change. 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He was passionate about developing the public service and I will always be grateful for his support to me personally, and to many others I referred to him over the last decade or so, who found his unique approach very helpful.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4X4HIWZF5GPXB2AKR7DW2VUCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159682},"content":"Born in Donegal on November 25th, 1951, and raised in Moate, Co Westmeath, with siblings John, Máire, Anne, Bríd and Martin, Joe attended the Carmelite College, later going on to study English at UCG, where he met Merci Fahy. They built a lifelong love and marriage that spanned more than 50 years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDKV2A7XKVDZ5NVC566AZB3TNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159683},"content":"Joe’s professional life began with six happy years as a teacher at De La Salle in Bagenalstown, Co Carlow. But he wanted to see something of life beyond the realm of education and so, in 1978, he moved his young family to Swords, Co Dublin and took the adventurous leap into the business world at Burroughs Corporation and later Nixdorf Computers. Throughout this time, he learned his craft as a communicator, in sales, negotiations and presentations. It was at Nixdorf that he met Bunny Carr and Tom Savage. This had a seismic effect on Joe and he joined Carr Communications. Five years later, he started his own firm, Frontline Communications.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PNG3EB2AVZCN5H224XOJBUGNWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159684},"content":"Beyond his professional life, Joe was a man of deep warmth, generosity, and elegance. He was the consummate host. His passion for words and language extended beyond his coaching. He was a poet, a lover of Crosaire in this paper, and a man who appreciated the precision and beauty of a well-expressed idea.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCQ44U22L5AGZI64MN3S6CFVCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159685},"content":"In August 2023, Joe was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer. Though his initial treatments went well, he achieved remission for only a few weeks in early 2024. In his final months, he faced his illness with characteristic strength and grace. His death last year was sudden and shocking.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7LGLA2M6EZB6JLQEO4UJYB5VZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159686},"content":"Joe Horan changed lives, not by seeking the spotlight but by helping others step into it. His legacy lives on in the leaders he shaped, the friendships he nurtured, and the family he adored. He is survived by his wife Merci, children Rachel, David and Jane, their partners Chris, Sarah and Jonathan, and his granddaughters Lauren, Hannah and Grace.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SAPC32NORG5TO6YNJ4VYHE4TI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159687},"content":"Joe’s absence will be deeply felt, but his legacy remains—woven into the fabric of Ireland’s public and private sectors, in the decisions made by those he guided, and in the leaders who carry forward his wisdom.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Founder of Frontline Communications was a mentor, a strategist, and a trusted confidant to his clients"},"display_date":"2025-03-03T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Joe Horan: communications and executive coach who shaped leaders in the public and private sector","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"67FSN7KH55C3VCSU6AKJ45QJFY","auth":{"1":"d921331db58984a11536478182b4488a6584437e7407a5e13e487d5f4bc2720f"},"focal_point":{"x":94,"y":104},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/67FSN7KH55C3VCSU6AKJ45QJFY.png"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/03/joe-horan-communications-and-executive-coach-who-shaped-leaders-in-the-public-and-private-sector/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"H4X33ZXED5DCZNVMNOFKVPSMCY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":606,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d38e6169-957e-4c34-aa52-fe11fae1c498/versions/1740742300/media/3992234c288c846c6582f6c631eaeb75_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/gene-hackman-obituary-one-of-the-most-prolific-and-respected-character-stars-of-late-1980s-and-90s/","content_elements":[{"_id":"R4K4NQ7NCNBV5HD6UUKJIRUSIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born:</b> January 30th, 1930","type":"text"},{"_id":"WFSE353YGBCJHNYB6L7ES6SIZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> February 26th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"3AB2VZEO2JBWTAHDRFKIWR5W6Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"Few of Hollywood’s leading actors made such an unlikely journey to stardom as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gene-hackman/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gene-hackman/\">Gene Hackman</a>, who has died aged 95. He had no early contact with show business, came from a fraught family background and had looks that might generously be described as “homely”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NEMG42RPJGK3PNO5DGM3P6FE4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He did not decide on acting as a career until his late 20s and was in his late 30s when he had his breakthrough, in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Yet within four years he had won the first of his two Oscars, playing the cop Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection (1971).","type":"text"},{"_id":"EI6VU6SOUFFSHOV25GC5Q2ES7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"While this was his biggest commercial success, his critical status grew with his performance as the paranoid surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). He went on to become one of the most prolific and respected character stars of the late 1980s and 90s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WD5TUGMGKRC3LNANQZDZORDKXY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hackman acted in about 80 movies. Many were dire, and Empire magazine once described him as “the master of the art of rotten career moves”. But he survived those films, as well as problems with drink, a heart ailment and periods of depression. He admitted he took many jobs for the money – certainly nothing else could account for his return to the Superman series in 1987 – to support an expensive lifestyle. He enjoyed flying his own planes and maintained homes throughout the United States and Europe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VRY2N5AKDFHS7OUV2T6YMO7BWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"His readiness to accept so much work may have stemmed from a disrupted childhood during the Depression years. Born in San Bernardino, California, he was the son of Lyda (nee Gray), a waiter, and Eugene Hackman. His father, a journalist, in a restless search for employment moved the family from town to town before leaving for good when Gene was 13, upsetting his schooling and life so that he later remarked he never felt he belonged anywhere. He lied about his age and joined the Marines when he was 16, serving an instructive though unhappy few years, mainly in the Far East. After a serious motorcycle accident, he was invalided out of the forces and had to find a livelihood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZP7S3DGJXFBHBEDOGZ3VTZHNBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1956 he married a New Yorker, Faye Maltese, and with her support decided to try acting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5JNL44Z2JA5FHFPXJ5WWWBARQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Remembering some of Gene Hackman's most famous roles","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"E6CORC7WH5DZ3O4UZJ3Z4B6G5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"They moved to the west coast and Hackman enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts, where he found himself years older than his fellow students. They included Dustin Hoffman, who later became the Hackmans’ lodger and lifelong friend. Allegedly the duo were nominated by their fellows as those “least likely to succeed”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KR2IGRNCBFDNNAMIXZEHKIXIBM","additional_properties":{},"content":"On their return to New York, Faye became a secretary and Hackman took casual jobs between a few off-Broadway plays and occasional television work in episodes of The Defenders and The United States Steel Hour. In his film debut, Mad Dog Coll (1961), he played a cop, and he then appeared in a TV western, Ride With Terror (1963).","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4OH4ZYQ7BDQVBV3CXISV4FEKM","additional_properties":{},"content":"He anticipated better from a role in Robert Rossen’s Lilith (1964), which starred Warren Beatty. Despite the film’s subsequent cult status, the initial response to it hardly helped the struggling actor, who by then had a family – a son, Christopher, and daughter, Elizabeth. A Broadway role in Any Wednesday (1964), starring Jason Robards and an unfriendly Sandy Dennis received good notices.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CTEUKHEHTVCQVETX2ZPN44U6JI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Happily, Beatty turned producer for Bonnie and Clyde and, remembering Hackman from Lilith, cast him as Buck Barrow. The violent film set in Texas during the late 1920s became a hit and Hackman’s assertive performance gained him an Oscar nomination, as best supporting actor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQBOAAACGJCLRJFHB3C7INHRPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":" He also had a third child, Leslie, and a marriage made increasingly difficult by his relentless schedule.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PO26WRD3EBCRBNDK3NQYM2Y7MQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Gene Hackman: Ageless, everyman actor who never gave a bad performance","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"JRS3RTI2GFASTLCAMSQKBCQWNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Critical kudos and a second Oscar nomination came from his role as the son in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). But it was his subsequent success as the truculent detective in William Friedkin’s The French Connection that changed his life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGSLKE75FZFBHKHIGPJBCGUDZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When Steve McQueen and others rejected the film, Hackman seized the moment and made the unyielding cop on the trail of drug dealers his own. He received an Oscar as best actor and reprised the role in the darker French Connection II (1975)..","type":"text"},{"_id":"W2EOZXNYABD6XGG2IRG6JPFZTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Between these thrillers, he was notable in two films released in 1972: Prime Cut, as a vicious gangland boss, and as the lead in the popular film The Poseidon Adventure. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"3Y7YALRQJVBS3E6PZRR57GZDWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PXUPY3H7VRHBBJE5HRP4K7VW64","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYUUFZPVTVFALNCVEVMNCAUF7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Following the highly paid chore of playing the villain Lex Luthor in Superman (1978), Hackman went into semi-retirement. His scenes for Superman II (1980) had been completed during the initial shoot. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QIBS4F4GHBGGZL2VSVKUN2D6HY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1983 he launched the second phase of his career, playing a jaded reporter in Roger Spottiswoode’s political thriller Under Fire and a colonel in Uncommon Valor, and taking the challenging role of the reclusive billionaire in Nicolas Roeg’s Eureka.. It took Hackman a while to find his stride, mixing disasters such as Misunderstood (1984) and Superman IV (1987) with successes in Best Shot (released as Hoosiers in the US, 1986) and a villainous secretary of defence in the stylish No Way Out (1987).","type":"text"},{"_id":"2SDSJ25VXBG6NMDDWFSEEOWMBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was the fourth of his six films in 1988 that gave him his best role for years, playing the co-investigator of racial murders in the US deep south. Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning received some stick for its alleged inaccuracies, but Hackman enjoyed a tailor-made part, exhibiting a combination of world-weary humanity and wry humour, cloaked by an exterior toughness. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JPHITBNRRESFLYAQX466SCANA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Embarking on the busiest period of his career, when he also returned to the stage, opposite Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss in Death and the Maiden on Broadway (1992), Hackman made much of a small role as a film director in Postcards from the Edge, and played the prosecutor in the remake of the noir classic Narrow Margin (both 1990). Including roles as narrator and General Mandible’s voice in Antz (1998), he made 25 appearances in 10 years. One documentary was a tribute to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/clint-eastwood/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/clint-eastwood/\">Clint Eastwood</a>, to whom Hackman had reason to be grateful.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DMYXOBVSLNEIJCFCLKREIXQSZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Gene Hackman 1930-2025: in pictures","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FX2YPLWBONBQHL6UGYFLXJS3ZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1992 Eastwood had nagged him into playing the sadistic sheriff Daggett in the sombre Unforgiven. Hackman brought weight and credibility to the pivotal role and received his second Oscar. It started him on a run of westerns – as a brigadier general in Geronimo (1993), Nicholas Earp alongside Kevin Costner in Lawrence Kasdan’s monumental Wyatt Earp (1994), then another evil sheriff in the quirky The Quick and the Dead (1995). In Tony Scott’s cold war thriller Crimson Tide (1995) he was memorable as the hawkish submarine captain who nearly brings about a nuclear war.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ULUZWLY55NDUVBJVOLYNJIUII4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He clearly enjoyed playing the sleazy producer in Get Shorty (1995). Relishing his increasing status and workload, he knocked spots off Hugh Grant in Extreme Measures (1996) and responded to the competition offered by Paul Newman in the nostalgic private-eye movie Twilight (1998). Hackman worked increasingly in big-budget movies: as the murderous president in Eastwood’s Absolute Power (1997), and the reclusive surveillance expert in Scott’s Enemy of the State (1998).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RE44CJODOZHJ5KDL5C2UE2KSSI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In his own production, the disturbing thriller Under Suspicion (2000), he played a wealthy lawyer being tracked by a dogged detective for a child murder. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IUYO6QLEGNBENEVB3I2Z6G3ZQI","additional_properties":{},"content":"There were lighter moments, such as his rightwing senator in The Birdcage (1996), a feeble revamp of La Cage aux Folles, and a return to coaching – this time football – in The Replacements (2000). ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNBTSVFZUNEV5IVXMDJTZ3ZMOE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2001 he again embarked on a series of big-budget films, beginning with a cameo role in The Mexican, an uneasy blend of romance and black comedy starring <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/brad-pitt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/brad-pitt/\">Brad Pitt</a>, quickly followed by Heartbreakers, in which Hackman played a cigarette tycoon bamboozled by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sigourney-weaver/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sigourney-weaver/\">Sigourney Weaver</a>. In welcome contrast, he was very much the star as a gang leader, Joe, in David Mamet’s smart and complicated Heist – a thriller in which, characteristically for the writer-director, nothing was exactly what it seemed. Hackman was elevated to the rank of admiral in Behind Enemy Lines, a jingoistic and gung-ho war film that was more rewarding financially than artistically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NOJIX6ISKFGNZBNXHPO7PZAOOE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In one of the best films of his career, Wes Anderson’s witty and poignant The Royal Tenenbaums, Hackman took the lead as Royal, a long-absent father who returns to salvage his erratic family from a complicated domestic dilemma. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DQHXVSF2Z5CSXELZIJKEXLYENU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Runaway Jury (2003), adapted from a John Grisham novel, proved efficient entertainment, largely thanks to an original premise and fine performances from Hackman and his friend Hoffman. After a minor comedy, Welcome to Mooseport (2004), Hackman gave a television interview stating that he had no plan to act in future and was going to enjoy a more simple life. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6WGQCFKNYBDTNNV3NZGBTBNE3Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"WRVHJ3FULVCCXCMFPLTVYCOKLU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His first marriage ended in divorce in 1986. He married Betsy Arakawa, a pianist, in 1991; she was found dead with Hackman at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His three children survive him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UVXUG3YR5RES3LYZWOOINOENTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Few of Hollywood’s leading actors made such an unlikely journey to stardom as Hackman"},"display_date":"2025-03-01T06:00:01Z","headlines":{"basic":"Gene Hackman obituary: One of the most prolific and respected character stars of late 1980s and 90s","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3XWOXQ54PRDILMAQDV3S5GJP6Y","auth":{"1":"f1665caeffdc5ef72c970a4e0e0bede0de3ba006d49a4a7e2a83f7da20f27db3"},"focal_point":{"x":537,"y":256},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3XWOXQ54PRDILMAQDV3S5GJP6Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/gene-hackman-obituary-one-of-the-most-prolific-and-respected-character-stars-of-late-1980s-and-90s/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"E4SU54EHXVER3F56IT4HP4FFNM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":371,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/3c11074d-8e52-4a13-8890-cddca5b8c99e/versions/1740581261/media/d70a98dccc4d70fdc8593e7a77ac562f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/brendan-bik-mcfarlane-obituary-ira-figure-linked-to-kidnapping-killings-and-prisoner-escape/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6T3MP4Q6OVAGZI6ILERHAPSK7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 9th, 1951","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>February 21st, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"6BAOX2KNTRGXRIQVTSO5EX4E4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002818},"content":"Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, who has died aged 73, was a former seminarian who as an <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_self\">IRA</a> member participated in a sectarian massacre on the Shankill, allegedly was involved in the kidnapping of Don Tidey and the killing of a Garda and Irish soldier, played a central role in the H-Block hunger strikes and was one of the leaders of the mass escape of IRA prisoners from the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/maze-prison/\" target=\"_self\">Maze prison</a> in 1983.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G2P4CU3WW5C3JMQVBPJ3APEO4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002819},"content":"In paying tribute, senior <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sinn-fein/\" target=\"_self\">Sinn Féin</a> and former IRA members majored on the hunger strikes and the Maze escape, while <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2025/02/21/who-was-bik-mcfarlane-the-ira-figure-linked-to-notorious-kidnapping/\" target=\"_blank\">several others</a> concentrated on the Shankill killings and the Tidey kidnapping.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HKU3ZZ2HERGZNFKA566GHGEWVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002820},"content":"The clash of opinion was well illustrated in an exchange on X following his death where Sinn Féin leader <a href=\"https://x.com/MaryLouMcDonald/status/1893007767142629485\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Lou McDonald described McFarlane</a> as “a great patriot who lived his life for the freedom and unity of Ireland”, with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2023/11/02/university-of-limerick-names-brigid-laffan-as-new-chancellor/\" target=\"_blank\">chancellor of the University of Limerick Prof Brigid Laffan</a> responding that such praise was <a href=\"https://x.com/BrigidLaffan/status/1893362116389642533\" target=\"_blank\">“stomach churning”.</a>","type":"text"},{"_id":"XWEDBH6DYVGFRGY2KVSQWXMMHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002821},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"7W6XPE7YCFA3NEGDZBRCB2JREY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002822},"content":"There was a large attendance of republican figures at his funeral in west Belfast on Tuesday, February 25th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4D2DHURFPHEJCPMGQMPGH7WHM","additional_properties":{"_id":"KMJAEDRD7BCB5MRYJGJIU6GZ44"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"IY666QV2KFDAJFLQ4O76EHDSCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002823},"content":"McFarlane was born in 1951 and raised in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast. He took his nickname “Bik” from a Scottish brand of biscuits, McFarlane, Lang and Co. In 1968, he decided to study for the priesthood, attending St David’s Catholic seminary in Wales, but abandoned his vocation two years later to return to Belfast, where he joined the IRA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F5YXCEWUCBCJ7LU4OYIHAG2GRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002824},"content":"Several years ago he told the republican newspaper, An Phoblacht, that he saw no contradiction in engaging in armed violence. “We were studying liberation theology. I’d have turned up somewhere like South America with a bible in one hand and an AK47 in the other,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDSIAO6IARFXVOCMYZPJBXUWTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002825},"content":"He was convicted of the IRA gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar on the Shankill in August 1975 in which five Protestants, three men and two women, were killed and some 60 injured. As it made its getaway, the IRA unit also <a href=\"https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/bayardo-murders-lost-in-rubble-of-mcgurks/28595832.html?\" target=\"_blank\">opened fire</a> on a group of women and children standing at a taxi rank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DD24FZNB6FCETMQSZCQLCMC4DQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002826},"content":"McFarlane was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders. As David Beresford wrote in Ten Men Dead, McFarlane was not chosen as one of the 1981 hunger strikers because of the Bayardo attack, which potentially would have labelled him a “one-man public relations disaster”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZC5Q6ZOT5ZHTHD6CUTBP7IZHEA","additional_properties":{"_id":"DHWJ5W6CJFCW5OWYNU6X6ERUPY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"Z5G6SKUTFNGDNNGVODBDYMJ6IA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002827},"content":"But against his wishes, he ended up as the IRA commanding officer in the prison during the strikes. The obvious candidate for the role was another leading republican, Seanna Walsh. But Bobby Sands, the first to begin the hunger strike and the first of the 10 to die, insisted that McFarlane must take on the role. “Seanna Walsh is my best mate,” said Sands. “When a crisis develops, Seanna Walsh will not let me die. You will. You have to.” McFarlane took it as a dubious compliment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WC6WFEPBPBBEJH3Y6JWNT3L5GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002829},"content":"Over fairly recent years McFarlane was involved in a dispute with another former H-Block prisoner Richard O’Rawe, who was the IRA press officer in the prison during the hunger strikes. O’Rawe said he and McFarlane had agreed to accept a deal on offer that would have ended the strike after four deaths, but that it was overruled by the outside republican leadership. Others such as the late Monsignor Denis Faul made a similar assertion, but McFarlane insisted “there was no such deal”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NL4OBEOPDBEJLK3BI34E26DLLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002831},"content":"He tried to escape from the Maze Prison in 1978 dressed as a priest but was caught. He was more successful in 1983, when he led the Maze prison breakout in which 38 republican prisoners escaped.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YKAA67MBENF77KTUPKF4ZMCYM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002832},"content":"He quickly resumed his IRA activities. There was strong evidence that he was involved in the 1983 kidnap of supermarket executive Don Tidey. The IRA gang was traced to Derrada Wood near Ballinamore in Co Leitrim, where Patrick Kelly and trainee Garda Gary Sheehan were shot dead. Tidey was freed while the kidnappers escaped.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZIRZ3PX4YNCR3ADDCXF5A72Q3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002833},"content":"McFarlane was arrested, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/timeline-mcfarlane-appeal-1.649361\" target=\"_blank\">along with fellow escapee and current Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly, in Amsterdam in 1986</a>. He was extradited to Northern Ireland and returned to prison. He was released on parole 11 years later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EOWFSMXOKJAEJNQGGQMBPG3EGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002834},"content":"He was arrested in the Republic in 1998 and charged in connection with the Don Tidey kidnapping. That trial collapsed, however, after gardaí lost items recovered from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2023/12/16/death-in-derrada-wood-how-a-provisional-ira-gang-shot-dead-a-recruit-garda-and-a-soldier-during-a-bloody-rescue/\" target=\"_blank\">Derrada Wood</a> that were said to have his fingerprints on them. He faced a retrial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin 10 years later but that case also collapsed after Garda evidence and an alleged admission he had made that he was in Derrada Wood were ruled inadmissible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N2ADZJPZH5AHVHPT7VX4B2NYJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002835},"content":"In 2010, the Irish government had to pay McFarlane €5,400 in damages and €10,000 in legal costs after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that proceedings against him were “unreasonably long”. The court cited how over 10 years, McFarlane made 40 round-trips each of 320km to the court from his home in Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UT2ZZ5NRCNA3HLSK3V2WSBNC5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002836},"content":"McFarlane was a firm supporter of the peace process and of the former Sinn Féin president <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gerry-adams/\" target=\"_self\">Gerry Adams</a>. He also was a singer and played at republican events. He wrote a number of songs including one about Sands called A Song for Marcella. This was a pseudonym, the name of one of his sisters, that Sands used in articles he wrote for An Phoblacht.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GUMASLA4P5CMNA6TXTD56XWCOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002838},"content":"McFarlane married young but, according to Beresford, that relationship broke up early under the strain of his IRA activities. He met his Danish wife Lene in a jazz club in Paris while he was on the run in 1984. He is survived by Lene and their children, Thomas, Emma and Tina.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He became a firm supporter of the peace process"},"display_date":"2025-03-01T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane obituary: IRA figure linked to kidnapping, killings and prisoner escape ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"O3YDXGKIN5EJ5O4XEUSYQLGOUE","auth":{"1":"4fbaa31585e947719bedd15c05d6a85a715bacddaa022e1c692bbcafc6cfa83f"},"focal_point":{"x":323,"y":174},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/O3YDXGKIN5EJ5O4XEUSYQLGOUE.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/brendan-bik-mcfarlane-obituary-ira-figure-linked-to-kidnapping-killings-and-prisoner-escape/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"IEUXR4H46RHHBGF65COMINLJZA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":568,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/71c9314c-a4ba-4c69-8cc7-354b5be1c336/versions/1740563520/media/8385907d8f530b48914a47b0ce894bcf_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/26/jennifer-johnston-obituary-writer-who-combined-brevity-with-razor-sharp-wisdom/","content_elements":[{"_id":"X5ZCZCX3SBALZD6V2NK3G4KCTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>January 12th, 1930","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>February 25th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEW6NZILD5EYLDGFFDCTBKU7UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468963},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/jennifer-johnston/\" target=\"_blank\">Jennifer Johnston</a>, who has <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2025/02/26/writer-jennifer-johnston-dies-aged-95/\" target=\"_blank\">died aged 95</a>, was a prolific novelist, playwright and short story writer who won numerous accolades for her distilled and acutely perceptive writing. They included the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards, the Irish PEN Award, the Whitbread (now the Nero Award), and a shortlisting for the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/booker-prize/\" target=\"_blank\">Booker Prize</a>. She was one of the writers nominated in 2014 for the position of first Irish Laureate for Fiction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LF7H4POUTFFFTPP3ROPIZGCSZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468964},"content":"Booker Prize winner <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/roddy-doyle/\" target=\"_blank\">Roddy Doyle</a> called her the greatest Irish writer ever, while writer <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/dermot-bolger/\" target=\"_blank\">Dermot Bolger</a> said her books had not always received the attention they deserved, because reliable novelists were not newsworthy. “Johnston simply appears in the shops every three years with another small, intensely crafted volume to be treasured by lovers of good writing,” <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jennifer-johnston-chronicler-of-ireland-s-hidden-civil-wars-1.3110916\" target=\"_blank\">he wrote in this newspaper</a> when her last novel, Naming the Stars, was published in 2016.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UKQNYOHP5EKZE6MKRKUHHADW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468965},"content":"“As with Samuel Beckett, the novels of Jennifer Johnston grow shorter and wiser as she grows older, so that they have come to embody brevity and resigned, earned, razor-sharp wisdom.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KE6D5Q7GNBGYDNILVTMJVO3NMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120343},"content":"Jennifer Johnston: chronicler of Ireland’s hidden civil wars","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"R6BGNVNE2ZCEZPUF2JI7D4Y4RI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468966},"content":"Publishing her first novel, The Captains and the Kings, at the age of 42, Jennifer Johnston went on to have an exceptionally rich and prolific writing career, spanning five decades. In a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jennifer-johnston-is-june-s-irish-times-book-club-author-1.3104373\" target=\"_blank\">Book Club series in this newspaper in 2017</a>, fellow writers and critics <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/in-praise-of-jennifer-johnston-1.2168695\" target=\"_blank\">celebrated her achievement and her unique contribution</a> to Irish literature.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X47B27KBQJB4PFTCSTPEU7O2QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468967},"content":"Acting had been Johnston’s first calling as a teenager, which was hardly surprising in light of her family background in Dublin. The daughter of acclaimed <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/abbey-theatre/\" target=\"_blank\">Abbey</a> actress <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelah_Richards\" target=\"_blank\">Shelah Richards</a> and playwright and war correspondent <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Johnston\" target=\"_blank\">Denis Johnston</a>, she was accustomed to the company of actors and writers at their family home in Donnybrook. She often watched her mother on stage from the wings and helped her practise her lines. It left her with a keen ear for the music and rhythm of spoken language. “Words are our greatest joy,” she said. “Whether you are speaking or writing, every single person in the world is a guardian of words.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"K6RN4EY7S5O25LON5RI3IM6N54","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120346},"type":"image"},{"_id":"C63SKKU4H5DE5EPVHAE7RBYJNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468968},"content":"Shakespeare and Chekhov remained Johnston’s influences and her most admired writers throughout her life. Studying English and French at Trinity College in the late 1940s, she left without finishing her degree to marry a fellow student, Ian Smyth, a solicitor. The couple moved first to Paris in 1951, and then to London, where she went on to have four children. It was during these years, as her children began to grow up, that the urge to write took hold, she later recalled. “The pain I felt at the age of 35 troubled me. I wanted to see if I could write the pain out of myself.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNWSI2ER45EAXHCWGTKDJCBPHI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468969},"content":"This creative compulsion can be observed in many of the characters in Johnston’s novels, especially the young women, who are attempting to express themselves and forge an identity amid confusion and conflicting loyalties – whether of class, religious background or sectarian allegiance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTVOX2IMHZJ3BKXXGTUJKPE2YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120349},"type":"image"},{"_id":"RO26P4L2ARFBLPSUTUZEXAO3DE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468970},"content":"Drawing on her Protestant family background, her first novels – The Captains and the Kings, The Gates, and How Many Miles To Babylon – were set in the Anglo-Irish milieu of crumbling country houses and genteel poverty, shadowed by the devastating impact of the first World War, followed by the War of Independence. The Captains and the Kings won The Evening Standard Best First Novel Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CBWYZXD45FES5GWVCKHFAEEW2M","additional_properties":{"_id":"WQL6D624MRAJFPEH57Y4OEN2CI"},"content":"Jennifer Johnston: the letter I kept in my wallet for 30 years","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HPFJZ5BJGFGT3OFGY2SUFFK46M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468971},"content":"Although her writing career was taking off in the early 1970s it was a period of upheaval in Johnston’s personal life. Her first marriage ended in divorce and she married the lawyer and dendrologist David Gilliland, moving to his family home, Brook Hall, overlooking the Foyle outside Derry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XHLBAPPIDFHE3GITG57TX5VSDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468972},"content":"Her 1979 novel The Old Jest won the Whitbread Prize and was turned into a movie called The Dawning, starring Anthony Hopkins. “I was never so happy as in the first 15 years of my writing,” she said in an interview in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SORY25OLKNAJJNAN3XECFHM4HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468973},"content":"Her first play of many, The Nightingale and Not the Lark, appeared on stage in 1981 while in 1989 her play O Ananias, Azarias and Misael won the Giles Cooper Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ABDMORZOTNDNZAERSCC7NAWBGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468974},"content":"While Johnston was initially associated with the Big House literary tradition, she was above all a minutely observant chronicler of family dysfunction in Ireland, against the background of wider social, political and cultural change. Deeply sympathetic as she was, this did not hinder her from being clear sighted and tough in tackling the anguish of violent deaths during the Troubles, in novels such as Shadows On Our Skin (1977) and The Railway Station Man (1984). The latter novel was adapted into a film starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Nor did she shy from the equally difficult subjects of child sexual abuse, rape and incest – most notably in The Invisible Worm (1991) and Grace and Truth (2005).","type":"text"},{"_id":"4EPQFFSLU5K3RN6TQX5AX36LR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120355},"type":"image"},{"_id":"XMHRSK72FFAZRC75EI6BIHI76I","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468975},"content":"“I am not sure in which tense I live, the present or the past,” says Laura, the damaged central character in The Invisible Worm, and this became Johnston’s overarching theme. As traumas from the past return, her characters attempt to clamber out of their echo chambers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XLH4CJ3DRFDXNUM7TQ26FXQWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468976},"content":"Grief for lost brothers, absent fathers, and emotionally absent mothers recurs as a leitmotif in her novels and plays, and in interviews she often returned to her father Denis Johnston’s abrupt disappearance from her life as a seven-year-old child, when her parents’ marriage broke down and he left Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LO3A724J5ZG2LOIIGAW6E7QVD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468977},"content":"Her 2009 novel, Truth or Fiction, is widely regarded as a portrayal of her father, in the character of an ageing Dalkey-based playwright who feels that his work has been overlooked in later life. Far from a petty settling of scores, this is a generally genial depiction of a self-involved man struggling to accept his displacement to the sidelines of life. In this, it is typical of Johnston’s treatment of her many elderly characters and their ageing bodies: wryly humorous and sympathetic, wise without being sentimental.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KRE6TLE5NVFPPLPI76EOTBZHVM","additional_properties":{"_id":"OFXUEKRDHVEZBI2IELM3RVCEVA"},"content":"Lost in transition: the fiction of Jennifer Johnston","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OH5SZNQC3RFDRFQFZ67G6YOSKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468978},"content":"Family secrets, omissions, silences and lies permeate her novels, and as she developed as a writer, she increasingly began to take more risks with form: playing with time frames, incorporating different narrative points of view in the form of letters and diary entries, fragments of poems and songs, creating a loose collage effect. Shifting back and forth between past and present, allowing small details to accumulate, her style was elegantly described by critic Deborah Singmaster as “pointillist”. Other commentators deemed it to be excessively sketchy, especially in her most recent novels, which have not been very well received critically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTMU2X5VKVFSPHC6IAOVIHUU64","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468979},"content":"In her later years, Johnston became a stern critic of her own work, especially her early novel The Gates (1973) – “I can’t bear it” – and expressed puzzlement that it was Shadows On Our Skin (1977) that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her own preference among her books was for The Illusionist (1995), in which a middle-aged woman, Stella, gradually emerged from the shadow of her husband to find her own voice as a writer. It seems one of the most personal of Johnston’s books, expressing her own experience of writing as an utter necessity. “What could I do if I didn’t write,” she asked a few years ago, in relief at returning to her regular, steady pattern of publication following a brief fallow period.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2CLHFMHTQJEMDGIVYBNJOJ7FOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120361},"type":"image"},{"_id":"4AFLSWTC55DQVHLGNB4JSJQ5PM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468980},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/a-writer-making-sense-of-life-s-awful-muddle-1.554386\" target=\"_blank\">An interview she gave to Irish Times journalist Arminta Wallace</a> on the occasion of her Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 captures her ready laugh and vigorously candid conversation, as she reflected back on life. “It’s one bloody awful muddle from the moment you’re born until the moment you die. You might as well just try and muddle through.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"O57LXZR2DRH2XD4TD2Q3Q5R5RM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468981},"content":"She returned from Derry to Dublin in her later years so that she could be close to her family and settled in Dún Laoghaire. In 2019 she donated her writing desk, which was made to her precise specifications several decades earlier, and nearly 2,000 of her books to Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Libraries. The collection is housed in dlr Lexicon. She previously donated her archive to Trinity College Dublin. Dlr Lexicon hosted a celebrated exhibition of her work in 2020 to mark her 90th birthday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NQAW7B36OVGBVK3TQRE5F3KHCE","additional_properties":{"_id":"FCZS6QISHZCRFFQHFPJUG2ZROE"},"content":"‘How has life led me to this moment?’: Creativity in Jennifer Johnston","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5VDSMABDTRDQVFUHBU573T7TGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468982},"content":"When her last novel, Naming the Stars was published in 2016, RTÉ‘s Arena presenter Seán Rocks asked how vital the act of writing was to her at that point in her life. “It’s very, very important to me because it’s my life,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZIBAF7NDJHAVHOEABZBPXWBWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468983},"content":"Jennifer Johnston is survived by her children Patrick, Sarah, Lucy and Malachi, her grandchildren Sam Daniels and Attikos Lemos Smyth, her brother Micheal and half-brother Rory. She was predeceased by her husband, David Gilliland, former husband Ian Smyth and half-brother Jeremy.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"While Johnston was initially associated with the Big House literary tradition, she was above all a minutely observant chronicler of family dysfunction in Ireland"},"display_date":"2025-02-26T10:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jennifer Johnston obituary: Writer who combined brevity with razor-sharp wisdom","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KNOLKXEACVM3XCNMW467RRXXD4","auth":{"1":"43d316eac33b08e59c4cf62323acc92d219909bb2583ee4e9366cd3315c47177"},"focal_point":{"x":2609,"y":2388},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KNOLKXEACVM3XCNMW467RRXXD4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/26/jennifer-johnston-obituary-writer-who-combined-brevity-with-razor-sharp-wisdom/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"KPALIC4TEZHCFJPXAURLV2OZIY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":248,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6c804924-2eac-4c1a-aab5-b57574af127e/versions/1740077767/media/c0cb163b5f83be1f178b4d44c81b7503_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/23/john-howard-storyteller-and-old-school-journalist/","content_elements":[{"_id":"PXDYPMW2GJHUJJZWXYVLTDCQBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The death has occurred on January 8th of John Howard, a great storyteller, an old-school journalist and avid reader of, and letter writer to, this paper. He was born on January 27th, 1934, in Knocknamana, Clarecastle, Co Clare, the eldest of five children: John, Mary, Philip, Ethel and Paddy. Sadly, he lost both his father and brother Philip during his childhood and was the last of his siblings when he died. He grew up in Ennis attending school at St Flannan’s College, where he received an excellent education, in particular in Latin and Greek, forming the bedrock of the many languages he went on to learn. As a teenager he contracted rheumatic fever and, while this left him bed-bound for many months, it also gave him his love of radio, which fed into many things he held dear throughout his life: music, travel, politics and journalism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EG777V53RRHQHDYKGLZMELJVRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1952, John joined the Clare Champion as a cub reporter, where he spent four years, in what he considered to be a “fabulous” training ground under the editor at the time, Larry de Lacey. He later moved to Dublin, joining first the Irish Independent and then, in 1960, The Irish Times, first as a general reporter, on the London desk, and then, in what he described as his “dream job”, as aviation correspondent. John moved to the RTÉ newsroom – radio and television – where he spent time reporting on the Troubles, and then into public relations at the ESB.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TGEX2EWWARA2VCVVPKMXBEXFIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"John married Mary Segrave on February 4th, 1967, in a double wedding with George Devlin, a fellow journalist and great friend, who married Mary’s beloved sister, Patricia. John and Mary had three children: Cathy, Philip and Trish, who married Andy, Niamh and Adrian, respectively. John’s six grandchildren – Cara, Emily, Oscar, Senan, Cian and Luca – brought him great happiness as the years went by; they always felt like a million dollars through the attention and respect he gave them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GNB6JWAV7ZHMBDY3IKPVP3TONU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Through his work, and over the years with Mary and his family, John travelled to many places, taking a great interest in the people, the language, the culture, the food and wine. His travels included India, Beirut, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Florida, and multiple trips to Spain, Italy and France. John also loved to travel within Ireland: Doolin, the Burren, Kilmichael Point, Kilmore Quay, Achill Island, Roundstone, Lough Corrib and Valentia Island being among his favourite spots","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQPBN4FVCJAHXBAPTPMAE6NLOA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although he spent the rest of his days living and raising his family in Dublin, Co Clare was always in John’s heart and his thoughts, with great memories of Ballyvaughan, Fanore, Lahinch and Kilkee and stories of the West Clare Railway and the Kilfenora Céilí Band, not to mention nights out in Lisdoonvarna and dances on “maple-sprung floors”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6KQN3ENLMFCULNC3ZIMSWPCPWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"John took huge joy out of family and friends coming together and in sharing conversation, thoughts and especially stories. He could tell a great story and loved nothing better than regaling a captive audience with tales of various deeds and misdeeds by himself, his friends, colleagues or politicians or judges or whoever. Everyone loved to listen to him and to laugh together: wonderful memories forever. But there was also, in these stories, something to think about; there was often a nugget of learning, or of wisdom in the story – something you could take away and reflect or contemplate on. John will be remembered for his attitude: open-minded, friendly and accepting; for being interested and interesting; for his kindness, gentleness and love; and for his learning and wisdom, conversation, and stories.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Philip Howard"},{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Cathy McDonnell"},{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Trish Howard"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2025-02-23T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"John Howard – storyteller and old-school journalist","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XPNLENJZXZFHJPEGL4AGEJYWOI","auth":{"1":"b80c26acc986d0c46eec5412642852932ba56f337e8229eeac6cdb22ae13de13"},"focal_point":{"x":124,"y":130},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XPNLENJZXZFHJPEGL4AGEJYWOI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/23/john-howard-storyteller-and-old-school-journalist/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"5P4OL4UOL5B33DNKCDGX3XOU6E","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":336,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9f7d57fd-c21a-4551-8d46-bf20fb91b9ea/versions/1739967296/media/b8691a2e918f5653ea18804ce0f8694f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/michael-cooper-obituary-sculptor-inspired-by-the-beauty-of-connemara-and-donegal/","content_elements":[{"_id":"C6ZVM6GBWVH6TIH77PXBCY7NPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>July 4th, 1944","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 25th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"TYO75VARNNHU5JEYOH3QQBVCYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035604},"content":"Sculptor Michael Cooper FRBS (Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors) lived in the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-kingdom/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-kingdom/\">UK</a> throughout his adult life, but his childhood years in the wilds of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/connemara/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/connemara/\">Connemara</a> and later in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/donegal/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/donegal/\">Donegal</a> always inspired his art and craft. The beaches near Dunlewy in Donegal – where his father Major Derek Cooper, OBE MC, had purchased a house after he returned from the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/second-world-war/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/second-world-war/\">second World War</a> – were where he first experimented with whittling wood, sometimes under the eye of landscape artist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/fine-art-antiques/remembering-the-artist-derek-hill-1.2322895\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/fine-art-antiques/remembering-the-artist-derek-hill-1.2322895\">Derek Hill</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F2J4SAVDM5CUDDCH35HJHBOTF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035605},"content":"Over the ensuing decades his body of work would include a four-ton gorilla carved in Belgian fossil marble for Lord Carrington’s Sculpture Garden in Buckinghamshire and a 7ft statue of 16th century pirate queen Grace O’Malley for Westport House, Co Mayo.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ARQRYQ2PUJDJLHB76KH5TXLZ6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035606},"content":"Cooper was born in 1944 in a little maternity hospital on Hatch Street in Dublin where his mother, Pamela Cooper (née Tulloch) was living while her husband was away in the war.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMBRU6NMO5H3TDCEID3N5O3HLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035607},"content":"Soon after his birth, Michael was brought to live at his maternal grandparents’ home at Shanbolard House, near Cleggan, in Connemara. His older sister, Jennifer, had spent all of the war there with her grandparents, Doris and Kinmont Tulloch, and was very excited when Mick, as he was called by the family, arrived.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I3OQOZH4FNDYRHTMFASMQL5DXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035608},"content":"The richness of this natural world with all its freedoms would prove to be the genesis for much of his later work, which through further travels captured the mystique and unfettered beauty of the animal world. Regular stays at nearby Delphi Lodge engendered a love of fishing too. One of his first big commissions was a Sailfish while a piece entitled Salmon Leap was commissioned by Berkeley Square County Council, London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLK4MEBM2FHXHJ5YU7AX4ATOX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035609},"content":"First, though, Cooper spent a very unhappy time at Eton College before attending Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, between 1969 and 1971 and then studying under Anthony Gray. Cooper spent much of his working life in his studio in Buckinghamshire, near where his mother then lived.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5PGPPOWN5H77DJOFHNO3JV7FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035611},"content":"Working in materials including marble, stone and bronze, he exhibited at a wide variety of venues from 1974. They included Regent’s Park Zoo, London, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Royal Academy, as well as many private galleries. Among his large-scale commissions were three life-size bears in Belgian fossil marble for Bicester retail village.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SGTNNPNAZBFXRL4SDYJUUGHH5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035612},"content":"His lifelong friendship and camaraderie with his late brother-in-law the 11th Marquis of Sligo, Jeremy Browne of Westport House, led to much discussion, before he agreed to making the 7ft Portland stone sculpture of Grace O’Malley, with a second piece also cast in bronze (2003).","type":"text"},{"_id":"VTVUODFSEFBKDNV7R7ZA4LXQ5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035613},"content":"His Irish connections also led to a number of exhibitions and the commissioning of Irish Wolfhounds in bronze for the Kildare retail village.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O2LLAXXGEFC37DBIBWKHK5EK2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035614},"content":"Cooper’s work has been described as “figurative but stylised, giving his pieces a marvellous tactile quality”. They range from the monumental, to pieces that fit in the hand such as his small Orangutan and Camel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIQ4RFN7JNDTDE3KMNZWPSUD2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035615},"content":"A citation in the catalogue for his last major exhibition, Out of the Block at Gallery Pangolin in 2023 states: “Starting with a rough block using nothing but a chisel and sandpaper, Cooper brings incredible tactility and subtle sensuality to the sculptures he creates. Forms flow from one into another, magically suggesting a feline flank, a canine quizzicality, primate personality or pachyderm power.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"F335AUHPYFEO5B2SL3CVUEWDWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035617},"content":"The sculptures included a bronze entitled Lemur, his Reclining Polar bear in marble, Seated Leopard in Kilkenny limestone, Small Orangutan in sterling silver. Significantly, the exhibition also included examples of another lifelong artistic endeavour, the human body, with Torso and Mother and Child, both in marble.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LIH3FDIR7ZBOHIPXNTGO3VXMJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035618},"content":"His Irish-born stepbrother Lord Grey Gowrie, a Conservative politician and minister for arts under Margaret Thatcher, wrote poetically about the sensuality and stillness of Cooper’s human torsos “caught by their own shape, unsullied by anything but regard”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3GCACKXD55G5RPP4UMR6DG5SLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035619},"content":"A permanent exhibition of Cooper’s work is on show at his wife’s restaurant, The Sir Charles Napier in Oxfordshire. Since early exhibitions in the Lad Lane Gallery in Dublin and the Municipal Gallery in Cork in 1977, his work has appeared in dozens of galleries across the UK, the US and Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RZ3OAGKIPZCZHNBR4OHKGSC574","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035620},"content":"His closeness to his sister Jennifer always ensured regular visits to the west of Ireland. Staying at Renvyle House Hotel with his family while heading off to Coynes of Tullycross for “a good pint of Guinness” was an important part of the ritual.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIOCMBFPA5HZFMUUXAHHV2HOPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035621},"content":"In September 2018, Cooper was delighted to walk his niece Alannah up the aisle in Holy Trinity Church, Westport. After Jeremy’s death in 2014, he was very supportive to his grief-stricken sister and her five daughters. With a philosophical outlook influenced by Sufism, he encouraged his sister to always remember: “We are in this world but we don’t have to be of this world.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HMM5WLPHYVE4FMN7W2FS2CCSRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035623},"content":"Michael Cooper is survived by his wife Julie, his children Lórien, Kate and Sam, his sister Jennifer, and wider family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VOQZDHSR3JDSFFA5TSX3SFOO7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035624},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He always believed that ‘we are in this world but we don’t have to be of this world'"},"display_date":"2025-02-22T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Michael Cooper obituary: Sculptor inspired by the beauty of Connemara and Donegal","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"AJQICAABTBGTBFH7U5FYQFZJMI","auth":{"1":"c496f226079a57e2ac34e5d8897da67d4f11c140b95b6d754fefab749e284abc"},"focal_point":{"x":3457,"y":1853},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/AJQICAABTBGTBFH7U5FYQFZJMI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/michael-cooper-obituary-sculptor-inspired-by-the-beauty-of-connemara-and-donegal/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"RQVOQ5GQ5BGWREEPZT7YFWGAJI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":584,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/21bf61fc-4817-43f5-9d4f-69572ccaf8b5/versions/1739958479/media/da69f044f1591b3ad446c43133d7d42d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/eleanor-maguire-obituary-irish-neuroscientist-who-changed-our-understanding-of-memory/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AMDROTMZEVABRKCAIJZVVV5J3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>March 27th, 1970","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 4th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3LW3XSCPNAQDEQXPAFEDK6U3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559081},"content":"Eleanor Maguire, a cognitive neuroscientist whose research on the human hippocampus – especially those belonging to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\">London</a> taxi drivers – transformed the understanding of memory, revealing that a key structure in the brain can be strengthened like a muscle, has died at the age of 54 in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EEFSKBTRXJAKPF7RKEJIJ5WKTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559082},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"37EZ2ORTSJCCHMVOI54VSXMLYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559083},"content":"Working for 30 years in a small, tight-knit lab, Maguire obsessed over the hippocampus – a seahorse-shaped engine of memory deep in the brain – like a meticulous, relentless detective trying to solve a cold case. An early pioneer of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on living subjects, Maguire was able to look inside human brains as they processed information. Her studies revealed that the hippocampus can grow, and that memory is not a replay of the past but rather an active reconstructive process that shapes how people imagine the future.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KU65DYO625AA5NMZBXAROUAA2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559085},"content":"“She was absolutely one of the leading researchers of her generation in the world on memory,” said Chris Frith, an emeritus professor of neuropsychology at University College London. “She changed our understanding of memory, and I think she also gave us important new ways of studying it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BZMUNLBCKNAL7LPRCZDLMUSQYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559086},"content":"In 1995, while she was a postdoctoral fellow in Frith’s lab, Maguire was watching television one evening when she stumbled on The Knowledge, a quirky film about prospective London taxi drivers memorising the city’s 25,000 streets to prepare for a three-year-long series of licensing tests. Maguire, who said she rarely drove because she feared never arriving at her destination, was mesmerised. “I am absolutely appalling at finding my way around,” she once told The Daily Telegraph. “I wondered, ‘How are some people so bloody good and I am so terrible?’”","type":"text"},{"_id":"W3XYWALV3FFLZGQTEHYORVIHSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559088},"content":"In the first of a series of studies, Maguire and her colleagues scanned the brains of taxi drivers while quizzing them about the shortest routes between various destinations in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XP2VB45GSFGOPPWUXZHC4WLGZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559089},"content":"The results, published in 1997, showed that blood flow in the right hippocampus increased sharply as the drivers described their routes – meaning that specific area of the brain played a key role in spatial navigation. But that didn’t solve the mystery of why the taxi drivers were so good at their jobs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NF6QD6A57ZHCJJPYHWYNNWVOG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559091},"content":"Maguire kept digging. Using MRI machines, she measured different regions in the brains of 16 drivers, comparing their dimensions with those in the brains of people who weren’t taxi drivers. “The posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects,” she wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And the size, she found, correlated with the length of a cabby’s career: The longer the cabby had driven, the bigger the hippocampus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LB4I63THOJFSHDT5LVQNH5R2FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559094},"content":"Maguire’s study, published in March 2000, generated headlines around the world and turned London taxi drivers into unlikely scientific stars. “I never noticed part of my brain growing,” David Cohen, a member of the London Cab Drivers Club, told the BBC. “It makes you wonder what happened to the rest of it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRF4ON2WRBGNBC7O6UI7HFXNQY","additional_properties":{"_id":"XXAI66LGLZC3XJENTLYRIBYRXM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"RWHJTKSPRNAM7PSJEUEH6D3SEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559096},"content":"Maguire wondered, too: Why (and how) did their hippocampi grow?","type":"text"},{"_id":"BXSK3OLKVJFNDARY3B57BXXWCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559098},"content":"She followed up with other studies. One showed that the hippocampi of bus drivers – whose routes were set rather than navigated from memory – didn’t grow. Another showed that prospective taxi drivers who failed their tests did not gain any hippocampus volume in the process.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Q6TAZUXTBEZHHIHRCUSCOSBXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559099},"content":"The implications were striking: the key structure in the brain governing memory and spatial navigation was malleable.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RE7UCOBGQNBK3BBMULHMTAZJYI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559100},"content":"In a roundabout way, Maguire’s findings revealed the scientific underpinnings of the ancient Roman “method of loci,” a memorisation trick also known as the “memory palace.” This technique involves visualising a large house and assigning an individual memory to a particular room. Mentally walking through the house fires up the hippocampus, eliciting the memorised information. Maguire studied memory athletes – people who train their brains to recall vast amounts of information quickly – who used this method, and observed that its effectiveness was “reflected in its continued use over two and a half millenniums in virtually unchanged form”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DNXYO3FL5NA53MH45PTXLHPD4Y","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"44SN4WB7MNBCROYLOWJIKVIZQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559102},"content":"But recalling information was only half the story. In studying patients with damage to the hippocampus, including those with amnesia, Maguire found that they couldn’t visualise or navigate future scenarios. One taxi driver, for instance, struggled to make his way through busy London streets in a virtual-reality simulation. Other amnesiacs couldn’t imagine an upcoming Christmas party or a trip to the beach. “Instead of visualising a single scene in their mind, such as a crowded beach filled with sunbathers, the patients reported seeing just a collection of disjointed images, such as sand, water, people and beach towels,” the journal Science News reported in 2009.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TFAW2RJMSFGXJNBNNA7XKPDE4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559105},"content":"The hippocampus, it turns out, binds snippets of information to construct scenes from the past – and the future.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLUL2LB2F5F3XKPTXMFOVBGEJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559106},"content":"“The whole point of the brain is future planning,” Maguire was quoted as saying in Margaret Heffernan’s book Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future (2020). “You need to survive and think about what happened when I was last here, is there a scary monster that will come out and eat me? We create models of the future by recruiting our memories of the past.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XKJLQROO4BG4HCPGYQFUZ5ASZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559107},"content":"Eleanor Anne Maguire was born on March 27th, 1970, in Dublin. Her father, Paddy Maguire, was a factory worker. Her mother, Anne Maguire, was a receptionist, who was an advocate of hard work and fond of the quoting Mark Twain: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FIYWSXGGNNGQHHEFRNLATH3SLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The young Eleanor was a hard worker even in primary school. Her first loves were archaeology, astronomy and biology. As she told <a href=\"https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01190-6\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01190-6\">Current Biology</a> in 2012: “When it came to making choices for university, my parents ruled out archaeology as they felt I couldn’t make a decent living from it. In Dublin in the late 1980s, studying astronomy seemed like pie in the sky. So I quite happily plumped for a career in biology. Visits to the local university arranged by my biology teacher quickly confirmed that a wet lab was not for me, and consequently I fell into psychology.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QT5EML34FFFBTPU7HYRQLF5AJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559109},"content":"As a child, she was obsessed with Star Trek. “My first scientific hero was fictional – Spock, science officer on the Starship Enterprise,” she told the journal Current Biology. “He embodied so much of what attracted me to science. He was inquisitive, logical, honest, meticulous, calm, fearless in facing the unknown, innovative and unafraid of taking risks.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NKBQH56FPRB5ZLMB7BNQJSTZUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559112},"content":"She graduated from University College Dublin in 1990 with a degree in psychology, and returned to earn her doctorate there after receiving a master’s degree from the University College of Swansea (now Swansea University). Maguire joined the faculty at University College London in 1995.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MLE4FS32UBC67GFPT4SBZDOPNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693910},"content":"She remained a keen supporter of Irish rugby and Crystal Palace Football Club.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2TBR7V6QSVAUJM2353FXH5PZCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559116},"content":"At Maguire’s memorial service, Prof Cathy Price, her colleague at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, spoke about the energy and excitement her friend and long-time colleague generated at the lab, recalling that Maguire’s mother had called nightly to remind her daughter to go home. “It wasn’t just a job,” Price said. “It consumed us, day and night.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEAEOO2IXBH5XBE6J6CHT4INCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693912},"content":"Price also said: “Her taxi driver study, widely regarded as a stroke of creative genius, exemplifies her trailblazing discoveries and inspirational research. Famously, though a world authority on navigation she was notoriously poor at negotiating even familiar environments. Eleanor was a force of nature and had a towering work ethic. Her immense clarity of thought allowed her to distil complex ideas with unparalleled clarity ... Eleanor’s team motto was: ‘We want to plant seeds, not prune hedges.’ And that’s exactly what she did.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"F6KYW4W5QNEETBIVUMW4TCZPY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693913},"content":"Over the course of her career, she received numerous awards, including the Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award. She was a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), and the Royal Society (FRS), and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA).","type":"text"},{"_id":"BA6AHH5BVBHQHBC7X3WFNTJHXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693914},"content":"Maguire was diagnosed with spinal cancer in 2022 and had recently developed pneumonia. She is survived by her parents, nephews Senan and Ultan and a wide circle of family and friends. Her brother, Declan, died in 2019.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXC2RH6WSNHE5AWZUIM7QQH7HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559118},"content":"– <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/science/eleanor-maguire-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Her work studying London cabbies transformed our conception of how brains adapt and grow"},"display_date":"2025-02-22T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Eleanor Maguire obituary: Irish neuroscientist who changed our understanding of memory","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NE5WJIGGGJD5NKHANGK3LP7MB4","auth":{"1":"3d341a6586b42b2e71607d88f4fe477ddca3890c7b9d505cfdf479a37db792c1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NE5WJIGGGJD5NKHANGK3LP7MB4.jpeg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/eleanor-maguire-obituary-irish-neuroscientist-who-changed-our-understanding-of-memory/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"AM7HDTXOOVCZJNU2CUUORNEKMI","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/the-aga-khan-obituary-spiritual-leader-with-a-taste-for-fast-cars-and-racehorses/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7BUVNDTOGVDQXDFFVNEB2TIBVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781634},"content":"<b>Born </b>December 13th, 1936","type":"text"},{"_id":"BJXTLTETPNBK7AUH6Y5WYL6ALY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781635},"content":"<b>Died </b>February 4th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"2T5HKDZAOVA63GDQBTHOS7YWI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781636},"content":"Fast cars, yachts and racehorses are not the usual accoutrements of religious leaders, but they fitted the lifestyle of the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the world’s 12 million Ismaili Muslims, who has died aged 88.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OLW7KEAGD5ELVC4ZAKLV2DHP5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781637},"content":"Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the 49th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, claimed direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Hazrat Bibi Fatima and his son-in-law Hazrat Ali, the fourth rightly guided caliph of Islam. The Ismaili sect sees no contradiction between spiritual and material wellbeing. As the Aga Khan said: “It is not an Islamic belief that spiritual life should be totally excluded from our more material everyday activities.” Or, as he told Vanity Fair magazine: “We have no notion of the accumulation of wealth being evil, it’s how you use it ... if God has given you the capacity or good fortune to be a privileged individual, you have a moral responsibility to society.” His personal wealth may have topped €15.5 billion, and he was probably richer than the British royal family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NILJUNFR5HODDVW5IBILNQE7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781638},"content":"An international businessman and philanthropist, “smiling, welcoming, with a receding hairline and slightly overweight figure”, according to the former Guardian journalist Hella Pick, who came to know him well. The Aga Khan was a familiar and revered figure to members of the sect scattered in minority communities not only in the Indian subcontinent and Africa, but also in Europe and Canada. They donated tithes of their earnings to him, his foundation and development network and in return his organisation has provided hospitals, clinics, schools and scholarships to their communities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4PKKN2J5RZGPDLKNVWOBHPOJMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781639},"content":"On a trip to Africa with him to visit the Ismaili community in Kenya in the early 1980s, Pick witnessed the reverence with which he was held: “I felt that between the Aga Khan and his followers, there was an extra element. I noticed during the Kenya trip that any cup from which he drank and even the jeep he drove during a safari instantly became treasured museum pieces, probably never to be used again.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOD5EIGOFREOPOW6HKUDRM5WNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781640},"content":"Despite the distinguished lineage, the dynasty traces back in its modern form to the expulsion of the then imam from Persia (now Iran) in 1837. Settling in India, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Raj as a spokesman for the Muslim community and was granted tax-free status by the British, and the title Aga Khan, which means ruler.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CVKFHLW5T2OIDHN5JTRR6KB5IM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781641},"type":"image"},{"_id":"WWLHBUMX3NEHHE5WJD6RGBQTKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781642},"content":"On the fourth Aga Khan’s accession in 1957, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II formally granted him the style of His Highness, “in view of his succession to the imamate and his position as spiritual head of the Ismaili community, many members of which reside in Her Majesty’s territories”. He remained close to the British royal family and was appointed KBE in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BOGQ2O3GVEPXGCUEMEZ6I5UL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781643},"content":"Here, he was best known for his association with the equine industry. His family’s engagement with Ireland’s horse racing and related economic development spanned three generations. The Nations’ Cup at the Dublin Horse Show was established with help of the late Sultan Muhammed Shah <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/aga-khan/\">Aga Khan</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRWA6N5RUJDUHNRWMQAA64IXDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781644},"content":"Non-Muslims generally knew him better for what appeared to be a jet-set lifestyle: a former Olympic skier, owner of fast racing yachts, a familiar figure at Ascot and other racecourses, where his horses, not least the ill-fated Shergar – which was kidnapped by an armed gang thought to be the Provisional IRA from Ballymany stud farm in Co Kildare in 1983 and never seen again – won big races.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RIZYBKNP3JH55MVK3IMG5SGS7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"DNMPVGCJSVB4HPFKNP6AOSMURY"},"content":"Johnny Watterson: Shergar mystery lives on after the Aga Khan's death","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"57ASSQKGWBBOVJOLBXKC7VINTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781646},"content":"Probably the most famous horse in the world at the time, he had run in six races in 1981, winning five, including the Irish Derby, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth Stakes, and at Epsom, where he won by a record 10 lengths. But the Aga Khan refused to pay the £2 million ransom demanded, which was a fraction of the horse’s worth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBB2GIKBJBDRTM6JVZBCZIGHKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781647},"content":"Another of his horses, Harzand, subsequently also won both English and Irish Derbies, and a third, Zarkava, won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. He was fascinated by the science of horse breeding but never betted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z3X34GKYZVC3TOEHZVQJC3MH7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781648},"content":"Prince Karim was born in Genthod, Switzerland, the son of Joan Yarde-Buller, daughter of the British peer Lord Churston; and Prince Aly Khan, an international playboy and son of the third Aga Khan. According to Pick, who was commissioned to write a biography that never went ahead, it was a lonely childhood for the boy and his younger brother, Amyn, shuffled between homes in Paris, Deauville and Gstaad in the charge of an English nanny by parents whom they rarely saw. They spent the war in a dilapidated family house in Nairobi.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7EV62ZQIGBE35IAC23DTUPZUIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781649},"content":"Both of the boys were sent to an exclusive boarding school, Le Rosey in Switzerland, which at least provided some stability as their parents divorced in 1949: their father went on to marry the Hollywood film star Rita Hayworth, and their mother the newspaper proprietor Viscount Camrose. Aly Khan was killed in a Paris car crash in 1960.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VBYW7OXEX5BVBH3FN4JGVSBMKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781650},"content":"Karim was studying engineering at Harvard when his grandfather, the third Aga Khan, died in 1957 and unprecedentedly settled the succession on him rather than his father, laying down in his will that, in the fundamentally altered conditions of the world in the atomic age, he was convinced that the community “should be led by a young man who could bring a new outlook on life to the office of Islam”. Karim toured the Ismaili communities around the world before returning to Harvard to finish his studies in oriental history, receiving a BA degree two days after setting up a development fund for Muslim students at the university.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOW2NORELBNMREYE3GTTXX2X6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781651},"type":"image"},{"_id":"FRRWVCR6SVE55BOK5XZSIMXU34","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781652},"content":"The range of the Aga Khan’s business interests, run from his headquarters in Switzerland, encompassed diamonds and marble, tyres and saucepans, real estate and mines and top-of-the-range hotels including the Costa Smeralda beach resort in Sardinia and the Serena hotel in Kabul.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAKQQIOK4ZFAFCEZLL7LJBKNXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781653},"content":"Philanthropic initiatives funded through the Aga Khan Development Network included medical facilities in rural areas, higher-education scholarships, a rural support programme to improve living conditions in the African bush and a hydroelectric power network in Uganda.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YNGHOYNR7ZG6VHBEBDGQOCUL3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781654},"content":"The Ismaili Centre in Kensington, London, was set up in 1983, and the 700-year-old Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu was restored, all part of his attempt to reconcile Islam and the Judeo-Christian world. “I see it as a clash of ignorance rather than a clash of civilisations,” he told the Sunday Telegraph in 2005. “There is a remarkable degree of ignorance ... I am talking about human society and civilisation. It’s not a religious issue.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OZX2GLH5VBBTHLID7PGRXO5BTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781655},"content":"The Aga Khan was married twice, first in 1969 to the English model Sarah (Sally) Croker Poole, who took the title Princess Salimah. The couple had three children, Zahra, Rahim – who now succeeds as the 50th imam – and Husain, but the marriage was dissolved in 1995. He married Gabriele Leiningen, a German lawyer and former pop singer in 1998, and they had a son, Aly. That marriage ended acrimoniously in 2004 with protracted divorce proceedings in British and French courts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4FADRXIEXJHXTBHGASQEDYQBJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781656},"content":"The Aga Khan lived his last year in Lisbon, which has an Ismaili community, and was granted Portuguese citizenship. His children survive him.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The Ismaili Muslim ruler was perhaps best known in Ireland for refusing to pay a ransom for the kidnapped Shergar"},"display_date":"2025-02-15T00:48:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Aga Khan obituary: Spiritual leader with a taste for fast cars and racehorses","native":""},"label":{},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"W5QV4YMEPCEDYYKZSYSGZ2TKWI","auth":{"1":"9f61038af594b0a36d1c526332be1f988833c26b06e15ba562c40d089357c092"},"focal_point":{"x":912,"y":129},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/W5QV4YMEPCEDYYKZSYSGZ2TKWI.jpg"},"lead_art":{"_id":"K4S5RCPFYUGMCLUBMCSUQA3WGQ","type":"image"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/the-aga-khan-obituary-spiritual-leader-with-a-taste-for-fast-cars-and-racehorses/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"OSU3U3J75VAFBHFHDX22Z7KHVU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":299,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/ddc6fb07-c35f-45a3-b2f9-3fee5e94f092/versions/1739291452/media/e1a297fa9d5c30ce0114768872a69461_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/mary-odonnell-obituary-pioneering-irish-fashion-designer/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5OWSPG23KNDOBKL6WRU6C3AOEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213590},"content":"<b>Born: </b>April 8th, 1933","type":"text"},{"_id":"XH442XPIU5EL7C7CGU4PI74D3A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> January 27th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"KVNA2WENH5H7JEKJKDCWNECDGU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mary O’Donnell, who has died aged 92, was <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/irish-fashion-since-1950-1.97741\" target=\"_blank\">a leading Irish fashion designer from Donegal</a> who established a highly successful career both in Ireland and in the US, during the 1960s and 1970s. Part of a group of pioneering Irish couturiers of the period who included Sybil Connolly, Neilli Mulcahy and Irene Gilbert, she used Irish textiles in new and imaginative ways and won fame and international recognition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MIBJ6Y2JE5HSXP3ISJIWZNYRD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213591},"content":"O’Donnell was known particularly for her needlework, hand crochet, lace, embroidery and the sophisticated romanticism of her clothes. One outfit, for instance, shown at an exhibition in Dublin, featured an electric green crochet top threaded with green silk ribbon over a pink and green braided diamond patchwork skirt: an example of both her flamboyance and restraint.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2BEXSA32NNGXZJMCYDGZULKOFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213592},"content":"Clients for her couture included Princess Grace of Monaco, the Kennedys, Miranda Countess of Iveagh, Maureen O’Hara and other high-profile women both at home and abroad. Themes for her fashion collections often drew from Irish literature and the poetry of WB Yeats. She also designed the costumes (many with details from the Book of Kells) for the film Lovespell, , based on the story of Tristan and Isolde: it starred Richard Burton and was filmed in Ireland in 1979.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6354UDKQ5FB7NIKEFT3RUIDRXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213593},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"G3WX6L6HWBDM3JGV4OUAMMFPOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213594},"content":"O’Donnell was born in Kilcar in 1933, in the heartland of the Donegal Gaeltacht tweed industry. One of six children to parents James and Cassie O’Donnell, from an early age she had mastered the basic hand skills of knitting, embroidery and crochet, as well as spinning and carding wool. She would claim that she could both knit and read a book at the same time. Those skills were widespread locally and, in her last interview for the TG4 fashion series Snáithe in 2017, O’Donnell recalled that “there were 15 houses in the town, and each of the women were skilled at crochet and needlework”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RM2DJOB7YRCDNB2AODQJYXCN6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213595},"content":"Determined to develop her craft, having spent a year in Mountcharles with a dressmaker cousin, she left Ireland at the age of 17 for New York and enrolled in the Traphagen School of Fashion on Broadway, working in restaurants to support her studies. Her ambition was to secure a position with the house of Mainbocher, then the most famous couture house in the US. It had been founded by the American couturier Main Bocher, who had already established a successful business in Paris with clients that included Wallis Simpson, before he returned to New York and rooms on 5th Avenue. O’Donnell achieved her ambition and remained there for more than two years, before returning to Dublin and working briefly with Sybil Connolly. She opened her own premises on Dawson Street in 1963.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QYOY7TWAEZCANLM7G4F54N2LGM","additional_properties":{"_id":"COLTC2HJQZGB7KAUXQFOVFO5M4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"25EAP3QE35FNFNRVDSPWRGQXXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213597},"content":"Her style became known for its use of Irish textiles and craft skills in fresh new ways, particularly crochet – typical ensembles might be a voluminous skirt of poplin or gossamer tweed with a tight hand crochet top or white crochet trouser suits. Embroidery using traditional Irish motifs were other signature examples of her expert handwork, and an Irish Rose pattern was fashioned in many colours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AK757FCL7JBZPKSNQ7U2DO75GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213598},"content":"O’Donnell continued to spend a great deal of time in the US, where her work resonated with the Irish American establishment. She was friends with the Kennedy families and the family of Tip O’Neill (47th Speaker of the US House of Representatives), among many others. In 1970, one charity fashion show was held in the garden of then Senator Edward Kennedy’s house in Washington.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUB5SLZQNBE6FKSUBNBEA6SSQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213599},"content":"O’Donnell’s clothes, handmade and labour-intensive to produce, were necessarily expensive and the product of a team of more than 30 women working from their own homes in Donegal or Dublin, with ten in her Dawson Street workrooms. She once described her business as “basically a cottage industry”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3HJVBCCSO5FOBL6H22H2SEYYK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213600},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"Z6IPMVDHIVGN5MTQYMKAJ5FIO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213601},"content":"In 1965, she married a Scottish medical student John Duckworth, with whom she had a son, Richard. After their separation, she had another son, Donnacha, from a long and loving partnership with the late Michael Tierney. Following the closure of her Dawson Street premises in 1983, she ran a factory in Donegal for three years before returning to the US, where she maintained a strong following of loyal private clients.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63RUZJ7JHZBONKZH5QBVWMG43M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213602},"content":"O’Donnell retired in 1995 and returned initially to Dublin, then to Kilcar, where she remained until her death. Her archive, including many sketchbooks, was offered to the National Museum in Collins Barracks in 2019, but will be donated to the Ulster Museum in Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZZBG25RJ6NCPPM4I3RLTG4E4BY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213603},"content":"She is survived by her sons Richard and Donnacha; a brother, Sean; daughters-in-law, grandchild, extended family and a wide circle of friends.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Her clients included Princess Grace of Monaco, the Kennedys, Miranda Countess of Iveagh and Maureen O’Hara"},"display_date":"2025-02-15T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Mary O’Donnell obituary: Pioneering Irish fashion designer","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HWG4IZPQQJHEDIAE3F3PYEDGJY","auth":{"1":"c232bb8cd7a310a339c6b032c67a93a5c20d2c51813e0f0442acec058aa6c411"},"focal_point":{"x":3491,"y":2227},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HWG4IZPQQJHEDIAE3F3PYEDGJY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/mary-odonnell-obituary-pioneering-irish-fashion-designer/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"DJ5DQGTCVBCMHIQUUFHWABLM6Q","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":426,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9359a558-9c5a-42a9-909a-e2a4a78c56a0/versions/1738763222/media/f5fb4a8491fb3c53044bd463cf394826_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/marianne-faithfull-obituary-it-girl-reputation-belied-singers-talent-and-pathos/","content_elements":[{"_id":"4AO3IPY23VFYNMRKOWXO6XPHJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born: </b>December 29th, 1946","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 30th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3CDZS5ABVFXLPTU22VU7K2K6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/marianne-faithfull/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/marianne-faithfull/\">Marianne Faithfull</a>, who <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2025/01/30/singer-and-actress-marianne-faithfull-dies-aged-78/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2025/01/30/singer-and-actress-marianne-faithfull-dies-aged-78/\">has died aged 78</a>, was one of the most photographed and talked-about female singers of the 1960s. But to her enduring frustration, her musical talents were eclipsed by her reputation as the pre-eminent It girl of swinging London and her four-year relationship with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/the-rolling-stones/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/the-rolling-stones/\">Rolling Stones</a> frontman <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/mick-jagger/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/mick-jagger/\">Mick Jagger</a>. “I got out very quickly,” she would say of her Jagger years. “Much as I love The Rolling Stones, they’re not my life.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7XJXI3TEF5DLNBAQNUSSOWU73U","additional_properties":{},"content":"With her trendy haircut and movie star looks, her image was of a Carnaby Street femme fatale. But her music could not have been further removed from that glitzy persona. Faithfull’s breathy singing voice brimmed with melancholy, and if early songs such As Tears Go By were disposable pop, in the 1970s, she matured into a thoughtful songwriter who looked back on her gilded past and saw only pain and loss.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ARF52QSL5FDLFJGMMV2LMKHKN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"This was more than just poetic licence. In 1967, her fame turned to notoriety when the police raided the home of Rolling Stones guitarist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/keith-richards/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/keith-richards/\">Keith Richards</a> and found the Stones and hangers-on in a state of drugged debauchery. Faithfull was discovered naked, wrapped in a rug, and the infamy would haunt her for years. “It destroyed me,” she would say. “To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIZ54P4DQGZSRXVGYNLJZAXUZY","additional_properties":{"_id":"2WQ6SYAS7VCUTD4BSOUXGPG4SE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CDNCC2JHGJCITDGE5PFLASN53E","additional_properties":{},"content":"She split from Jagger in 1970 upon discovering he was having an affair with Richards’s lover, Anita Pallenberg. After a suicide attempt, and having become addicted to heroin, she also lost custody of her son Nicholas to her ex-husband, art dealer John Dunbar. “Suddenly, when I was living on the streets ... I realised that human beings were really good. The Chinese restaurant let me wash my clothes there. The man who had the tea stall gave me cups of tea.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PALRWVJSQJF3XNOWXRLMNFX7TY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Music would prove her salvation. In 1976, while still a drug user, she released the mournful ballad Dreamin’ My Dreams. Ignored in the UK, in Ireland it became a huge hit after being championed by a young Pat Kenny, whom she would acknowledge in her 1994 autobiography. Encouraged by that song’s success, in 1979 she recorded Broken English – the LP widely regarded as her masterpiece.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HJRA2OLZRBDRNFUUSNCSD3TJ74","additional_properties":{},"content":"For Marianne Faithfull, Ireland was where one of the most misunderstood women in music could make sense of her life","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CJ652SKHX5CTTFH4AW4HFPV56M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Dreamin’ My Dreams was released in Britain to a resounding silence. And then out of the blue a deejay in Ireland by the name of Patrick Kenny started to play it on his show and it went to number one in the Irish charts for seven weeks – the Irish love a waltz,” she wrote. “It was a fluke ... I don’t know whether it’s the church in Ireland or the drinking, but these people do know how to forgive.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R2SW6LFK4FEH3OWOZE5ZL6IJ24","additional_properties":{},"content":"She felt she needed forgiveness after years of addiction. She also believed that Ireland was the one place that would look past her faded glamour and her notoriety and see her for who she was: a broken, confused mother who wanted to do right by the world – and the world to do right by her.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KO3AS72YFFFJHMM6VB2VIIFP4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Faithfull had visited Ireland on and off since the 1960s, initially with Jagger. In 1969, months before she and Jagger split, the couple were visiting Glin Castle in Limerick when they were introduced to Anglo-Irish peer Paddy Rossmore – who would later become her fiance (Faithfull would end the relationship in 1979). “He was so Anglo-Irish: long legs that curl up in that English aristocratic way, a bit like an old lady. In short, the sort of man my mother always wanted me to marry,” she recalled of Rossmore. “Flirtation becomes infatuation.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KYXGRI5C3JAGPOGFFLTC27LAY4","additional_properties":{},"content":" The singer was born Marian Evelyn Faithfull in December 1946. Her father, Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British army officer and MI6 agent with a bohemian background to rival any 1960s rocker. His father was a pioneering sexologist, while Robert had helped establish an upmarket commune in Oxfordshire, which Marianne would describe as a “mixture of high utopian thoughts and randy sex”. Her mother, Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch, was born in Budapest to Austria-Hungarian nobility: her great-uncle, Baron von Sacher-Masoch, was the author of the pornographic novel Venus In Furs and the creator of the term “masochism”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMAID5R6EJD2BGXE43PGUYLGLM","additional_properties":{},"content":"The marriage was stormy, and Faithfull’s parents separated when she was six. She and her mother moved to a terraced house in Reading, where Faithfull was educated at the local Catholic school. Her life changed when she met Jagger at a party in 1964. She was only vaguely aware of The Rolling Stones – then just another up-and-coming blues band in London. But their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, thought she looked like an “angel” he could market as a pop star. A few months later, she had her first smash with As Tears Go By – a Rolling Stones original that Jagger and Richards had dismissed as a “terrible piece of tripe”. The public disagreed, and Faithfull’s’ recording became a top-ten hit. A pop icon was born.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNASQIH44FBLDLRXFS7VDNZHHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"If Faithfull’s relationship with the charts was a brief flirtation, her love affair with Ireland was more enduring. She lived for many years at the famous 18th-century Shell Cottage on Carton House near Maynooth – the interior of which is lined with seashells. She later moved to Dublin and Co Waterford before relocating to Paris, where she endured a difficult lockdown, coming close to death after contracting Covid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3YY5T6CEF5DZJMNXQEE2O54JMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"She never stopped writing and recording. In 2021, released her final album, She Walks In Beauty – inspired by her love of the British romantic poets. In <a href=\"https://www.hotpress.com/opinion/marianne-faithfull-it-took-a-new-generation-to-appreciate-what-i-could-really-do-it-took-a-hell-of-a-long-time-22851168\" target=\"_blank\">an interview with Hot Press</a> that year, she was philosophical about her life and continuing association with the Stones. “I haven’t seen Mick for years. I did see him once or twice in Ireland and we just talked non-stop, as if there was no one else in the room. It was at a dinner party, so in a funny way, we’re still kind of close. But no, I don’t go out and I’m not in his world any more.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFJM42AI4NGHPF3DR2ZQASTVBY","additional_properties":{},"content":"She was married and divorced three times, to John Dunbar (1965-66), musician Ben Brierly, a musician (1979-1986), and writer and actor Giorgio Della Terza (1988-1991). She is survived by her son, Nicholas.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Star of 1960s saw Ireland as the one place that would look past her faded glamour and notoriety and see her for who she really was"},"display_date":"2025-02-08T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Marianne Faithfull obituary: It girl reputation belied singer’s talent and pathos","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"2PW6UQ64BRBCBOYMY6P4MLCMWI","auth":{"1":"dafa18827ea8281af7c204b0c6f12fc58a5949ddbdc4f899c9cb7ccfc4f9daf6"},"focal_point":{"x":1462,"y":1143},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/2PW6UQ64BRBCBOYMY6P4MLCMWI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/marianne-faithfull-obituary-it-girl-reputation-belied-singers-talent-and-pathos/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"2UPSOQTWGRHG3NJ52XLHM6ERPU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":442,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c159d510-d278-4a14-bd9d-48b2e56cdf5a/versions/1738755937/media/d5c45a3b65494f44df23f047ce2b2141_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/paddy-cole-obituary-musical-icon-of-the-showband-era/","content_elements":[{"_id":"N7D3WX4MRZH3PO7LZ7ZWO4HRYA","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born </b>December 17th, 1939","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died </b>January 22nd, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"NO52W5L7D5A7THB6ZL7WF6SW6Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Retaining the passion that steers anyone on their career path is a challenge, but Paddy Cole’s love for the music that defined his life was undimmed to the very end.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UY62TYJPIZHYFENDWL5IDIKKKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Born the second of seven children, Paddy was an only son among six sisters. His father, Pat, played saxophone in a local band and instilled in his son an early love for jazz and for that instrument. Both his father and his mother, Mary (née Hughes) were from Castleblayney, Co <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/monaghan/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/monaghan/\">Monaghan</a>, and such was Paddy’s natural musical talent that he debuted with his father’s band at the age of 12. On many afternoons the bandwagon would pull up outside St Mary’s National School in Castleblayney, whisking a young Cole away from his studies to perform on stages across the region. Some might say his natural performance talents were to be seen even before that, as it was Cole who read the address when the bishop formally opened his primary school.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGFE6PYNSRGDNG4M5AM5J4VGUQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole went on to attend the local vocational school, but at the age of 15 he became fully professional, joining the Maurice Lynch Showband. Having grown up in a home where his father would order records by the jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie from the US, he was well-versed in the intricacies of swing, embraced his new musical milieu with delight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4XTXX37GFJFT5D2DFIL2MDYCDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paddy Cole, showband singer and saxophone player, dies aged 85","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"2OSA6GMHUNENBC7XLOJMS7MZ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"Family was always central to his life. He married Helen (nee Hehir) from Drumcolliher in 1965, and they lived in Castleblayney, where later they bought and ran a very successful pub and restaurant, Paddy Cole’s Place, where he frequently performed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZUBO3OFBVHC7I6X4NSLBMCD7M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole graduated to the Capitol Showband in the 1960s and from there to Brendan Bowyer and the Big Eight Showband. From 1971 to 1974 Cole and the band would spend six months of the year in Las Vegas, playing three shows a day, six days a week. It was not unusual for their dressingroom to be visited by stars including Elvis Presley, Rock Hudson, Muhammad Ali and members of the Rat Pack who were winding down after their own performances. During this time Cole befriended the actor and singer Roy Rogers and the pair enjoyed socialising together. Once when former Sunday World editor, Kevin Marron, was visiting Paddy in Vegas, the phone rang and Paddy was heard to say “if that’s Roy Rogers, tell him I’m not home.” This was a source of great amusement to Marron, as Rogers was a huge name in Hollywood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AN65G42VCRPCHGLVSVZVPCCRLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"T7YU3EAGYFG2LCOPLM7G2OW6GA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"ALZBVOQJNJCI3H2V4VER65JJXQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole, Brendan Bowyer and the Big Eight toured Ireland for the second six months of each year. In Las Vegas, he formed his own band, The Paddy Cole Superstars. He played both saxophone and clarinet, with the latter instrument being closest to his heart.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VDRM6ZYPA5A3BG7KJPWWNSF5EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the early 1990s, Paddy and his wife sold their pub and restaurant and moved to Ballsbridge in Dublin, which was a more convenient base for his musical travels.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZFX6AX7EENFSRBF6RZ5NH5XUTY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole had the honour of playing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans, with his performance rated by one of the band members as “not bad for a white guy”. Cole greatly appreciated this opportunity to play in what is considered to be the birthplace of jazz and headlining his own shows on Bourbon Street marked the pinnacle of his career in many ways.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HGJOAU32MFDKZCFD6T6XRYOMZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He also headlined many international tours to that American city and to the Caribbean, and found a new chapter in corporate gigs such as the Budweiser Derby. He quietly supported a raft of charities from the Make A Wish Foundation to Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind and St Luke’s Hospital. He was chair of RAAP (Recording Artists Actors Performers) for 25 years and worked hard to ensure that artists got paid their royalties at a time when such advocacy was uncommon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JF6SKNK55VH5ZGRJHK6AUHS2CY","additional_properties":{},"content":"A sideways move into radio broadcasting on Sunshine 106.8FM began in 2004 and afforded him another opportunity to immerse himself in the music he loved. American trumpeter, singer and bandleader Louis Prima was one of Cole’s favourite artists, beloved not only for his musicianship, but for his wit. On radio he found a niche as an empathetic interviewer who drew the best out of his guests. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SC4HQJMHNBCHKCLUCAUJSQSGI","additional_properties":{},"content":"While the world grappled with the pandemic in 2020, Cole published his autobiography, Paddy Cole: King of the Swingers. It chronicled a life lived to the full, defined by an irrepressible wit and passion for music and people, followed closely by an innately competitive love for golf. He was a member of Castle Golf Club in Dublin and Lahinch in Co Clare. On both courses, every €5 note would be played for as if it was his last.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FXDQE7CTPSR55Q2QD3624NJXFE","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"F55KL4WIZVBTXGYHJ7ELCC4OUM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Charismatic, warm, witty and openly affectionate, Cole would invariably encounter people when out walking who would want to reminisce with him about the showband days, with tales of draughty dance halls and dance hall promoters peppering their conversation, his son Pat recalled. These encounters were a source of energy for him, propelling him ever onwards. Cole and Dickie Rock said their final goodbyes to public performance in the same concert in 2019. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMBVYW4JXFFIZDYJXCGO3CUA4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"President Michael D Higgins stated that “the loss of Paddy Cole is the loss of one of the founding icons of the great period of the Irish showbands.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BIWXWO66JZFHDGLZN5CQ5NQHFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2022. He dealt with the news with the same pragmatism that defined his life, discarding the things he could no longer do, but moving forward to live life to the fullest possible extent. Just a week before his passing he was still walking to Herbert Park and buying his daily newspaper. He was a firm believer in the Clint Eastwood philosophy of “don’t let the old man in”, and so until very recently, he continued to relish his weekly gatherings with his son Pat and grandson Paddy, as well as with his showband and golfing buddies. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OAXGIYHHORDRJGGEYEMXEIKQOU","additional_properties":{},"content":"At his funeral, Cole’s lifelong friend, Fr Brian D’Arcy spoke of him as a real pro who always played well, dressed well and showed up on time. That professional attitude propelled him at a time when the showbands were in their heyday, with huge dance halls operating all week, throughout the country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SD22KCICRBZ7KDKPH3KANPHQU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole was a force of nature who had a lot of tenacity and grit. There was no difference between the public and private person. He could easily have been creative in many other ways. He was proficient in the Irish language, and could have been successful in industry, but there was only one path that he wanted to pursue, and he did that with an enviable enthusiasm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTQRHZ35Z5DILE6ZWDHA4XDRWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"His roots were important to him and in 2019 a mural was unveiled in his honour in Castleblayney. His funeral cortege paused at that site as he made his journey home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GX7DHSNEDVD5HAHLCP6APELPJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"He is survived by his wife Helen, children Pearse, Pat and Karen, his nine grandchildren, and his four sisters Mae, Carmel, Lucia and Betty. He was predeceased by his sisters, Sadie and Jacinta.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"It was not unusual for his Las Vegas dressing room to be visited by stars including the likes of Elvis Presley, Rock Hudson, Muhammad Ali and members of the Rat Pack"},"display_date":"2025-02-08T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Paddy Cole obituary: Musical icon of the showband era","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VPTSRRRJW5NFRKXKMVNGHUHRHU","auth":{"1":"2f1b62d4d9bc8815d0fa802c3fb7aa96ca03adb142118cd5b880391b46b4ad49"},"focal_point":{"x":2362,"y":860},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VPTSRRRJW5NFRKXKMVNGHUHRHU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/paddy-cole-obituary-musical-icon-of-the-showband-era/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"KVTK3PWPBNA4FCJZAEV5PZN7II","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":501,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/00726792-8e0a-4e5e-b971-0bbd496ff484/versions/1738084708/media/e0a5ca36caf47b9d039897e4b397748f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/michael-longley-obituary-award-winning-poet-of-emotional-and-intellectual-depth/","content_elements":[{"_id":"WQURAPM2Y5HGHHRX4LJSCYA7V4","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born: </b>July 27, 1939","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> January 22, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFUZBQ3Q4FFZDAYOAQPOYGQSDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ireland has lost one of its leading literary figures following the death of the multiple award-winning poet, Michael Longley.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XMZVUE66INCJDGLL7AUZILDBJA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The last survivor of the Belfast triumvirate of poets which also included Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney, Longley infused his works with an emotional and intellectual depth garnered from a long life filled with strong loving relationships, enduring friendships and a rigorous academic curiosity. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"W55ON7MVOBG4ROZYL4XHD3HPSI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The three men, Mahon, Heaney and Longley – whose presence heralded a rich mix of younger Belfast writers (Stewart Parker, Bernard MacLaverty, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian) – all published their debut collections in the 1960s and went on to become major internationally renowned poets. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"EJQKILKNTBCLJP7RH2MDESIP2U","additional_properties":{},"content":"A love poet, a nature poet and a war poet inspired by Greek and Roman mythology, Longley’s work courageously bore witness to the Troubles in his native Belfast, first and second World Wars and the Holocaust. He also celebrated the richness and fragility of the natural world and the love he shared with his wife, the academic and critic Edna Longley, their three children and seven grandchildren.","type":"text"},{"_id":"672BTBFUFVHHLLSPQCS4J6FC4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"His 13 collections – including Gorse Fires, The Weather in Japan and The Stairwell – received many awards including the Whitbread Poetry Award, the TS Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, The Irish Timess Literature Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize. In 1994, he published an autobiographical work, entitled Tuppenny Stung, and wrote about jazz, painting and natural history. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LQ6QSD2TKFHD7NK35CFNCEHVJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2010, he was honoured with a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) award and from 2007 to 2010, he served as Ireland Professor of Poetry, a cross-Border academic post administered by Queen’s University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and both Arts Councils North and South. He was a member ofAosdána, the Irish association of distinguished artists. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXP7K5AR2ZAI7PEOOPE457LXPA","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2021, a special room at Queen’s University Belfast was named the Longley room in honour of the poet and his wife. And the Michael Longley Scholarship fund was established with two scholarships to be awarded annually to outstanding poetry students. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRB7TS7ZUVDU7PAO2UXGB7XFGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Longley’s collections Ash Keys: New Selected Poems was published in July 2024 to mark his 85th birthday. It brought together work spanning over 50 years from No Continuing City (1969) to The Slain Birds (2022).","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMYHLSLRC5HCJOVA7F72NYXKA4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His best-known poem, Ceasefire, was published in The Irish Times shortly after the Provisional IRA ceasefire in 1994. In it, he compares the episode in the Iliad when Trojan king Priam must plead with the Greek warrior, Achilles, for the return of the body of his son with the reconciliation between enemies during the Northern Ireland peace talks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UTWEMR2G2VDMLJFZYLZJHE5UCU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another poem, The Ice-Cream Man, was about how the owner of the shop he brought his child to had been murdered during the Northern Ireland conflict. Following a reading of this poem on the radio, Longley received a letter signed, The Ice cream Man’s Mother in which she thanked him for remembering her son. “Getting that stunning letter was one of the most important events in my life,” he subsequently said. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYWUDOYAQNB4XJVWY3AM2NPAZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In an interview with The Irish Times in 2024, Longley reflected on progress in Northern Ireland since the 1998 Belfast Agreement. “I think we are getting there but it is going to take a generation and it’s going to take patience and it’s going to require everyone to lower their voices and to listen to each other and to get to know each other and to never forget the victims and their families.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RQB37CPDHJHCVPOBWND3EGUMAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael George Longley grew up in Belfast with his twin brother, Peter, and their elder sister, Wendy, of London-born parents, Richard and Connie Longley (née Longworth). The family had moved to Belfast because of his father’s job as a commercial traveller for a furniture manufacturing firm. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, a boys' grammar school, before moving to Dublin in 1958 to study classics at Trinity College. His first poems were published in student magazines at that university.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6NILOY4KTFATLKAEREOTUXWKFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"An early poem, The Flying Fish, was published in The Irish Times in 1962, which began a decades-long relationship with this newspaper, as both an outlet for his poetry and a place he wrote reviews.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WDMO3QF57RD5FC5ZKERHQVVAKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Trinity College was also where he met his wife-to-be, Edna Broder. Recalling his first encounters with Edna in the aforementioned Irish Times interview, he said: “I registered two things – the black raven hair and that she was brainy. One of the guiding things in my life has been intelligent women. Most men don’t like intelligent women. But I hang on their every word.” The couple married in 1964. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NSEVWFAJO5GAXMUEOT6YZWTNOU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Friends with Derek Mahon since his Trinity days, the Longleys later got to know Seamus Heaney and his then fiancée, Marie Devlin, when Enda Longley got a lecturing post at Queen’s University prompting their move to Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OHRDIRUSHJEUFG7LDLOMTDHAOU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Growing up in Belfast as a Protestant, Longley didn’t have any friends who were Catholic so the friendship with the Heaneys broke through these artificial boundaries. “And it was awkward for me in the late 1960s and early 1970s as I spent a lot of my time as a liberal Protestant apologising as though it was all my fault.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IWSRKVYTERC4DFA6UNXFTH6PNA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Throughout his life, Longley was adamant that he was known as an Irish poet. “I’ve no doubt that I’m an Irish poet or I’m nothing,” he attested. Yet alongside this Irish identity sat the British identity inherited from his parents who moved to Belfast in 1927. His father fought at the Battle of the Somme for which he was award the Military Cross for gallantry. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUS2NSWRWNFEZD3RYFHPD4PZVU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Longley also drew inspiration from what he described as “the soul landscape” near the family’s second home in Carrigskeewaun, Co Mayo. During long stays there from 1970 onwards, the Longleys forged deep friendships with neighbouring writers and environmentalists Michael and Ethna Viney and ornithologist David Cabot.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VUNQOUCSXBHAND3NPVNJG65ECM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Scholarly and wise, yet witty and mischievous, Longley was also generous, compassionate, self-deprecating and approachable. After some years of teaching in Dublin, London and Belfast, he joined the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. As director of combined arts from 1970 until his retirement in 1991, he developed supports for music, storytelling and community arts as well as fostering relationships with publishing houses, particularly the Blackstaff Press in Belfast. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YSKGXLQ3XBEG3ES4SSTOZ5DFZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Throughout that period and later, he became a father figure to several generations of new writers and artists. In a tribute to him, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland said he was “an advocate, a listening ear, an artist whose own high-altitude practice served as a standard against which artists came to measure their work”. That organisation also noted how, during the period of the Troubles, he fulfilled an artistic and civic role “where his quiet voice for tolerance, fairness and remembrance registered powerfully among much noisier and less helpful attitudes”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"B76W5E5H6JEQTIOUCGMOQIDOUU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2024, Double Band Films and Lone Star Productions released a remarkable BBC documentary on Longley entitled Where Poems Come From. The title refers to a typical Longley quip – when asked where poetry came from, he replied: “If I knew where poems came from, I would go there.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ML3HOKNLOVCORIOSMWKUL52IXU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael Longley is survived by his wife, Edna, their children, Rebecca, Daniel and Sarah, and seven grandchildren, Ben, Jacob, Eddie, Conor, Katie, Maisie and Amelia.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He was the last survivor of the Belfast triumvirate of poets which also included Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney"},"display_date":"2025-02-01T00:41:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Michael Longley obituary: Award-winning poet of emotional and intellectual depth","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SIY3FGUHMJE6TAZOUHIGZYQXZU","auth":{"1":"162770f583b736a15d31c5f79ba50dcd5a56956dee99d4b06beab824bad02ad6"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SIY3FGUHMJE6TAZOUHIGZYQXZU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/michael-longley-obituary-award-winning-poet-of-emotional-and-intellectual-depth/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TVTAYDPCWJBSPFFY73YTXU6KXY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":372,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/84ab5136-5751-49b4-9a45-aff6a2628966/versions/1738076509/media/44073b1ace1f6724fb85a0988ba8d1f0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/denis-law-obituary-a-bone-fide-manchester-united-legend/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7BEKPAXJKNAPDBF5M4LJPALAMY","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born: </b>February 24th, 1940","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> January 17th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"IO5E4KEDIRFRHLSOILMRNWKN44","additional_properties":{},"content":"The impact made on the world of football by Denis Law, who has died aged 84, can be measured by the fact that at the height of his fame a future footballing superstar was named after him. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVIZNS47JNB4RJYJGSKWBX4D6A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The child, born to Wim and Tonnie Bergkamp in Amsterdam in May 1969, subsequently had to have his birth name altered because the registrar insisted that “Denis” was overly feminine. The newly-named “Dennis” would go on to make plenty of football history of his own for Arsenal and the Netherlands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W6CFQZHZLVF55JJ65HVKE5BUTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In an era when the word “iconic” was not as commonly abused as it is now, Law – nicknamed The King – was a bona fide sporting legend, along with his Manchester United team-mates Bobby Charlton and George Best. Together, they would be known as the United Trinity. Law was the last surviving member.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AH45L6QBPRHFFDBGX4MCVGZJPM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ebullient, extroverted and a natural showman, Law served as the gleaming spear-tip of Matt Busby’s United team, scoring almost at will as they claimed the English League title in 1965 and 1967 and the European Cup in 1968: only Wayne Rooney and Charlton have scored more goals for the club than him. In 1964, he was anointed as European football’s top player by being awarded the Ballon d’Or, the only Scotsman ever to receive the honour. Decades on from his heyday, he was still revered as a living legend not only of United, but of football itself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T7B77TCGFBC6LOGOUGNWVIMPK4","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"JQEUCN2RZNDYDDFWXYWE4AQ5XE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Denis Law was born in February 1940: his father George worked on a fishing trawler, while his mother Robina was a housewife. He was the youngest of seven children. The family home was a tenement in a deprived area. As a boy, Law was obsessed with football and went to watch his native Aberdeen at Pittodrie whenever he could. Aged 14, he was spotted by a scout while playing for Huddersfield Town, where he then honed his skills under the eye of his manager, the future Liverpool legend Bill Shankly. Grimacing at Law’s frail physique, Shankly said he looked “like a skinned rabbit”, but acknowledged the teenager’s ability.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZMV5EDVMLREDXER6FNUQC44GVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"A childhood squint which forced Law to play with one closed eye was soon medically corrected, removing a major obstacle to his progress. By 1960, he was performing well enough for Huddersfield to catch the attention of Manchester City, who signed him for £55,000, a British transfer record at the time. In one memorable FA Cup tie, he scored six times against Luton before the game was abandoned due to a waterlogged pitch; in the replay, he drew a blank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43QDY5S5NVBJ3PPQU4APAZKQPE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1961, Law would join Italian side Torino for £110,000, another record. He embraced the Italian lifestyle (“The wine was lovely, the food was lovely, the women were lovely”), but became disenchanted with the ultra-defensive tactics that charactised Serie A, and scored only 10 goals in his solitary season there. Far more gravely, he and his team-mate and compatriot Joe Baker were involved in a car crash: Baker almost died, but Law was virtually unscathed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5FKQZYOFCNGB5BFEKUARACUBXY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Following one dispute too many with coach Beniamino Santos, Law walked out on Torino and signed for Manchester United in July 1962. United were still getting back on their feet after the 1958 Munich air disaster, but Law was made for them: a quality finisher who perfectly complemented the creative skills of Bobby Charlton and, later, George Best. It was now that his trademark goal celebration – one arm upraised skywards while clutching his shirt cuff in his hand – entered the wider consciousness of British football.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHDJMHX3PBCD7OW3FWLP2C5Q4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Law’s clinical shot on the turn set United on their way to winning the 1963 FA Cup final against Leicester, and he grabbed 46 more the following season (still a United record) to claim the Ballon d’Or. In 1964-65, his finishing made all the difference as United pipped Leeds on goal average to win the Division One title. Just seven years on from Munich, United were back at the summit of English football. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UK6SUTRLJBCGJKD7ZBK64GFVV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"They claimed the championship again in 1967, but Law was not involved: a knee injury saw him miss the semi-final second leg against Real Madrid and the final against Benfica at Wembley. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2I3Q3SZWFFCNGONIBFTZYPRBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"United’s post-1968 decline was mirrored by Law himself, as nagging injuries saw new manager Tommy Docherty sell him to neighbours Manchester City in 1973. But the decision would ultimately haunt Docherty, who looked on in horror as Law’s late back-heel condemned United to defeat at Maine Road in May 1974. Law pointedly declined to celebrate the goal. It was popularly thought that he had relegated his old club, but results elsewhere ensured that United would have gone down regardless. “I have seldom felt so depressed as I did that weekend,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YTNLSIU3GFFK3MMYETJSZHENIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"That summer, aged 34, he made his only appearance in the World Cup, looking weary as Scotland defeated Zaire in Dortmund; it was his final game for his country. He still holds the Scottish record for international goals (30) jointly with Kenny Dalglish. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SA5EZ6Y6LZC25BFBFFSIFEIYXE","additional_properties":{},"content":"As a player, Law was spiky and aggressive but off the field, he was known for his cheerfulness and approachability, and he remained a beloved figure with United’s fans through the next five decades. After retiring, he was a regular pundit on the BBC and ITV. In 2002, a statue of him was unveiled outside Old Trafford; six years later, another one of him alongside Charlton and Best was situated at the other end of the stadium.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDASKSQ6P5HFVA73UXTCRXND6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Law died on January 17th. He is survived by his wife Diana and their five children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AI3WLT2ZPBCQZFI4SGFHUVSY6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The only Scotsman to win the Ballon d’Or was a spiky and aggressive player on the pitch and a beloved figure off it"},"display_date":"2025-02-01T00:39:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Denis Law obituary: A bone fide Manchester United legend","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CM45X2UALZY3SY4J2AG4CEBIII","auth":{"1":"d1a4b70fb94de432b2c74e9f6c824d1a1e363eeff79fa52ee949085a5d258367"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CM45X2UALZY3SY4J2AG4CEBIII.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/denis-law-obituary-a-bone-fide-manchester-united-legend/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"ZUHNQQTDUBFUVPGWZAV3IZTTRY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":483,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d5933d1a-c20d-4bc7-ac2d-62a53844c185/versions/1737543548/media/123a2bf0f545458262bfb6620966d7fd_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/25/patrick-macentee-obituary-leading-criminal-advocate-of-his-generation/","content_elements":[{"_id":"HOJCD3NYZRCRNH7Q5RBBB3BZDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>November 4th, 1936","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 13th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNQWNGDXDBG6PD2EODPCFMZZ3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040162},"content":"Patrick MacEntee SC QC was born in 1936 into a middle-class family in Monaghan town. His father was a dentist. His mother, born in England, was of Irish stock. He was educated at his local Christian Brothers school, St Macartan’s college in Monaghan and at <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/ucd/\" target=\"_blank\">University College Dublin</a>, where he graduated and had been an active member in the Dramsoc society.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GW4JV7NTNBFYLPH5G7UMQQK2QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040163},"content":"Called to the Bar in 1960, he devilled with Herbert McWilliam, a distinguished Presbyterian Northern circuit barrister who later became a judge of the High Court. MacEntee practised across the Northern circuit as a junior counsel, a role at which he excelled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ATRVF4LITZGY7MYZ3WEP4A4XCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733184},"content":"He deployed his innate curiosity, intellect and willingness to pursue the often-elusive separation of truth from lies, and justice from injustice, in the representation of his clients.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ZYUIT2TANEJRA7RUXAV4SCADE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040164},"content":"The outbreak of the Troubles provoked a quest for arms and money by subversives in the State and led to the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_blank\">IRA</a> and splinter groups engaging in murders, robberies, extortions and kidnappings. Their example was followed by criminal gangs in Dublin, too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"42SR3VZ3S5EFJNTLIPQ7CHXSU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040165},"content":"While still a junior, his practice gravitated away from the Northern circuit towards the Dublin criminal courts and to the non-jury <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/special-criminal-court/\" target=\"_blank\">Special Criminal Court</a> after it was re-established in 1972. That brought with it powers of arrest and lengthy detention under the Offences against the State Act 1939 for scheduled offences, which did not include many serious offences such as murder or robbery.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ZBZ5XFXBZEVHBPZIOK5WWKOPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733187},"content":"Gardaí had no general powers applicable to all serious offences to arrest and detain people for the purposes of criminal investigation until the Criminal Justice Act 1984 was finally commenced in 1987, after the Garda Complaints Board had been established and the Treatment of Persons in Custody Regulations were signed. Previously, people were euphemistically said to be “helping police with their inquiries”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6N7NGNMURHCHDTSR67BBUJ4YM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040166},"content":"Investigative and evidentiary tools available to the gardaí had been rudimentary. That changed dramatically with the evolution and deployment of forensic science in Irish criminal courtrooms which started in 1975, the year MacEntee took silk.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PL4BP7D25VG6PFOJRV6YMVDB2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"RWTLNWXVJVBRVPJ23ZBZ4BO6KQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"GL45XTH7I5CBBFZ4IAHTSNYAWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733190},"content":"With the opening of the State’s forensic science laboratory, judges, juries and practitioners were faced with expert evidence that could include complex analysis of firearms residue, glass, paint, fibres, explosives, hair, blood, saliva, ballistics and ordnance evidence. Later came linguistic analysis, ESDA analysis, and forensic examination of confessions, police notes and statements, and DNA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G5CJJRGE5FFCTNNWDTB6BWLVXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040167},"content":"These were often the fields of battle facing MacEntee for the greater part of his career. He mastered and dealt with all these areas, whether in the Special Criminal Court or the ordinary courts. His skills were based on a clear understanding of the science underlying such evidence, what it was based on and what it could establish or not. This allowed him to demonstrate his greatest skill: that of cross examination. He could be relentless and devastating.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KFCJROXXMVFHRMXQSKMLKNVMZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040168},"content":"Other great qualities were his independence and fearlessness. This confluence of talents and circumstances ensured he came to be regarded by many of his peers as the greatest Irish criminal barrister of the last 100 years. No one else has represented so many clients in so many high-profile, difficult and often unpopular cases in the brightest glare of publicity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2UGL2TAIVRHABHRHBIZWPUP7BY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040169},"content":"In the non-jury Special Criminal Court, he fearlessly defended many cases which depended largely on alleged admissions and the disputed credibility of witnesses dubbed the “the Heavy Gang”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVV4OWN7GFDZBPMRFDM7DU3OLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733194},"content":"From high-profile cases such as the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/malcolm-macarthur/\" target=\"_blank\">Malcolm Macarthur</a> trial, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/louis-mountbatten/\" target=\"_blank\">Mountbatten</a> murder trial and the Fr Molloy case to the Catherine Nevin trial, his criminal trials were rarely out of the headlines. His became a household name as the country’s leading criminal advocate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"64S36GCV5BHNZFQCXG2JEHWJK4","additional_properties":{"_id":"GQR76VUDHRFMTFU7FIZR4LWXU4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"PVV4OWN7GFDZBPMRFDM7DU3OLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733196},"content":"He also had a major extradition practice, including the Trimbole case and the Evelyn Glenholmes case. After Robert Trimbole’s Australian extradition warrant request was rejected, Australian media surrounded MacEntee outside court demanding to know whether and how much he had been paid. He replied that he would be very disappointed if they thought he was just an enthusiastic amateur.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTJFV2IYEJHJTEG3GRU7HXZDZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733197},"content":"Similarly besieged by English press demanding to know what had happen after the UK warrant was found to be flawed in the Glenholmes case, he said: “We call it the rule of law; you claim to have invented it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SNTHFRO3XJEWXMOEFQD4C3OMG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040172},"content":"His reputation took him to other jurisdictions. In Northern Ireland, he appeared in the Harry Kirkpatrick supergrass trial, having taken silk as a QC there. In England he appeared for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/paddy-armstrong/\" target=\"_blank\">Paddy Armstrong</a>, who had been wrongly convicted of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2024/09/09/guildford-pub-bombings-among-first-cases-to-be-examined-by-commission-into-troubles-era-crimes/\" target=\"_blank\">Guildford and Woolwich bombings</a>, in the ultimate successful appeal. In Tanzania, he appeared for an unfortunate Irish businessman who had been wrongly jailed in the course of commercial litigation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"64MGKZJJTBAY5B4ZYKAV5E264Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040173},"content":"MacEntee later became chairman of the Bar Council and a bencher of the King’s Inns – marks of the popularity, respect and friendship he enjoyed among his colleagues. He was witty, well read, a formidable intellect and a shrewd observer of character.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4B32YIDYMZAR3HUG3AAWHFZHKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040174},"content":"He was not favoured with instructions from state bodies or authorities until well into his career of approximately 54 years, perhaps due to prejudice and typecasting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G5KHCQRGOJHPZFC7OX3AY22HK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733201},"content":"Eventually he appeared regularly for health boards/HSE particularly in relation to the accommodation of young persons in the care of the State and as counsel in state civil litigation. He was appointed sole commissioner to report on the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2024/05/17/grief-and-anger-mark-50th-anniversary-of-dublin-monaghan-bombings/\" target=\"_blank\">Dublin/Monaghan bombings</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"76UDFEAUW5DJPJZVP2V6UEWRK4","additional_properties":{"_id":"O52ROPD3CFHURCW5EAZDIT7SAE"},"content":"The great defender is on the case","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HGMBSES4GBHXRJGGAYVF56HOU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040175},"content":"In July 2010, a dinner was held in King’s Inns to celebrate him reaching the milestone of 50 years in practice. He decided to ease back in practice.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SVLBL2NGKBCDDNAOBYHL6KAKDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040176},"content":"Unsurprisingly for someone so much in the public eye, MacEntee lived a private life. He was known to be a gay man in the long, dark decades preceding decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IUU5H3XSP5EH5AFR5WJ2GI3H2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733205},"content":"He and his partner Richard Reilly lived quietly in Rathmines, Dublin, in an elegant but secluded mews, lined with books, furnished with Kilim rugs and adorned with an extensive art and portrait collection. They had two Afghan hounds and had two parrots which had flying rights around the house when not perched in their finely planted conservatory.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DQD3GRF3R5BYDCV4AV54DO3HY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040177},"content":"Saturday was a day of respite from work, involving trips to town, a drink or two with friends in McDaids, Davy Byrnes or The Bailey followed by lunch and browsing in bookshops or art galleries. Sundays often involved a trip to The Hill pub in company of friends including John and Harden Jay and MacEntee’s goddaughter, Ferris.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YNQERWCAV5BGFA6Q7VQFIP6KHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737537900365},"content":"His professional success allowed him to buy an apartment in Paris which became a joyous retreat from the pressure of his professional life and in part led to his engagement with the Irish cultural centre in that city.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U4PKQMGDOJGV7IF5FTIZMTK4YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733208},"content":"But he never indulged in conspicuous consumption or other outward trappings of success. His modest and battered car was affectionately known by colleagues as a “mobile ashtray”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTCSCANIR5CA7LJUPW6NPP26YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040178},"content":"MacEntee had many loyal friends including legal colleagues and well-known poets, writers, actors, artists, and architects. He and Richard married after 40 years together. Sadly, Richard died before him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WN74TORL5BGDXB5BNDWSPH7U6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040179},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2025/01/18/patrick-macentee-was-the-outstanding-criminal-lawyer-of-his-generation-funeral-service-told/\" target=\"_blank\">MacEntee died in his 89th year</a>, survived by his brother, Michael, and his sister, Betty, both of whom live in North America.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"No one else represented as many clients in high-profile, difficult and often-unpopular cases in the bright glare of publicity"},"display_date":"2025-01-25T12:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Patrick MacEntee obituary: Leading criminal advocate of his generation","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"A3POVHZB2RHJTDOROS5FHN34Q4","auth":{"1":"155bc662c8a44b638542d0c3af6880dbd082e3d82f82983b63716e3c679d06d1"},"focal_point":{"x":517,"y":244},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/A3POVHZB2RHJTDOROS5FHN34Q4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/25/patrick-macentee-obituary-leading-criminal-advocate-of-his-generation/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"BXDV24QNIFEPTPKHJT22D4CF6M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":297,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5d918315-3f1e-4e9c-8971-e95f28f1fe60/versions/1737025621/media/e0f22a996cb5a8e3700793704a125184_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/tom-hyland-obituary-east-timor-peace-campaigner/","content_elements":[{"_id":"HPEWOGIIPNDAZHT25RJCO2XVXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>October 12th, 1952","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>December 24th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPUVIB27FRDFDIEJFCSGPXPLUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017242},"content":"Tom Hyland had, in his own words, “72 years of happy life”. The former bus driver from Ballyfermot, Dublin, and East Timor solidarity leader died early on Christmas Eve in a Timorese hospital after a long illness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7HNNF762E5E7DE6HI7PICXGUGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017245},"content":"Hyland, known in Timor as “Papa Tom”, was a founding member of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He also campaigned for West Papua and LGBTQ+ equality.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TEYUEWYPNFGURNMBEHA7GIDR7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017246},"content":"The day after watching a documentary on the 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre of about 100 young mourners by Indonesian troops*, Hyland set up the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign. The campaign was officially launched at a 1992 Afri (Action From Ireland) event. Together with similar international organisations, he campaigned tirelessly until a 1999 United Nations referendum ended 24 years of brutal Indonesian military occupation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VU3JF2MNEZCCZKCWG3JBB6NLEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017247},"content":"The Santa Cruz footage had been shot by the late Max Stahl, who buried his film, and after his arrest and nine-hour interrogation by Indonesian officers, returned to the cemetery and dug up the visual record and smuggled it out to the world. It showed soldiers shooting and bayonetting to death young men, women and children, mourners of an independence activist killed two weeks earlier.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ZYJ5IAHZBGUTPRZYIKZB35ALM","additional_properties":{"_id":"SX2DBQVUXZFLLOTDT2XBUTUBH4"},"content":"An Irishman’s Diary on Timor-Leste’s joyous liberation","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"APSQYSOMLJG6PA2TS74T6LM2WI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017250},"content":"Ireland’s foreign minister, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/david-andrews/\" target=\"_blank\">David Andrews</a>, became an EU special envoy to East Timor and brought a planeload of observers to the UN independence referendum in 1999.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OVDHRWCWBRCF7PXGT2FZO6GDKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736945072455},"content":"An Irish Interests section was set up in Dili. Irish gardaí and soldiers went as UN observers and peacekeepers, while the Carter Center also observed. The Irish aid agencies Concern, Trócaire, and Goal all established branches in East Timor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AO2H5HWLH5AL7P7JPRVDIUTT5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017251},"content":"Andrews also visited Xanana Gusmao, then a guerrilla leader, in his house arrest in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O65IDMHWX5CQDHIXGKEO4BF2FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017254},"content":"Hyland travelled to the former Portuguese colony for the first time in 1997. He decided to change his passport into Irish and travel incognito. But entering by bus from neighbouring Indonesian West Timor, an Indonesian officer at a border immigration hut glanced at the “Tomás Ó Haoláin” passport and said: “Welcome, Mr Hyland”. He was watched, often through binoculars, for the rest of that visit. He heard stories of atrocities, including one involving a Fretilin (pro-independence) person who was staked crucifix-like to the ground and cut with blades, his wounds rubbed with chilli.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2FCN7KJKHZFLJDNILXEPTPCFNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017256},"content":"Hyland told a story from when he was living in Timor of covert Indonesian attempts to get him to accept an invitation from mountain guerrillas so that he would lead intelligence agents to their location. Another concerns the arrival of a taxi at his hotel, and the driver’s surprising announcement: “Your flight is at 12.30 tomorrow.” Hyland said this was letting him know “they knew everything about us”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHCET6Z7SZCV3OOXYU7ZX6XGNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"RHYAPB7IBBCZBHNL4GJCPR4QK4"},"content":"Death announced of East Timor peace campaigner Tom Hyland (72)","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VU3JF2MNEZCCZKCWG3JBB6NLEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017247},"content":"East Timor became the independent Republic of Democratic Timor-Leste in 1999, with a vote for independence of 78.5 per cent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WTH6TRU5YNG6ZDHQ7XAGZ5H2AY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017258},"content":"Adding to the 186,000 already dead victims of the occupation, 1,000-plus died as the departing army trashed the infrastructure, including power lines.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PB7GJ2NNFRGUDJG4ZNFQN3N7EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017260},"content":"In recent years Hyland worked as a government teacher of English. It was joked that he created Timorese diplomats speaking with a Ballyfermot accent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W64GSEZ5SFFRBHIOPLK6CMZMBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017261},"content":"In 2003 his work was honoured by the conferring of a Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Limerick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQDRLA546RBHRJAPML2SXI3N6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017243},"content":"President Michael D Higgins has described Hyland as “one of those exceptional people who, having familiarised himself with what was happening far away from Ireland, decided to take action on an issue of humanity that could not be ignored”. The Timorese prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, considered “Timor-Leste has lost one of its own”. Gusmao said that Hyland was particularly concerned about the plight of people in Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GMOOGBGEEFCO3AVLQ7YBD6QDX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017244},"content":"And president José Ramos-Horta said: “Let us honour Tom Hyland by continuing the work he so passionately championed.” He recalled that Hyland received his country’s Order of Timor-Leste, the highest such award. Not just a supporter of Timor, “he was a passionate voice that resonated across continents”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4CJ3KGWZWBECFHSXOPY5K4XFQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017263},"content":"Tom William Hyland is survived by his elder brother, Jimmy, and sisters Marcella and Ellen. The eldest, Mary, predeceased him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZWN45VD2SRC4BKPNXEEM4RGLEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739297095925},"content":"*This obituary was amended on February 11th, 2025","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Hyland set up the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign the day after he watched a documentary on Channel 4 of the 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre"},"display_date":"2025-01-18T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Tom Hyland obituary: East Timor peace campaigner","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WV4SK7LHJRNT3H74E2A6M23ZD4","auth":{"1":"d02f6e49e55021ffdf77f7011ea7d4af2c73d3ff55d01833a08c6f28cbd0c152"},"focal_point":{"x":1460,"y":671},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WV4SK7LHJRNT3H74E2A6M23ZD4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/tom-hyland-obituary-east-timor-peace-campaigner/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"J7WA4PAS7JC63C5F4SLPR75BWQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":292,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/e3bcc6c3-a38a-4290-a90d-191618468abf/versions/1737030866/media/4d94d2aec7d42972aee8f96b462b1328_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/rosita-missoni-obituary-designer-who-helped-make-milan-a-capital-of-italian-high-fashion/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FQPF6547TJGSHK5VLD2QXMNZD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>November 20th, 1931","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 2nd, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"CU37SYPTLRGBNP6TQ43OWOLCUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466058},"content":"Rosita Missoni who, with her husband, Ottavio, built a luxury clothing brand on a foundation of boldly colourful striped and zigzagged knitwear that helped make Milan a capital of Italian high fashion, has died at the age of 93.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NVU5Z6O5RBDBDIT63B7ME55MHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466059},"content":"What began in 1953 as a homespun venture for the Missonis was transformed in just a couple of decades into a leading fashion house with one of the world’s most recognisable brands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXKES57MA5EI5FTTWT7YQ5CJOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466060},"content":"If Emilio Pucci’s bold swirls helped define Italian fashion in the 1950s and 1960s, Missoni’s squiggly, striped and multicoloured space-dyed designs marked the 1970s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYNIVEUPSND5TARMBRKV2UQF5Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466061},"content":"At first, the Missonis sold their sweaters anonymously or under co-labels with known designers. Rosita eventually took over the design of the silhouettes, and Ottavio handled the patterns: space dyes, stripes, squiggles, chevrons, all in vivid colours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IOLI5KTCBE53KN5JIZW5KFBEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466062},"content":"Five years after the company’s founding, Missoni dresses could be purchased at La Rinascente, an upscale department store in Milan. Anna Piaggi, editor of Vogue Italia, had Missoni designs photographed for an editorial shoot in 1965. The family business had become a high-fashion brand.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LE4TPAXSWZCLVDLJWYHAE53NH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466063},"content":"Missoni’s first runway shows that – part-collection, part-performance art – were a precursor to the Instagrammable runway spectacles of the 2010s began the following year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I4HUD3MET5BS7KAJSOMWKOR4PI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466064},"content":"Over time, they made Milan a destination for fashion critics from around the world. The couple showed their next collection in Florence, at the Palazzo Pitti. When Rosita Missoni saw her models in the thin knit dresses that she and her husband had conceived, she asked them to remove their bras, which were showing through the fabric. What she hadn’t considered was how the stage lights would affect the transparency of the garments; the scandalous see-through dresses became the talk of the town, and the Missonis were not asked to show in Florence again. So they returned to Milan. Missoni’s presence on the calendar drew other northern Italian knitwear brands, whose factories had been renovated in the 1950s with money from the Marshall Plan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TV6KPHSVENGFNJYSCHASO4PZEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466065},"content":"By then, the Missonis had captivated the global fashion press. Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue, featured Missoni in a 1969 spread – a big endorsement for the company and proof that colourful sweaters could be as viable an art form as couture gowns.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WJ3RMTSRH5FA5LLPPO343U5GMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466066},"content":"Entering the 1990s, the Missonis took steps to hand the company over to their children, putting sons Vittorio and Luca in charge of the business side and installing daughter Angela as head of design. Angela Missoni set the company up for growth in multiple business categories, establishing more than 20 sub-brands, including a lower-price label; a home decor line led by Rosita Missoni; and a now-shuttered hotel chain. Under Angela Missoni’s creative leadership, the brand has dressed stars such as Kerry Washington, Regina King, Cate Blanchett and Beyoncé.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M34XNOXZPFDDBKNNWMEV6GEMRU","additional_properties":{"_id":"DWGDTCYAJBEUDP37N77ZBD3PFE"},"content":"Fashion in 2024: Simone Rocha’s Gaultier show kicked off an exceptional year for Irish designers","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F2ZDVDF55VDFJINGX3CCLVEOME","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466067},"content":"Rosita Jelmini was born into a textile-manufacturing family November 20th, 1931, in Golasecca, in northern Lombardy, near Lake Maggiore. Like her grandparents before them, her parents, Diamante and Angelo Jelmini worked in the family factory, where Rosita spent much of her youth absorbing techniques and aesthetics, including the colourful zigzags that would become a Missoni signature.","type":"text"},{"_id":"33PTC4Q2XJEB5H5JH33KARD7XU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466068},"content":"Rosita, who grew up with two brothers, Alberto and Giampiero, was a sickly child. Her parents sent her away to school on the Ligurian coast, and living on a Mediterranean diet near the sea seemed to help.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GVYEFI6D2JFLTKV36NIIKUWDHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466069},"content":"Rosita met Ottavio, known to his friends as Tai, in 1948. She was a student in London studying English, and he was a hurdler with the Italian track-and-field team competing in the Summer Olympics there. The couple wed on April 18th, 1953, and began renting their first factory, in Gallarate, outside Milan, the same year. Ottavio had graduated from athlete to designer, fashioning uniforms for the Italian team before the 1952 Olympics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QHLDI5V3HBFTLJXXAPNPN53JCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466070},"content":"Ottavio Missoni died at 92 in May 2013, just a few months after their son Vittorio was killed in a plane crash. Rosita Missoni is survived by her two other children, as well as her brother Alberto, nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. – <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/fashion/rosita-missoni-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The brand famous for its zigzag stripes has dressed stars such as Cate Blanchett and Beyoncé"},"display_date":"2025-01-18T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Rosita Missoni obituary: Designer who helped make Milan a capital of Italian high fashion","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XZZ46DLZUAB7PWG4IP2RY5AEAI","auth":{"1":"82d698bcb5e6c350edff3f6c4305a100bada19425c71df735571471563604ad6"},"focal_point":{"x":1751,"y":1518},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XZZ46DLZUAB7PWG4IP2RY5AEAI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/rosita-missoni-obituary-designer-who-helped-make-milan-a-capital-of-italian-high-fashion/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TKR3XBOA65BKVBSMKWX4ZTNVXM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":451,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/94904a03-e922-4f8a-aa5a-c7a373d422fc/versions/1736935566/media/634a14b964f19ccc01686f0198f9ac7b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/ted-howell-obituary-republican-figure-whose-influence-was-far-greater-than-his-profile/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ND3DQRFA4ZHBFBQTW52DN3HRX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>May 20th, 1947","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 3rd, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"27RSOFM4UFGEHG65ISONYRBTMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424261},"content":"Ted Howell, who has died aged 77, was the most self-effacing, yet one of the most influential <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_blank\">IRA</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sinn-fein/\" target=\"_blank\">Sinn Féin</a> figures, who incongruously also appeared regularly on social media, along with rubber ducks and cupcakes, as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gerry-adams/\" target=\"_blank\">Gerry Adams</a>’s “teddy bear”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7DLIPQQSFDADEO3DCTIZVBBSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424262},"content":"Howell’s association with the former Sinn Féin president went back more than 50 years to when they were both interned in the early 1970s and continued through three decades of the Troubles and into the period of the peace process and beyond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZJKMVEA63ZA2LMKEP7BZDGZRRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424263},"content":"He also served as Sinn Féin director of foreign affairs and was a go-between on behalf of the IRA leadership with senior Irish-Americans in the early days of the peace process in the 1990s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CV2PAWI2Y5EYFHECUURSONIYBA","additional_properties":{"_id":"T7HDCR6HUVCYLBJQC5IHZS6OHQ"},"content":"Sinn Féin’s evolving funding stream from Irish-America","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZVQ27C33A5CSDPNVPGZ6DXPO5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424264},"content":"In 1982 he was arrested for entering the United States from Canada during a plot to smuggle arms for the IRA to Ireland. He also had a run-in with gardaí over a plastic bag containing $80,000.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2A5OO63DLFFADAUI7ZRZYBV6IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424265},"content":"Historian and Irish News political commentator <a href=\"https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/brian-feeney-ted-howell-was-the-most-important-republican-figure-in-the-peace-process-youve-never-heard-of-NZYSCPQOEJDZ5HH3UDVK2KC4IE/\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Feeney</a> described him as the “most important republican figure in the peace process you’ve never heard of” while former senior Irish diplomat Ray Bassett said Irish politicians and officials “were never in doubt about his importance and influence within the republican movement”. Ed Moloney, who wrote A Secret History of the IRA, said he was “arguably one of the most influential figures in the Provisionals”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTF36STRDVAUFM54SEVQCTTEQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424266},"content":"From west Belfast, Howell was born in 1947. He joined the Provisional IRA early in the Troubles and was interned twice in the 1970s, on the Maidstone prison ship and in Long Kesh. Gerry Adams recalled that on the night of Howell’s marriage to Eileen Duffy in October 1972, the groom was arrested, but that the false identification Howell was carrying “held up” and he was released the following morning. Over the years he assumed a number of such false identities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XLGRQLLCZ5DBTIH44OKBL3JDSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424267},"content":"Duffy, who died in June 2004, also was a prominent republican, who for many years was director of the Falls Community Council in west Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTTVEBD3QNF7LCRZBG5VBHKK3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424268},"content":"Howell’s 31-year-old brother, James, a car dealer, and business partner Gerald McCrea, were abducted and murdered by loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association in July 1972.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RIDJATSB7VGYNNTFDWJTBEHP7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424269},"content":"If he mostly escaped the attention of the public, it was a different story with the authorities. Howell and four other men were arrested near Niagara Falls in 1982 as they attempted to enter the US from Canada carrying thousands of dollars, sterling and Irish punts – with the intention, it was alleged, on procuring arms and ammunition for the IRA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EMYNMCS4JZDQ3PJ4KRBXNMTEEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424270},"content":"He was deported from Canada but escaped from Canadian immigration officials at Orly Airport in Paris. He was subsequently apprehended by gardaí after Joe Cahill, the late IRA chief of staff, handed him a bag containing $80,000 dollars in a restaurant on O’Connell Street in Dublin. He was stopped on O’Connell Bridge but ran off with a white plastic bag which, after he was chased and arrested, was found to contain the money. He claimed the cash was for election expenses.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQUUITKBQNDMVEATVYQI5CW4TM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737102848452},"content":"Howell was charged with membership of the IRA but was acquitted. The Special Criminal Court in Dublin refused to release the money back to Cahill but eventually, after further legal proceedings, it was returned with interest.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YHDCQ3PFRJHIZLIED5A3HQT2AE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424272},"content":"Despite Howell’s IRA involvement and his arrests, he remained a secretive but important republican player. He was rarely photographed but was an authoritative presence whose word carried serious weight in the highest echelons of the Provisional republican movement. The most senior Irish and British diplomats also knew of his standing and paid close attention when he made his contributions during the critical and fraught period leading up to the Belfast Agreement of 1998.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTMZ66ATQBDPTHUSIKAGUTZGCY","additional_properties":{"_id":"GEU3FXCNDRFMVNBLKGOVA6HLR4"},"content":"Inside Sinn Féin: Who really makes the big decisions?","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"D7LBWYXIT5CDVIEXN7BPRRYPX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424273},"content":"Just once the mask slipped a little and he emerged briefly from the wings of Sinn Féin in an incident that reinforced how pivotal a Sinn Féin back-room heavyweight he was. That was during the “cash for ash” scandal which in 2017 crashed the Northern Executive for three years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SSTF6VOZNFFPJCVLB3U5JWGE64","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424274},"content":"The late deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, pulled Sinn Féin out of the executive over former DUP first minister Arlene Foster’s refusal to stand aside pending an investigation into the flawed renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme. Under the scheme, for every £1 that users spent on their green heating systems they got back £1.60 in subsidies – hence “cash for ash” or “the more you burn the more you earn”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4PNJZOLBMFEJZHN2NXPRWQJ7BU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424275},"content":"It was discovered that former Sinn Féin MLA Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, who was finance minister for a period during the RHI crisis, had sought the approval of Howell before he would agree to sign off on a plan aimed at cutting some of the cost of the scheme. This was despite the fact that three senior civil servants had told him the cost-saving plan was legitimate. Howell gave his approval and the scheme then went ahead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2J3AMMWERREVJBTYR3WJJQSEQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":"VBYYQORFEJFHXMBO4XSGVQCXSI"},"content":"Sinn Féin minister sought ‘consent’ for action from unelected official, inquiry finds","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"N3JFI2J6HNEYFP2PP3I4FJ6M6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424276},"content":"This triggered renewed claims that Sinn Féin in the North and the South was run by “shadowy”, “unelected”, “IRA army council-type” personnel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TF2SCTQWBVDVLOV2S43TD2J53U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424277},"content":"Ray Bassett, a former Irish ambassador to Canada and a senior Department of Foreign Affairs official during the peace process, noted how in the negotiations leading to the 1998 Belfast Agreement, “Gerry Adams would almost invariably have a word with the quiet man in the delegation, Ted Howell, whenever we reached a critical juncture”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDTMWCJTRFELZJ4YGGJUBYTANE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424278},"content":"“He was soft-spoken but we noticed early on that whenever Ted Howell intervened, the rest of the Sinn Féin delegation listened intently, as we did ourselves,” Bassett wrote in an article on writer and broadcaster Jude Collins’s blog. “He had a great ability to absorb detail and left his imprint on all Sinn Féin’s key policy documents.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M25OU542XVDFFHZQXUZPN6GWXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424279},"content":"Adams, in a number of tributes, also acknowledged how Howell was a key, yet reserved strategist. “Think of any of the major republican political, organisational shifts or initiatives taken over recent decades. Ted was at the heart of all of them,” he wrote in the Andersonstown News.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OQQYNMUEWZDZ7FKEMXYWTVTTJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424280},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2I3GGVLFVAXPN5BUMQLVNT4QA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424281},"content":"“And then there was the public process of negotiations with the two governments and the USA. In all of this Ted was indispensable.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IGUBY45HMBADXHNGMUYH7PYAA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424282},"content":"Adams and Howell were very close. Some of Howell’s recipes for dishes that he put together during the peace process negotiations appeared in Adams’s The Negotiator’s Cookbook. On his tweets and his blogs, Adams regularly referred to his “teddy bear” with ducks and cupcakes also featuring in these whimsical posts. Queried by one interviewer about them, Adams gnomically replied, “you have to think of the sensitivities of teddy bears. Teddy bears aren’t given their place in the scheme of things in this world.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7IG6PE4DBA2BID2C7C5HSNYCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424283},"content":"There was little doubt, however, that these dispatches referred to his right-hand man who had a significant if inconspicuous place in the republican world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FEFIGYWUERCHHOYS55ZM5Y6YUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424284},"content":"Ted Howell is survived by his sons, Eamonn and Proinnsias, their wives, Nora and Karen, and grandchildren, Micéal, Caoimhe and Amelia.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KWUC4ZIALRDTVMRC6XNOOBJUUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424285},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Gerry Adams jokingly referred to him as ‘teddy bear’ but Howell was an authoritative presence whose word carried serious weight in the highest echelons of republicanism"},"display_date":"2025-01-18T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ted Howell obituary: Republican figure whose influence was far greater than his profile","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3C74OKBUXRECXDXYYS3JKYO2JU","auth":{"1":"20b7b25ed2c12b0237495eef7a8ee7889241e711d49c086dc14c3032f1bea9ef"},"focal_point":{"x":244,"y":250},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3C74OKBUXRECXDXYYS3JKYO2JU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/ted-howell-obituary-republican-figure-whose-influence-was-far-greater-than-his-profile/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"M4MHMGJXVVEFTOVKF2I4GPATHM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":497,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/93b45397-01f9-43d2-9f75-1225c73d150d/versions/1736328470/media/a8f57c4cedfabe2f176962e8ce7c24c2_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/paddy-hill-obituary-one-of-the-birmingham-six-wrongly-convicted-of-ira-bombings/","content_elements":[{"_id":"UAEFCGX27NEGLGASHS47PDJ7UE","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>December 20th, 1944","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>December 23rd, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"W37XARUFARFEXEO2TC6ESUYN2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556428},"content":"For most of his life Paddy Hill, who has died aged 80, radiated a fierce energy, passion and anger that was first manifest to the general public when he and the five others of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/birmingham-six/\" target=\"_blank\">Birmingham Six</a> had their bombing convictions overturned at the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/old-bailey/\" target=\"_blank\">Old Bailey</a> criminal court in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a> in 1991.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T2N6TXNACZBUXIWXGTDXRQXP4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556429},"content":"The six were arrested shortly after the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_blank\">Provisional IRA</a> bombed two Birmingham pubs on November 21st 1974, killing 21 people and maiming and injuring more than 180. Hill and the five other co-accused were wrongfully convicted and each received 21 life sentences for the carnage perpetrated that day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HP4KOA46XBFCPI4Q4VFKORCFSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556430},"content":"With the rest of the Birmingham Six – Hugh Callaghan, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker – gathered around him outside the Old Bailey in March 1991 Hill declared with unrestrained vehemence that for 16-and-a-half years they had suffered as “political scapegoats”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PL5VJCQJZRFCVKY7TCL4QPCXSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556431},"content":"“The police told us from the start that they knew we hadn’t done it,” Hill thundered. “They told us they didn’t care who done it. They told us that they were going to frame us. Justice? I don’t think them people in there have got the intelligence or the honesty to spell the word, never mind dispense it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZF3YN6CAJVG4JHM5Q3FXYZOAYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556432},"content":"Hill carried that intensity of spirit for the remainder of his life, himself campaigning for other people falsely convicted through his Glasgow-based organisation, <a href=\"https://mojoscotland.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Mojo</a> (Miscarriages of Justice Organisation) and also seeking to establish some semblance of justice for the victims and those bereaved by the IRA bombings at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town pubs in Birmingham in 1974.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5IEXAXBPJREN3NMERV7KJWKKMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556433},"content":"Hill was born in 1944 and raised in the nationalist Ardoyne area of north Belfast. His father and a brother served in the British army. With his father, and others of his family, he went to Birmingham for work in 1960, training as a painter, decorator and signwriter. During the 1960s he was regularly in trouble in the city, serving a number of short prison sentences for offences such as breaking and entering and brawling. He said that after he was released from a nine-month stretch in 1971 he “kept out of trouble”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXDU2BYIWZBVRA6MFECL3K3ILM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556434},"content":"He went to school at the Holy Cross primary school in Ardoyne with James McDade, who in 1974 blew himself up while planting a bomb at the Coventry telephone exchange. With four others of the innocent men who would become known as the Birmingham Six, Hill decided to attend McDade’s funeral in Belfast, at the same time planning to visit a sick aunt in the city. The fateful trip coincided with the Birmingham bombings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KKBZLHQCEVG63CQPREYL4GY7K4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556435},"content":"The five were arrested at Heysham in Lancashire as they were preparing to take the ferry to Belfast – the sixth man, Hugh Callaghan, was arrested the next day in Birmingham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ZQU6FL7ZJHHZLCCJKM7C6CUUY","additional_properties":{"_id":"QLCAB6KLMBCXJIODAB37UMJFWI"},"content":"British government feared ‘tabloid scandal’ if it released Birmingham Six","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"NSERTA5FBFCV7KIOJ5PJZRBGYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556436},"content":"The prosecution case rested on confessions made by four of the men – Hill and Gerard Hunter did not sign confessions; a subsequently discredited forensic test suggesting two of the men had handled explosives; the circumstantial evidence of their leaving Birmingham around the time of the bombings, and also of their drinking in pubs in the city frequented by suspected IRA members.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KMPXRTTKGJDPNH4CP4UJD6UGSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556437},"content":"While evidence was provided that the confessions had been beaten out of the men by West Midlands police, and that the confessions had details wrong and were riddled with inconsistencies, they were convicted. Hill refused to do his time without resistance, estimating that of the 16-and-a-half years – mostly spent at Gartree Prison in Leicestershire – half of that time was spent in solitary confinement. In 1983, while in prison, he was divorced from his wife Pat whom he married in 1966. Relations with his six children also were difficult.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RFAXHD3YKNH35LAZSY4HVTCAWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556438},"content":"The convictions of the six led to years of campaigning by people who were convinced of their innocence, including Sr Sarah Clarke; Fr Denis Faul; the solicitor Gareth Peirce, who represented the men; and journalist, and later Labour MP, Chris Mullin, who made a number of television programmes for Granada TV’s World in Action series seriously challenging the safety of the convictions. In March 1991, the convictions of the six were declared unsafe and quashed by the court of appeal, and the men released.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UOZ2JS2C6VGOVBP77BBBVRZNSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556439},"content":"Mullin, in his investigations, said four IRA men were involved. He later identified two of the bombers as James Francis Gavin and Michael Murray, who are both dead, but has refused to identify a third man who admitted to him he was one of two men who planted the bombs in the two pubs, as he is still alive. Mullin said he was bound by journalistic confidentiality not to disclose the name of this man. In 2017, <a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-40553803\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Christopher Hayes</a> from south Dublin told the BBC he was one of the group responsible for the bombings. He apologised but refused to name others involved because, he said, he was not an informer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZ44PVWL2NHNJCIFOK6TTCJOFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"CF5GSSQMOBCQHFQUKZOZXHNLBA"},"content":"Chris Mullin and the Birmingham Six 50 years on: ‘My goal was simply to rescue the innocent’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"YUHLXG6JEBCPZBXTJXDRBSGPQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556440},"content":"Hill said it was well known that Hayes was implicated and was dismissive of his apology, describing it as “an insult to the Birmingham families”, and “40 years too late”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DX3AAITSHBG4DOWZBQ4TVCL3CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556441},"content":"Three years earlier, in 2014, the year of the 40th anniversary of the bombings, Hill offered his support to the Justice4the21 campaign group for the bereaved families. This led to an unusual and initially fraught relationship with other leading campaigners, Brian and Julie Hambleton, whose 18-year-old sister Maxine was killed in the Birmingham bombings. Together with other victims, they have been long pressing for a public statutory inquiry into how and why no one has been brought to justice for the atrocity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXPICCLOHNHS3PWLDD2SYX3KLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556442},"content":"Earlier this month Julie Hambleton recalled first meeting Hill, remembering how she was so distressed she could hardly catch her breath and couldn’t talk, wondering was she “betraying” her sister and her mother by meeting the man who had been branded one of the bombers. “But it was the best thing we ever did because he kept every promise he ever made to us and more, and became one of our staunchest supporters,” she said. “We were like two souls aligned in search of the same thing, the truth.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C3XJB7LE25DM3PQHAF5J4JMJXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556443},"content":"Hill produced a stack of material to help establish his innocence in the eyes of the Hambletons and introduced them to solicitor Gareth Peirce so that she also could assist their campaign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CIDXT3O2N5EQTPOBRRN3VEP4DM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556444},"content":"Hill made the distinction that he was a republican but that what the IRA did was “diabolical”. “He wanted a united Ireland but did not agree with their methods,” Hambleton said. Of the IRA and the Birmingham Six, she said, “They allowed them to be locked away knowing full well that they didn’t do it. The old adage, with friends like that who needs enemies, couldn’t be more apt.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5KEOFSEEEFF5LM74HVSEPYPRWA","additional_properties":{"_id":"7IWBSXZ2M5FR7CIRLUZSEH2GS4"},"content":"Birmingham Six were furious with Haughey for not seeking their release","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"RWSWYDKAY5DM7LFAKLMQVFNYYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556445},"content":"Hill is the third of the Birmingham Six to die. Richard McIlkenny died of cancer in 2006, aged 73. Hugh Callaghan died in 2023, aged 93.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YEI36T4LQBFEPPLN7VUVALFDUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556446},"content":"As Julie Hambleton said, for the rest of his life Hill was “haunted” by the whole experience of his arrest, beatings, conviction and imprisonment. Psychiatrists who treated him said they had seldom dealt with anyone so traumatised.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4D6K6QGLBDAPPSTKVVXMGDCYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556447},"content":"But there was some solace to his life as well. In 2001 the six received compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million. Hill used some of that money as well as libel damages from a number of newspapers that persisted in arguing the six were guilty to set up Mojo. It supports other victims of miscarriages of justice and provides psychiatric counselling for those getting out of prison. It was at a fundraising event for Mojo that he met the artist Tara Babel, whom he married and who survives him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SC5TCWMOREEPHRFVPTMFXSSOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556448},"content":"Some years ago <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/paddy-hill-of-birmingham-six-fame-still-fighting-the-good-fight-1.2517257\" target=\"_blank\">he told The Irish Times</a> how marriage to Tara and looking after their “five horses, three ponies, three donkeys and a Shetland pony, three dogs and two cats” on their 20-acre holding in Ayrshire in Scotland gave him comfort and pleasure.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Hill was haunted by the experience and dedicated the rest of his life to campaigning against miscarriages of justice"},"display_date":"2025-01-11T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Paddy Hill obituary: One of the Birmingham Six wrongly convicted of IRA bombings","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KHRQSXLRLIWZQCAT52E5CMVYT4","auth":{"1":"92728877011807da7101b9325c40680e760e7f36666ecfa159f02465fd017987"},"focal_point":{"x":1439,"y":934},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KHRQSXLRLIWZQCAT52E5CMVYT4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/paddy-hill-obituary-one-of-the-birmingham-six-wrongly-convicted-of-ira-bombings/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"HMTSNEHMPZBQ5JDME7JNQRTUEY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":457,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/bd49a77e-e869-4e99-84b1-87ea93fbcd89/versions/1736286141/media/a52b5abd59fce0c8f1120ce07424a6b6_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/jean-marie-le-pen-obituary-french-far-right-politician-rode-waves-of-discontent-and-xenophobia/","content_elements":[{"_id":"JPY54JDTZVDG5KZOCOX6RIPKYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>June 20th, 1928","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 7th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"B46Y5I27FBFG5MJPFTFV3M2UBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451755},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/jean-marie-le-pen/\" target=\"_blank\">Jean-Marie Le Pen</a>, the founding father of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/france/\" target=\"_blank\">France</a>’s modern political far right, who built a half-century career on rants of barely disguised racism, anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi propaganda, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2025/01/07/jean-marie-le-pen-french-far-right-leader-dies-aged-96/\" target=\"_blank\">has died. He was 96</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43GBQWMYJZBJHGUZYPCY4PVJQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451756},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2VE3HRMGJFHFFMSYR2MLCQY3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451757},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SGHH7OPNVAX3LVY5D3JTCIH3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451758},"content":"An arm-waving reactionary with the swagger of a circus pitchman making outrageous claims, Le Pen ran unsuccessfully for the French presidency five times, making it to a runoff in 2002, riding waves of discontent and xenophobia and raising spectres of a new fascism as he excoriated Jews, Arabs, Muslims and other immigrants – anyone he deemed to be not “pure” French.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BRDT5DVNBJDIHG42CWHWYQDA7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451759},"content":"Le Pen’s youngest daughter, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/marine-le-pen/\" target=\"_blank\">Marine Le Pen</a>, succeeded him as leader of the National Front in 2011 and rose to prominence on a tide of populist anger at the political mainstream. She was defeated in France’s presidential elections three times – in 2012, placing third with 17.9 per cent of the vote behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy; in 2017, with 33.9 per cent, losing to centrist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/emmanuel-macron/\" target=\"_blank\">Emmanuel Macron</a>; and in 2022, with 41.5 per cent, defeated again by Macron.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6ZYTMQHQ5ETHKE7MVMKX72QBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451760},"content":"But that year’s elections also sent a record number of representatives from the party, renamed National Rally, to parliament – 89 in all – testimony to the success of Marine Le Pen’s efforts to normalise it and moderate its message in some regards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZULRFT5KIFDLDGV2SJCVPTGCHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451761},"content":"By then it had became the leading opposition party, no longer an outcast widely viewed as a threat to the republic, and in 2024 the National Rally backed Macron’s bill restricting immigration, an embarrassment for the French president.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52AC75X2ZVBQFPYUP244PQQAGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451762},"content":"Voters in successively increasing numbers embraced Marine Le Pen’s right-wing messages that sought to exploit economic insecurity among the middle classes and resentment toward immigrants, themes pushed for years by her father.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIF4EQZHMRESTGVJHLOOYMJARY","additional_properties":{"_id":"J533WQBADRHV5EZN4OUBNKWJWY"},"content":"France on a precipice as Le Pen aims for absolute majority in parliament","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CHZQHJYPEZAR7BONBL4JBCSDMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451763},"content":"Trying to soften some of the toxic rhetoric of her father, whom she expelled from the party in 2015, Le Pen offered to accede to civil unions for same-sex couples, to accept unconditional abortions and withdraw the death penalty from her platform. And she publicly rejected Jean-Marie Le Pen’s anti-Semitism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LX7FLL2QJFB4PMNDLU7TDSM73Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451764},"content":"Marine Le Pen announced the party’s name change, to the National Rally, in 2018, although it decided to keep its logo of a red, white and blue flame. Jean-Marie Le Pen would have none of his daughter’s reforms. In 2016, he founded and became president of the Jeanne Committees, named after Joan of Arc, a new far-right political party.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XQEKZHT6GNAAHLVULC5P5WSXGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451765},"content":"He insisted that “the races are unequal”, that anyone with Aids was “a kind of leper” and that “Jews have conspired to rule the world”. He dismissed Adolf Hitler’s gas chambers as “a detail” of history and said that the wartime Nazi occupation of France was “not especially inhumane”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JJBR5X2DINDZFJD3KS7S6EEJRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451766},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"4RWV3NMWZ5BOHGJQBJMEOJUTRY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451767},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6BM4GVTKOBAFDJSVO45H4GEOWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451768},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"53EF223V4BEDLBAHJQV2TSM47A","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451769},"content":"Millions were repulsed by Le Pen’s statements. He was challenged by historians, denounced across the French political spectrum, including by mainstream conservatives, and convicted at least seven times of inciting racial hatred or distorting the historical record.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IHD7GD4OTBEDNGREAIJTD3X6J4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451770},"content":"But he always had a strong core of followers, particularly in the country’s south. His prominence reflected not only the shockwaves of his oratory but also a political drift to the right in France and other parts of Europe during economic downturns and periods of rising inflation, crime and unemployment, as fears rose with the influx of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.","type":"text"},{"_id":"75NYLR6VARAJJCKSSDB3GSI76E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451771},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQUABU2NJRGJLJ6HPAHHIJ32SE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451772},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"7USJTOVGJNCPDM5RT656ANTR2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451773},"content":"His supporters were hardly a mass of anti-Semitic neo-fascists; many were just blue-collar workers, shopkeepers, unemployed young people and others facing bleak futures.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QH4PWVY2TBBBVLICHN3VOG6KR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451774},"content":"Le Pen had been a street fighter in his youth, and as the receding hair turned frosty he kept the pugnacious look of a brawler: the burly shoulders and jutting chin, the narrow eyes behind tortoise-rimmed spectacles, a grim mouth for the bad news and raised fists to deliver it forcefully. But the voice had range: needling, charming, whispering, condemning.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRL4VPYSTFCU3AJ6GBCCGSKIMM","additional_properties":{"_id":"5HOAZBJP75BV7BHAFFTVFLCEFI"},"content":"Marine Le Pen: Putin’s best hope of sowing discord in EU and Nato","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"BDWR7ZV32BEI7EJP7CZB5P43AA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451775},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWVAFVGDD5FZNITETKPQ2RYW4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451776},"content":"He first appeared on the political scene in 1956, winning a National Assembly seat as a member of the anti-tax movement led by Pierre Poujade. From 1972, when he forged an alliance of extremist groups and founded his National Front party, to 2011, when he retired, he was the acknowledged leader of the far right in French politics, and his vociferous, sometimes violent followers were the principal opposition to the nation’s mainstream conservatives.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZODA3A4TFB7VNR54HKPICL5QQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451777},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"U6FHNY72LVB3PGKR5C2HIWZXJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451778},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCVIE35CJJDKLD2RL2I7HDRAWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451779},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PG22AKXF65GNXF5M5XGHWXONRY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451780},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6OWUDFFYA5H3HNGV5JJBIUIORM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451781},"content":"He insisted that he was not a racist, fascist or anti-Semite, though he shared the rhetoric of neo-Nazis, drew followers from reactionary elements and spoke often and crudely of racial characteristics. Some of his earliest colleagues in the National Front had been collaborators with the Nazis during the war.","type":"text"},{"_id":"34J475IBWBABDFBCVJGKT6R6YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451782},"content":"A French court in 1987 convicted Le Pen of Holocaust denial for saying that Nazi gas chambers were “a detail” in history. He repeated the comment a decade later, and was convicted by a German court. In 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2011, he was convicted of inciting racial hatred against Muslims. In 2012, he was convicted of condoning war crimes for saying, in a 2005 newspaper interview, that “the German occupation was not especially inhumane”. His numerous convictions resulted in many heavy fines, but no jail time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6MBTWQR6URHOBIQ4Z3D35CQVFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451783},"content":"Jean-Marie Le Pen was born on June 20th, 1928, in La Trinité-sur-Mer, a seaside village in Brittany, to Jean Le Pen and Anne-Marie Hervé. His father, a fisherman, was killed when his boat was blown up by a mine in 1942. His mother was a seamstress of local ancestry. The boy was raised Roman Catholic and attended a Jesuit school in Vannes and a lycée at Lorient.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOZLACEEHVA27P2SHYM5X5Z4BU","additional_properties":{"_id":"Y4TQBMWQ45B2XOO6PL3QWAVXEY"},"content":"Jean-Marie Le Pen: Self-portrait of a vulgar but at times erudite politician","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F4G3BMUPMREJ5CLWUORHHO647E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451784},"content":"Le Pen earned a law degree at the University of Paris, where he was active in right-wing politics, joined street brawls against Communist students and was repeatedly arrested. He claimed to have lost his left eye in an election brawl, but it was only damaged; he lost its vision later through illness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L6NVMLSCE5G3DCY2LR6EM5ML5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451785},"content":"As a Foreign Legion paratrooper in Indochina in 1954, Le Pen fought against the Communist-dominated Viet Minh. Later, as an intelligence officer in Algeria during its war of independence, he was accused of torturing members of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale. He was not prosecuted and denied the allegations of witnesses, but lost lawsuits against publications that cited them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZZ55OYBZBRHI7DY2DSD2XPXD2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451786},"content":"Le Pen became one of the youngest members of the National Assembly in 1956, but after campaigning against France’s withdrawal from Algeria, he lost the seat in 1962, when the colony achieved independence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LS2TPQRW3FCV5FBK55N4BQHF54","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451787},"content":"In 1960, he married Pierrette Lalanne. Besides Marine, they had two other daughters, Marie-Caroline and Yann, and were divorced in 1987. In 1991, he married Jeanne-Marie Paschos.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OODT2R4IVVCE5EPIWFHFKFGDHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451788},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"AEOQ3P2SRBELLHIVRK7XZW4SMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451789},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNAPDOYMPVD3FOTWIYHZDEOOD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451790},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PC6DUCASJ5AP7KMH3YQYAQI5Q4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451791},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"NV52TISMLZDAZBUAKDFAMAOKMM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451792},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"FZZKZ6OCMBEOTLORJJ77W2PQ4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451793},"content":"– <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/world/europe/jean-marie-le-pen-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Founding father of France’s modern political far right was challenged by historians, denounced across the political spectrum, and convicted repeatedly of inciting racial hatred or distorting historical record"},"display_date":"2025-01-11T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jean-Marie Le Pen obituary: French far-right politician rode waves of discontent and xenophobia ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"EBR3OGWBEKUC5Q2DHYSBEFV4UE","auth":{"1":"13b6650d578e158f51faaa7df40cea78f8c61eae32c0803baa7a23fd6ac14f06"},"focal_point":{"x":3920,"y":2424},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/EBR3OGWBEKUC5Q2DHYSBEFV4UE.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/jean-marie-le-pen-obituary-french-far-right-politician-rode-waves-of-discontent-and-xenophobia/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"MXDD46M2KNEHBOSQ43K3W7IVHQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":343,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5c226dd8-3dfc-4d8e-9c97-781638007a0f/versions/1736022635/media/5930b8704424050a0772263ea745def5_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/05/rory-brennan-a-poet-of-irrepressible-energy-and-commitment/","content_elements":[{"_id":"LDVDEWWBENCIDPQY5LFHEZADIE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The death of poet Rory Brennan on November 17th, 2024, creates an unfillable gap in the lives of his family and friends. He leaves behind his beloved wife, the novelist and travel writer Fionnuala Brennan, his daughters Orla and Fiona, his sons-in-law Ciaran and Keith, and his grandson Luca. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y2WSEQ3IHNDSNGLSR2PERXO5HA","additional_properties":{},"content":"I first met Rory Brennan more than 40 years ago at a convening of the board of Poetry Ireland in Buswells Hotel, Dublin. I recall a large pink urn, not at all Grecian or Keatsian, holding the middle of a plain low table and being “talked around” by a group of poets which included Rory himself, Conleth Ellis, John Ennis, Gabriel Rosenstock, and John F Deane, who had founded Poetry Ireland in 1978. Rory, the director, raised his hand and in a loud, mellifluous voice welcomed me as the newest member of the board.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QOWT7ZFM2VDWXHXV5AVFSOFZAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"There would be many more meetings over the following years, at which I grew to appreciate Rory’s irrepressible energy and commitment, his passionate desire to improve through practical measures the largely unchampioned and often-threadbare lot of Irish poets. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LN4J2OZEDNA7TJDCWRTIOUZGNU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fund-raising for the organisation, formulation of policy, the editorship and timely publication of Poetry Ireland Review, indeed the very survival and placing of Poetry Ireland on a secure footing, were an ongoing challenge which Rory met without fear or favour. Among many other achievements the Austin Clarke Library of some 5,000 books owned by Clarke was secured; and the until then peripatetic Poetry Ireland found a more settled residence. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SNXY2MUOFE3LGJTF22CAQHR3Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"Not least, Rory played a crucial role in ensuring, along with John F Deane and the board, that appropriate venues and financial remuneration for poetry readings – other than the pub and the few pints of stout – were provided.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFNZIKV27FACLJD7TFPM6QDEDA","additional_properties":{},"content":"If, according to the poem by WB Yeats, there is an existential choice to be made between the life of personal contentment and the sacrifice involved in artistic endeavour, Rory seemed always to strike a happy balance between these two opposing viewpoints. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXZTJG7J7BEI7IWTZC5VPULB2I","additional_properties":{},"content":"People warmed to his expansive yet courteous manner, his mischievous grin, his sudden laughter at the good of everything. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VVPF5QLJTBGQRPL2VET6LZSMZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"He had many friends and he always went the extra mile to keep in touch with them. He loved life and his life was richly lived. He was engaging and even-handed, an exuberant storyteller, a good listener, knowledgeable about many subjects but wearing that knowledge lightly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GRCN64WV7JBZBJVZKF6KN65JAM","additional_properties":{},"content":"An only child, Rory “confessed” to me once that he had an extremely happy childhood. He was born in Westport in 1945, but raised in Dublin, where he attended Trinity College. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"W4SIG5ETYJAODPVIOAABJE7RX4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He worked as a teacher in Dún Laoghaire Technical School, an educational broadcaster in RTÉ, an arts administrator and a lecturer in communications at Dublin City University. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"2OXG3Y5YMZCPRPXWUNBDRCTV4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"He wrote many articles and reviews on history, fiction, poetry and literary criticism for such outlets as Books Ireland and also edited a special edition of Poetry Ireland Review devoted to a reassessment of the poet Austin Clarke.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52LYG4HDZFENPJ42BOPPRD74LU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rory travelled widely throughout his life, and his poems reflect his questing, cosmopolitan spirit, his curiosity towards and lived experience of different cultures. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DH7UMYSIFBE3PHSX6RPTOYQ2MQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He taught for several years in places as diverse as Morocco and Sweden. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WG2CQZYPWBF4LAGRL2YG4DZFA4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He settled for a number of years on the Aegean island of Paros and from 1979 he and his family spent all their summers there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESZID7GDYRB7LEXH2URQ5PBVUQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"All the while Rory wrote poems of luminosity and lyric grace, ranging from the free-verse offerings of his earlier collections to exquisite later works of real technical accomplishment. Where personal feelings and experiences blend with formally gifted deliberations on the world at large, his poems achieve a resonance and power which is rare in contemporary poetry. Rory’s credo was and remains: “A poem must lift, take wing and fly – ideally, but not always – towards the sun.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DUCQIXVBKBHXBNU3TETIV6KNTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nine collections of his work were published: The Sea on Fire (Dolmen,1978); The Walking Wounded (Dedalus,1985); The Wind Messages, a chapbook published in 1986 with illustrations by Alice Meyer-Wallace; The Old in Rapallo (Salmon Poetry, 1996); Sky Lights/Luces Del Cielo (Aegean Centre, 2012); Dancing with Luck (The American University Paris, 2016 with paintings by Rafael Mahdavi); Alone in Amphitheatres, with paintings by Rafael Mahdavi (The American University of Paris, 2017); Days and Islands, with photographs by Panagiotis Kalkavouris (Rodakio, Athens, 2020); and Irish Poets: Translations of Kavanagh, Heaney, Longley and Brennan by Takis Papageloupolos, Ekdoseis Armos, 2024). Two new collections are due to be published this year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4I55DASTFA2NPITEJJ2DV3HYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rory Brennan’s poems received recognition by way of the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1978, the Listowel Writers Week and William Allingham Prizes, and the WB Yeats Award of the New York Yeats Society, based at the National Arts Club, New York, in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DJCAVTTQFNF5TFWTMCJCSHHYRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Farewell, Rory. Our memory and consolation is in knowing that, as you yourself would say, the oracle was often good.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Patrick Deeley"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2025-01-05T20:26:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Rory Brennan – a poet of irrepressible energy and commitment","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DF4PO6YE3FFZHDRPGNQAROVWIQ","auth":{"1":"aa9a1b0c94d094e35a389bedc2824795e806101a9ffc4e38213f503b95914156"},"focal_point":{"x":81,"y":106},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DF4PO6YE3FFZHDRPGNQAROVWIQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/05/rory-brennan-a-poet-of-irrepressible-energy-and-commitment/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"WO3VRYUATRCWLNPSRNCTG6PZQY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":523,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/f19ff334-9eee-46a8-80cb-680a280ec4ed/versions/1734954753/media/4ca301c6baec56b898ebae04b3af4d6b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/charles-handy-obituary-one-of-the-most-respected-management-thinkers-of-his-generation/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QUUQSEDV7JFCHJQRSBAJVXPVDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>July 25th, 1932","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>December 13th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZTFNPH5S65FCRKKJK3UBKOGHAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819689},"content":"The Irish-born, London-based management guru and social philosopher Charles Handy, who has died aged 92, was one of the most respected management thinkers of his generation. He often predicted organisational trends years before they materialised as corporate realities. For many years, he also presented Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Four.","type":"text"},{"_id":"34UQYQ5COZGK7CYWHDSUUMTDYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819690},"content":"In the early 1980s, Handy developed the concept of the “shamrock organisation” to describe companies with three integrated leaves: a core of full-time employees working alongside subcontractors on one side, and a band of temporary workers on the other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"62W2HORPQJA67GMKCMU3KWXBBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819691},"content":"He also coined the term “portfolio life”, the concept of self-employed workers using their multiple skills to make enough money to allow them to have a good work/life balance. And he encouraged people to change careers throughout their life to discover undervalued talents.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DHV7BNVRLFEC5FXVNEW6FXL2YM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819692},"content":"The author of more than 20 books – including The Age of Unreason (1989), The Elephant and the Flea: Reflections of a Reluctant Capitalist (2001) and The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society (2015) – Handy was a lucid critic of corporates who didn’t fully embrace the ethical and human dimensions of their businesses. He was also one of the first management gurus to accept that child-rearing was work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRL7J4OIW5HYLOVHDNIRNBRPA4","additional_properties":{"_id":"6VKOCR7K7JBW3JTZPIHSFAPCEY"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"RXEM3BUAUBD6ZIW7SNEPVAZIGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819693},"content":"Furthermore, Handy wasn’t afraid to reformulate his own ideas as organisational culture evolved. For instance, in his book The Empty Raincoat (1995), he acknowledged that he had underestimated “how greedy organisations were going to be in their demands of workers’ time”; and that modern communications had made it very difficult for people to be allowed to make mistakes without being sharply criticised, thus eroding the creativity and experimentation that he believed was essential to purposeful work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L3ICIKFF4BAX7HDARUOEINFTKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819694},"content":"He disapproved of money-obsessed executives who had a narrow focus on shareholder value, and once described the stock exchange as a form of slavery. More recently, he was critical of companies mandating their workers to return to the office when technology allowed them to work productively from home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q4WYKIZJRBENRPZCVVXL4IHJEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819695},"content":"Handy left his first permanent job as a marketing executive for the oil company Shell International in southeast Asia at the age of 31, to study for a year at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the US. He returned to England in 1967 to manage the Sloan Programme at the London School of Business, Britain’s first graduate school.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O6NWVIPH6FAURN6TZ6REKUXU2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819696},"content":"In 1972, he became Professor in Managerial Psychology at the London School of Business. But in 1977 he left this job to focus on freelance writing and speaking engagements, with his wife Elizabeth (née Hill) as his manager. The couple had met in 1960 at a party in Kuala Lumpur, and married in 1962. Their daughter Kate was born in 1966, and their son Scott in 1968.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QUGIDRPFKNGN7BYHKUDFMCX7II","additional_properties":{"_id":"OJQX5Z3IDFB57O26ZKHXSAVVXI"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"CQEFHITR6NHTFOCV5ZLENZIOKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819697},"content":"In a 2012 Irish Times interview, Handy said that “without [Elizabeth], I would have been a very good golfer, very large and very drunk – because I would have retired from my job about 25 years ago, having been a rather bad oil executive”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZDS7BA5Y7VCXLEF2FXRJ7SPRNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819698},"content":"In 1984, Handy was a core contributor to an RTÉ radio One series on The Future of Work, produced and presented by John Quinn. Over the next two decades, he was a regular guest on Quinn’s radio show The Open Mind. “He had a wonderful commanding voice, and a droll and wry sense of humour. He used storytelling and imagery effectively to portray difficult concepts. He was a visionary who was way ahead of his time,” said Quinn.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CIX7MNBZ5JH2LLRVJB6ZD3SNVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819699},"content":"Handy also developed a close friendship with Irish businessman Ronan King, who left a busy accountancy practice to work for the Special Olympics in 2003 and later managed the Ballymun Regeneration project “Charles had an aura of humility, an understated sense of humour and human kindness that is often lacking in people who are world famous,” said King. “He shaped the lives of many Irish businesspeople.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGO3CB22ZRCYHEOZZMBNPRNMZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819700},"content":"Drawing on Aristotle’s eudaemonia theory, Handy often said: “If every organisation could find out what they were best at, and if they did their best with what they were best at, for the good of others, it would get very exciting.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"24PIG3OZOBFE7ECBADKA7THTHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819701},"content":"“My message was always that what business is about is creating things or services that are useful to people and will actually make the world a better place,” he told Kathy Sheridan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FT4EKJAHANAO7DRT7DQ2ZXF2JI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819702},"content":"More recently, in an interview with the Financial Times, he said he was encouraged by young people’s ability to handle risk: “They live far more dangerously than we did . . . They are more relaxed about money and the future.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"AREWWUS64FFRFLOD7NDFDL2FMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819703},"content":"But he said he was less optimistic about companies themselves, where “hundreds of thousands of talented people have no room to express themselves . . . They suck the lifeblood out of you, these big organisations, because people aren’t connected to the purpose”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHQILT52BZB7TH5JN7WTOFAXPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819704},"content":"The eldest of three children of Joan (née Scott) Handy and Brian Handy, he grew up in a rural Church of Ireland rectory in Clane, Co Kildare where his father was rector and archdeacon of Kildare. Following his education as a boarder in Bromsgrove School in Worcestershire, he studied classics, history and philosophy at Oriel College in Oxford, graduating with a first class honours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T2UC4KDT55F75L5K5QOOGKLOI4","additional_properties":{"_id":"B3TVC6EFHZFHLIH7ECIEICQUII"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"FDNHCLUUVREANLIOGKNRYBZPZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819705},"content":"Attending his father’s funeral in 1977, Handy was so deeply touched by the profound impact his father had on the local community that he briefly considered becoming an Anglican priest. But two bishops refused to nominate him for theology college and instead offered him a job as head of St George’s House at Windsor Castle, a training college for future bishops. He took the job and moved with his wife and their young children. Four years later, the family relocated to the south London suburb of Putney.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I2MC4NX7JBFW5HXGL5GCGUJFSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819706},"content":"In latter decades, Handy and his wife collaborated on work – having got a degree at the age of 50, Elizabeth became a professional photographer. Their joint projects included a book of essays by women in their 60s entitled Reinvented Lives (2002).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RSY2GLZQQFGJXCSKHA4J32QBNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819707},"content":"Although dividing their time between their homes in London and Norfolk, the couple maintained strong connections with family and friends in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLTWWA7Y5VAUNEOH7C3K2F2JRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819708},"content":"In his autobiography, Myself and Other More Important Matters (2006), Handy wrote: “I can feel Irish at heart but still belong physically and emotionally to Britain and, indeed, to Europe.” His sister Ruth Handy, who had a similar career as an organisational psychologist at the Irish Management Institute in Dublin, said he was very proud of his Irish passport and corrected anyone who described him as a British management guru. Trinity College Dublin was one of many universities that bestowed him with an honorary doctorate. President Michael D Higgins gave him a President’s Award in 2015. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2000 New Year Honours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MXXGXVPL75BD3BQ2EZYRFHOCRI","additional_properties":{"_id":"STC7DR7J7VGYLN2BOMVNPRQX64"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"HGZQ6FRRWFDJZFHDC77AZ3BEFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819709},"content":"Handy remained reasonably active in his eighties, although a stroke in 2019 slowed him down somewhat. While recovering in hospital, he became impatient with the instructions doled out to him by medical staff, and insisted that a notice be pinned above his bed, reading: “Charles Handy is Allowed to Do Whatever He Wants To Do”. That same year, he wrote a book, 21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges – a compendium of life lessons (with chapter titles such as Curiosity Did Not Kill the Cat and What You Can’t Count Matters More than What You Can) for his grandchildren, interspersed with touching tributes to Elizabeth, who had died in a car crash in March 2018.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPYTDMSYWFD6BMS6QDPZAC7WGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819710},"content":"Between 2020 and 2023, Handy wrote 60 columns for The Idler magazine. At the time of his death, he had completed his last book, The View from Ninety: Reflections on Living a Long, Contented Life, which will be published in 2025.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D6OSM2MLGJC7HEBO3FRAEJZJ3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819711},"content":"Charles Handy is survived by his daughter Kate, an osteopath; his son Scott, an actor and theatre director; his four grandchildren Leo, Sam, Nephele and Scarlett; and his sisters Margaret and Ruth.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The social philosopher was never afraid to reformulate his own ideas as organisational culture evolved over the years"},"display_date":"2025-01-04T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Charles Handy obituary: One of the most respected management thinkers of his generation","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KRRX36F2IRBIDMUMA4XYC7IMRI","auth":{"1":"0c1c8709fb4ed82af1919c729e0dde2dc679191682f4bf31976c00f0a7a675c4"},"focal_point":{"x":1076,"y":699},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KRRX36F2IRBIDMUMA4XYC7IMRI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/charles-handy-obituary-one-of-the-most-respected-management-thinkers-of-his-generation/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"3UW3RUCGOBBUBLLJK4D3N5FC4I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":318,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/40e9551f-56e7-47ad-a135-2d563976aff8/versions/1734618514/media/a0e7fed62029216867b33d1ed9fccabf_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/ken-reid-obituary-journalist-who-covered-northern-ireland-from-war-to-peace/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RE3KASZJIFFZLN5V6XDBIIZX3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>June 23rd, 1955","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 20th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"P5XVNN2FXFB23PUKYO57IS5Z54","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644301},"content":"Ken Reid, who has died aged 69, was a journalist who in a sense covered Northern Ireland from war to peace while taking a brief detour from the Troubles to impress his warm Ulster personality on the people of Cork city.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZARPFC434ZGETKX37FQBWNOD6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644302},"content":"He started his career in newspapers but eventually moved on to UTV, where as political editor he delivered informed and accessible reporting on all the labyrinthine developments during the most crucial years of the peace process in and around the 1998 Belfast Agreement and beyond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37GMVEUQZVDQ7NLMF226QERNCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644303},"content":"From a Protestant background, he earned the trust of UTV viewers as an even-handed journalist as the various attempts to create a peaceful and political settlement unfolded. Equally, he was trusted by politicians of all shades, whether it be Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness or David Trimble and Ian Paisley. It was Paisley who facilitated his greatest television scoop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XCS4GEZKWNERBMUOEVGFHBHHOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644304},"content":"Reid, who was born in Belfast, lived near Ballymena, the hub of the DUP leader’s North Antrim constituency. Paisley had a fondness for Reid, over the years providing him with lively interviews and also keeping him up to speed on political developments. When, in March 2008, Paisley decided he would stand down as first minister and DUP leader, he made sure Reid was first with the information on the UTV main six o’clock news, every other reporter scrambling thereafter to catch up with the story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A3VQOELSM5GV3INIM5FRG7XRFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644306},"content":"Reid had an agreeable nature and could make friends with anybody. He had easy relationships with taoisigh such as Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern, with US presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and with British prime ministers such as John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCIH6MTZCVCPRNBQP46AYAITN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644307},"content":"And, as he wrote in the book Reporting the Troubles, he was one of only three journalists who had a genuinely cordial interaction with the late and former Ulster Unionist leader and first minister David Trimble, who generally was wary of reporters. The others were Victor Gordon of the Portadown Times and Frank Millar, former London editor of The Irish Times.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P6W54JKANVEKVGCKNQHML5PLI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644308},"content":"Reid was born in 1955 and raised in north Belfast. He attended Methodist College in Belfast and went on to Hull University in England. He began his journalistic career as the Troubles ground on relentlessly, joining the News Letter in Belfast in 1977 and moving to the post of sports editor of the now defunct Sunday News in the mid-1980s. He was later appointed editor of the paper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3K3QSVXRXJHIXAP5OETQFOMWOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644309},"content":"In 1987 he caused surprise among his Belfast colleagues when he moved south to join the Cork Examiner. As one journalist at the paper remembered, within months he had “charmed the city senseless” while also making solid contacts with senior Irish politicians, which served him well when he joined UTV in 1994.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SQ3A5HLF4VFUZMJQRLEDN22YVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644310},"content":"Not many months after his arrival in Cork, as the same reporter recalled, he had so embedded himself in the newspaper that if anyone wanted to know what was the important in-house gossip “they went to Ken”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LOHCM42NHFEUDAK5OZBFPVW7GA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644311},"content":"He was a devoted supporter of Everton, regularly attending games at Goodison Park in Liverpool. He was just as avid in his enthusiasm for Cliftonville FC in north Belfast, his grandfather presenting him with his first season ticket when he was just six. He also was a keen follower of Ballymena rugby club.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YH3VC5NWLZGIBI5VIOBTQITS3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644312},"content":"He was named news broadcaster of the year at the CIPR Press and Broadcast Awards in both 2005 and 2006. Earlier this year with his good friend and occasional rival Stephen Grimason, the former BBC political editor and later Stormont director of communications, he was awarded the Queen’s University Belfast chancellor’s medal. Both men were lauded for providing “a vital public service during the dark days of fear and uncertainty”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NPDSQZZGR5HBDCMSHOYGBYP2NI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644313},"content":"He was generous and supportive to his colleagues. He also campaigned on behalf of Leukaemia & Lymphoma NI, becoming its patron in 2023. Reid was fashioned from old-style journalistic stock, which explains the curious £50 bet he had with Grimason over which of them would die first.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3RXDIB7FJBDAJIC5NN4ALMZU2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644315},"content":"Both had been struggling with illnesses, particularly since their retirements – Grimason with cancer, Reid with leukaemia and diabetes. Grimason died in March this year, his wife Yvonne handing over the £50 to Reid after the funeral, insisting: “Ken, Stephen said you must take that.” Reid promptly proffered the money to the barman at Bob Stewart’s pub in Drumbeg near Belfast to defray just some of the costs of the libations indulged in by their friends after the service.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRF5TSA3LBB2DETUVOP4N45RCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644316},"content":"The wager certainly was on the black side, not untypical of journalists, but also was evidence of how Reid and Grimason faced up to both life and death, bravely and with grace and humour. Ken Reid is survived by his wife, Liz, children Gareth, Sarah and Sophie, and grandchildren Summer and Hugo.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Reid had an agreeable nature and could make friends with anybody"},"display_date":"2025-01-04T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ken Reid obituary: Journalist who covered Northern Ireland from war to peace","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7MCBOFKEFGTSDYR27O2UD3SRIE","auth":{"1":"0ad3515e288da9fe11675e39efaf0cd67c1c64f9e75d3cab00ca311c5bbb9bbe"},"focal_point":{"x":2960,"y":1141},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7MCBOFKEFGTSDYR27O2UD3SRIE.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/ken-reid-obituary-journalist-who-covered-northern-ireland-from-war-to-peace/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"GDWGPBSHGRGHNB4HG2AOBZN4SU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":919,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/aa3d582f-164b-40f7-931a-7f1e6c35d8ce/versions/1735237463/media/841925a4541dcb49e6ce64bad1920092_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/30/obituaries-of-the-year-ten-notable-people-on-the-world-stage-who-died-in-2024/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5DSVNBVJMZDIJGTK55CNOBHTTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251916},"content":"This year saw the loss of many notable figures who found international fame in worlds as varied as pop culture, politics, sports and literature. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"27FGNG5TWZF4HPA6NWGR6HK6NI","additional_properties":{},"content":"They included the singer and songwriter Kris Kristofferson, fashion designer Roberto Cavalli and actor James Earl Jones of Star Wars and Lion King fame. Political figures who died included Alex Salmond, who led Scotland to the brink of independence in 2014, while the movie world lost Roger Corman, one of the most prolific producers in the history of film.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOTVK2SLJZHCBB4MWVC5HE5V7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251917},"content":"Here we remember the lives of ten other well-known people whose deaths made headlines in The Irish Times, and around the world, this year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KVGVDX3XGLNY5WB6CW6UA2OFFE","additional_properties":{"_id":"FBMI6XGMEVBGXBX67OP7BCIWUI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"G6W3X7U4N5HMRES2DT7FMUGAW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251919},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/24/alexei-navalny-obituary-an-unflinching-critic-of-putin-to-his-last-breath/\" target=\"_blank\">Alexei Navalny</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"EDQ7CJXYJZB4JIZ2T3WTINPNIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251920},"content":"Russian politician, Putin critic","type":"header"},{"_id":"LZMQYUEWXVG6NFHUZDPLKXIAV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251921},"content":"Alexei Navalny, who died on February 16th aged 47, was one of the most prominent domestic critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin. He died in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle where he had been serving multiple sentences on charges his supporters say were trumped up to silence him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PNMQSISJWBDQXK3EISMRBDGVXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251922},"content":"He was jailed after returning in 2021 from Germany where he was recuperating from a nerve-agent poisoning in Siberia that he blamed on the Kremlin. He was given three prison terms after his return and was moved to a different prison with harsher conditions each time. Late last year, he was feared dead after he disappeared for three weeks during his transfer to the penal colony 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QDVTBPAR4NBNXNEGADG5SFZZ6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251923},"content":"Despite increasingly difficult conditions, which included solitary confinement, he maintained a presence on social media, while members of his team published investigations into Russia’s corrupt elite from exile. The Kremlin had tried to cut him off further by arresting several of his lawyers last year on charges of being part of an extremist group.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FG2XUQGYOJCU3L7MHCSC3DEAGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251924},"content":"In 2021 he was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament for his work on human rights. Three months after his death, his widow accepted the Dresden Peace Prize on his behalf.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWTABOLICVBALKYNU27KA4MWSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251925},"content":"His memoir, published after his death, revealed he believed he would die in prison.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNU3T5MFJRAAVNACHMW7BNZSCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"VD4UJUSG7BAFJAEBGHWMSDGFEA"},"content":"Thousands defy Kremlin to show up at Alexei Navalny’s funeral – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GEBADTN5UFC4VAQ2Q2KCVWUDS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251927},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/20/oj-simpson-obituary-ex-football-star-famously-acquitted-of-double-murder/\" target=\"_blank\">OJ Simpson</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"JDPJ57HWRBBP3ODXIGVPZPS2DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251928},"content":"American football player, criminal","type":"header"},{"_id":"2KDSGK7BM5F5XF2YGEWP6JCJCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251929},"content":"OJ Simpson, who died at the age of 88 on April 10th, was an American football player who was charged with murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. He was acquitted in 1995, but was later found guilty in a civil trial and was also jailed for other crimes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWKVPCEGOJG6ZGH4H7ZKSOE3VQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251930},"content":"He was one of the most popular athletes of the late 1960s and 1970s and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame after a record-setting career with the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers. He went on to enjoy a career as a sportscaster and actor and appeared in commercials.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIZ73Z7ZYNCNFOCBLZKZGQKXAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251931},"content":"When Brown Simpson and Goldman were found stabbed to death, Simpson emerged as a suspect. Days after the killing, he fled in his white Ford Bronco and a slow-speed chase through Los Angeles ensued before he was charged with the murders. He was controversially acquitted in a televised trial that transfixed the US. Later found liable for the deaths in a civil trial, he was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages to the families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4CKI3NFY6VBTLFA2CCTHWTGBR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251932},"content":"He also served nine years in a Nevada prison after being convicted in 2008 on 12 counts of armed robbery and the kidnapping of two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint. He was released from parole in 2021, at the age of 74.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3S5GBGNJQZAELBOQRPCQD5COXI","additional_properties":{"_id":"L54NJ7ZZEJEURIQL2OC2ZNOLKI"},"content":"OJ Simpson might have got away with murder but he lost the one thing he craved the most – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"43XFAQK4F2DDQWOVNWF2LNS5YQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"7XWJT34KS5FDNMEKSQJLHBSFWE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"USJXAUELU5AD3NOL3OGR6GX2P4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251935},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/18/alice-munro-obituary-writer-of-short-stories-that-were-novels-in-miniature/\" target=\"_blank\">Alice Munro</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"PSISFJ5OHZCEJGDUWNZEGLWVAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251936},"content":"Writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"OXFE4NQYIBEBPLAD47SVN4TJJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251937},"content":"Alice Munro, who died on May 13th aged 92, was a Canadian short-story writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She wrote short stories for more than 60 years, often focusing on life in rural and small-town Canada.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKLOJB3Q4FAHHASAWVVJK4XZCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251938},"content":"In awarding her the Nobel in 2013, the Swedish Academy referred to her as “a master of the contemporary short story”, and praised her ability to “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HINJMS4E6NDAHI6XQSUM7QHRTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251939},"content":"Her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968 and won the governor general’s award for fiction in Canada. Munro reached international critical attention when her work began to feature in the New Yorker, from 1977. She won the governor general’s award for fiction in Canada twice more, for Who Do You Think You Are? in 1978, and for The Progress of Love in 1986. Who Do You Think You Are? was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1980 under the title The Beggar Maid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EPDJH2BRNNG5VHXUG2A5SERC4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251940},"content":"In 2009, she won the Man Booker International prize for her overall contribution to fiction. The judges lauded her skill for bringing “as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNR6CKPRXJCXDMPSBKUE2VICXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251941},"content":"Her last work, Dear Life, was published in 2012, when she was 81.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CL2VDURA2RDJVJ6EUXO3FYJV6E","additional_properties":{"_id":"ULO4724IHREUDICEVM6KCIRHKY"},"content":"‘I loved Alice Munro’s stories more than any I have ever read’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"W65ADLL3EJAUTJRAT2CEC5H6UU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251943},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/2024/06/20/donald-sutherland-was-a-fearless-actor-who-brought-frightening-energy-to-many-roles/?\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Sutherland</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"NTTBBSGW45ASBNZ4KUW62KYPYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251944},"content":"Actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"FIA66M36K5EYDP43K5TLXHJEJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251945},"content":"Donald Sutherland, who died on June 20th aged 88, was a Canadian actor whose work spanned six decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKQJ2A27XZFUZPK5Q4WUAZAXQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251946},"content":"Known for his versatility, he had almost 200 credits to his name, and they ranged from a pot-smoking college professor in National Lampoon’s Animal House to Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4EFBGUE25VFM5IVQP43W3K3GJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251947},"content":"After studying acting in London, he worked in theatre in Scotland and secured some small television roles in series such as The Saint and The Avengers. He landed his breakthrough role in the second World War action film The Dirty Dozen and that performance led him to winning one of the lead roles in M*A*S*H, the satirical wartime series.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5PQM6MYFWRHDROGOWB2HPYEXF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251948},"content":"Movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kelly’s Heroes, Klute, Ordinary People, Don’t Look Now and JFK followed and he worked steadily for decades. He starred alongside his son Kiefer in A Time to Kill in 1996, and in 2012 he found a new generation of film fans when he took on the role of President Snow in the Hunger Games franchise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FY7TVNXUCZHXZGSISXCY6KAVQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251949},"content":"He won two Golden Globes for best supporting actor for the TV movies Citizen X (1996) and Path to War (2003), a Primetime Emmy for Citizen X and an honorary Academy Award in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LZ2CF434HRATRBNGASX76IVBUM","additional_properties":{"_id":"4MZYBL5DIBBVRHGVZQKE3PAWHI"},"content":"Actor Donald Sutherland, star of Hunger Games and Don’t Look Now, dies aged 88","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CHXXUKGHGFEUXJPT4OCUW6PPZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251951},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/31/sven-goran-eriksson-obituary-urbane-swede-whose-management-career-was-a-game-of-two-halves/\" target=\"_blank\">Sven-Göran Eriksson</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"ABOZJUZYKBDDVHGCKB7M3I34GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251952},"content":"Football manager","type":"header"},{"_id":"DXO3MKI43FHQTLYF6GXHKGNMZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251953},"content":"England’s first overseas manager Sven-Göran Eriksson died on August 26th at the age of 76 after a managerial career that spanned more than four decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CU3JFYGLBNGLTJCPC6CQVUFBLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251954},"content":"The Swede’s management career began with Swedish teams Degerfors and IFK Göteborg. His international breakthrough came when he guided IFK to win its first Uefa Cup final. This led him to manage teams such as Benfica, Sampdoria and Lazio and his success made him one of Europe’s most highly regarded managers. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OX334CMUHBFVXOLNVAU2RRQ7P4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nevertheless, his appointment as England manager in 2001 was lambasted by some tabloids because he was not English. He would go on to lead the country to the quarter-finals in two World Cups and in the Euro 2004 tournament. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JFLOUUEWFFDYHGYCOVJ35KXLFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His personal life provided much fodder for the tabloids and his phone was hacked by the News of the World between 2002 and 2006. Just before the 2002 World Cup tournament, it was revealed Eriksson had had an affair with fellow Swede and television presenter Ulrika Jonsson. After the now-defunct News of the World secretly recorded him in 2006 expressing interest in the Aston Villa job, the FA announced he would step down after the World Cup.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MULWCZ47HJBKLICYIUJUSO6AA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251955},"content":"He went on to manage a host of clubs and countries, including Manchester City, Leicester, Mexico and the Philippines. His final job in football was as sporting director at IF Karlstad before pancreatic cancer forced him to quit in 2023.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UVCML2LRVHSXBL67ZECVWP7AE","additional_properties":{"_id":"DFP5BT2FMFHMDICQ233EAPIRYA"},"content":"Former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson dies, aged 76 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"66F6GCHK7NHK5ONWAMTLDLRRIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251957},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/09/28/toto-schillaci-obituary-striker-who-shot-to-global-fame-in-the-summer-of-1990/\" target=\"_blank\">Totò Schillaci</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"D2XKFLBBUFHKXBIM7NBRTGKYIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251958},"content":"Footballer","type":"header"},{"_id":"PIUWPE7O4BGLLAOXUZNIOWYGNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251959},"content":"The former Italy striker Salvatore “Totò” Schillaci, who scored the goal that knocked Ireland out of the 1990 World Cup, died on September 18th aged 59. Italy lost on penalties to Argentina in the semi-finals but Schillaci’s goal in their third-place victory over England brought his tally for the tournament to six, making him the leading scorer and earning him the Golden Boot, and player of the tournament award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T3G2TTHKJZHJPGG4W7I7CSP3ZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251960},"content":"He was a wild-card pick for that squad and wasn’t expected to feature prominently in the tournament but all that changed when he was brought on in the late stages of Italy’s opening match against Austria. He broke the goalless deadlock with a header and kept on scoring in the days that followed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WBG52WWFR5DZVJ44ORUFO7BK4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251961},"content":"From Sicily, Schillaci started his career at Messina and went on to play for Juventus and Inter Milan. The 1990 World Cup marked the peak of his career and his football-playing days ended in Japan with Júbilo Iwata when he was 34.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6CSUH4TUNFKDD2PBZ7JMLBOZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251962},"content":"He later ran a soccer school in Palermo and appeared in a number of television shows, including Italy’s version of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. In 2002 he played himself in a TV advert for Smithwicks ale, smilingly popping up in an Irish pub as the surprised locals looked on.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5XED6G2LYFDT5M2STXRZJNU534","additional_properties":{"_id":"SV6G45N6S5H5RHNM2ICTDNVHE4"},"content":"Totò Schillaci’s joy was infectious and he was loved in Ireland, despite that goal – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VULCLV3H5AR3JFJSDC5XQMNMO4","additional_properties":{"_id":"33ICVC6D3BCU7L6SQHQ4OYD6FM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"EO7OA5YSURHEVFJHVR4H33PSOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251965},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/05/maggie-smith-obituary-iconic-actor-whose-comic-genius-was-often-refracted-through-tales-of-sadness/\" target=\"_blank\">Maggie Smith</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"G5SIGLYNC5DB5CY5C6C2POREVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251966},"content":"Actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"REND3V3COZAZBEKYCM5OVPAS5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251967},"content":"Maggie Smith, who died on September 27th aged 89, was a prolific award-winning actor whose work ranged from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Harry Potter to Downton Abbey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DN64ZHX6VRF4XM4EBCRMIVUHEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251968},"content":"She won an Academy Award in 1970 for playing the waspish teacher Jean Brodie and received another nomination for best actress in 1973 for Travels with My Aunt. In 1979, she won an Oscar for best supporting actress, and a Golden Globe for best actress, for California Suite.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ECUPMYWTNDS5DWUKIZUQK37KY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251969},"content":"Her gift for acid-tongued comedy was often lauded but she also thrived in serious dramatic roles, performing opposite Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre, winning a best actress Bafta for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and playing the title role in Ingmar Bergman’s Hedda Gabler.","type":"text"},{"_id":"23M4CFDM5VCMHMGZFOB4LVNPSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251970},"content":"The Oxford-born actor excelled in period dramas such as A Room With a View and Gosford Park. Downton Abbey brought her a whole new level of fame and earned her three Primetime Emmy awards. Younger viewers came to love her when she took on the role of Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOLEDZW5YVFARJN4ZJJRQFCZFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251971},"content":"Her collaborations on stage and screen with Alan Bennett were always well received and their 2015 film, The Lady in the Van, was a late-career triumph. Aged 84, she reached a new high in her six-decade career when she took on the one-woman play A German Life in London’s Bridge Theatre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TEPM3YW3FFG7FOGXPNEJQDYEIY","additional_properties":{"_id":"GTBCHYM6YVFMVJCCF6BPDNGWTM"},"content":"Maggie Smith, with a voice as unmistakable as Churchill’s, was a star for six decades – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"YKQUAIXQYRDFNAMP5SEGCUIFZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251973},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/19/ethel-kennedy-obituary-vital-force-in-her-familys-political-dynasty-whose-life-was-marred-by-tragedy/\" target=\"_blank\">Ethel Kennedy</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"4BOJJJLMLVB7XORKIMAVJELPHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251974},"content":"Human rights advocate","type":"header"},{"_id":"OAVJOBSXU5AZHGLCLQX7PWQWGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251975},"content":"Ethel Kennedy was a lifelong human rights advocate who endured a series of tragedies that included the assassination of her husband, Robert F Kennedy snr, and the deaths of two of their children. She died on October 10th, aged 96. She was the mother of former independent presidential candidate, turned Donald Trump ally, Robert F Kennedy jnr.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JHTN4RUQXNE6VCVRSJY4PZHS5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251976},"content":"She was a college roommate of RFK snr’s younger sister Jean and was formally introduced to her future husband during a ski weekend in Quebec. Her passion for politics was so consuming that she was often said to be “more Kennedy than the Kennedys” and she campaigned tirelessly for her husband and other Kennedys. She was pregnant with the couple’s 11th child when RFK snr was shot when he was leaving the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just won the Democratic primary in his bid to become US president, five years after his brother, JFK, was assassinated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XHLFM65FE5BVFP7BHMSVUDOWFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251977},"content":"She was passionate about social causes, including the rights of migrant workers, the rights of Native Americans and a variety of environmental causes. She founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights which honours exemplary work by journalists and human rights advocates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UM3W4AZJAJBD3CFOM6O6OKHEH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251978},"content":"In 2014, the US president Barack Obama awarded Ethel Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom for dedicating her life to advancing the cause of social justice, human rights, environmental protection and poverty reduction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYLF7VMH4FFKNDZUCJXO6USYPY","additional_properties":{"_id":"U2VOX23QUVBCBI2YFITQYGLTGY"},"content":" Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F Kennedy snr, dies at 96 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UQQQZSOUNP5PFHEV7VYHC6BUUM","additional_properties":{"_id":"V62YRLSL7RHY7EJFOOF5Z2S7TA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"B3M7KFHOO5GILKALYQTARLKP4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251981},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/26/liam-payne-obituary-pop-icon-who-remained-an-enigma/\" target=\"_blank\">Liam Payne</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"7BWDXRL5IFFBNEOGRIMVF2GIMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251982},"content":"Singer","type":"header"},{"_id":"QDBXFFGF7NDI7HGYLUOHKJL2SM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251983},"content":"Liam Payne died on October 16th, aged 31, after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires. His death prompted questions about the support and protection offered to young people in the music industry after it emerged that the singer had alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he fell.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UBYTAPXKRBGQPHRVEVCV6PEHQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251984},"content":"His love of singing was apparent from an early age and he auditioned for X Factor twice, first when he was 14, and again two years later. On the second occasion, in 2010, he was put together with four fellow contestants to form a boy band, One Direction. They finished third and Simon Cowell signed them to his label for a reported £2 million.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XSOML5MTNJBFFNYM4T5ZCUZYQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251985},"content":"The band sold some 70 million records and became the first band in the history of the US Billboard chart to see their first four albums debut at No 1. Payne established himself as a songwriter and by the time of 2014′s Four, his name appeared in the credits of eight of the album’s 12 tracks, including its lead single, Steal My Girl.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BIIPLPUGSBF23EMI4QDSTCU5UU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251986},"content":"The band split in 2016 and his debut solo single Strip That Down reached number three on the UK singles chart the following year. His album, LP1, debuted at number 17 on the UK albums chart in 2019.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XR5ID3YT35BH3BCZELFOYDPP4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"QA2D6EHJRJBPZLKZLTCWP75VF4"},"content":"After One Direction, Liam Payne was just getting started. His death is a heartbreaking end – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"WXWKI5RQHRFGNAYPG45XF3NCBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251988},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2024/11/04/quincy-jones-producer-and-giant-of-us-entertainment-dies-aged-91/\" target=\"_blank\">Quincy Jones</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"VUJW7YAXVZHQNKVLWCUXZ63M3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251989},"content":"Music producer","type":"header"},{"_id":"WK5AUYM5VJHSTBN6P2PQIY23NY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251990},"content":"Quincy Jones was an American musical performer, producer, arranger and composer who worked with a “who’s who” of figures in the music industry. He was 91 when he died on November 3rd.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Q5544364ZDWRH4WDMFPI5K7RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251991},"content":"The roster of singers and musicians he worked with included Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and Count Basie.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIBSWDERSNB4NIIIVPPDDLHMYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251992},"content":"At 14, he started playing in a band with a 16-year-old Ray Charles, and he once backed Billie Holiday. He played trumpet in Elvis Presley’s band and was Dizzy Gillespie’s musical director and arranger when he was 23.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VREAVCEPONDTZPQMGFUN3QKXII","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251993},"content":"A job at Mercury Records led to him working with artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee and Sammy Davis Jr. He also began scoring films, clocking up credits for The Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night and The Color Purple.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4SS3GAT37NFRZENWZFSLWCOFDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251994},"content":"He produced Off the Wall, Bad and Thriller – still the biggest-selling album of all time – for Michael Jackson while his film and TV production company launched the career of Will Smith with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air sitcom.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LATED2GVEBELHCIGWLYN2FFTSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251995},"content":"Jones won 28 Grammy awards, received seven Academy Award nominations and won an Emmy award for the theme music he wrote for the television series Roots in 1977. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. He was posthumously awarded an honorary Oscar two weeks after his death.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Among those who died were Putin critic Alexei Navalny, actor Maggie Smith and criminal OJ Simpson"},"display_date":"2024-12-30T06:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Obituaries of the year: Ten notable people on the world stage who died in 2024","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"I6XQFVBCEZGCLP6GRD5FAQEA2A","auth":{"1":"ffaa37e2085ca16a49048c7ae1d49f696f74bf6d63f138d9afc43c5f3a1ac200"},"focal_point":{"x":2345,"y":1613},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/I6XQFVBCEZGCLP6GRD5FAQEA2A.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"World"},{"name":"Opinion"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/30/obituaries-of-the-year-ten-notable-people-on-the-world-stage-who-died-in-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"2RCWQSRVCJH3DHO232KXQGKJ74","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":700,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0f593fc5-3934-4973-87b2-13281d5813fe/versions/1735510615/media/2df1f04d4a07a51439cea6ee23a4c547_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/jimmy-carter-obituary-former-us-president-was-unwavering-champion-of-civil-rights-and-a-peace-broker-in-the-middle-east/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FEL52PWVQBFY3GY4GIZBZE77P4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 1st 1924","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died:</b> December 29th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZXRWZGZWVJACNB6WZ6YW6CSHHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375895},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2024/12/29/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-dies-at-100-say-reports/\" target=\"_blank\">The death at 100 of the US’s 39th and longest living president</a>, James Earl Carter, a peanut farmer and Baptist preacher, sees the passing of a remarkable Southerner who infused his politics with a rare down-to-earth moralism, sincerity and honesty. A refreshing outsider to Washington politics, he surprised all by sweeping aside the capital’s old post-Watergate elite to leave a legacy that pointed in new directions even if it never quite achieved his promise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VJ6FDLNB2ZAF7HBQQOIEJH3AKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375896},"content":"“He decided to use power righteously,” biographer Kai Bird would write, “ignore politics, and do the right thing. He was, in fact, a fan of the establishment’s favourite Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote, ‘It is the sad duty of politics to establish justice in a sinful world’.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CBIPFVSYSFHOHLXLE7BGKC6QIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375897},"content":"Although he had notable successes in office from 1977 to 1981, not least the Camp David Accord between Egypt and Israel, he would be the first incumbent president since Herbert Hoover in 1932 to lose a re-election bid. Ronald Reagan used the economic challenges and oil crisis faced by his administration, and the disastrously bungled attempted Iran hostage rescue, to successfully portray Carter as a weak and ineffectual leader.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NOMEVIZ4K5FKPFBJP4NW4M7GUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375898},"content":"In some ways Carter was a paradox. Although an opponent of segregation in a segregationist state, he played the race card to get elected to governorship in 1971, then announcing that “the time of racial discrimination is over”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PECZVDJSYNARVBZY7JBS7XPY7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375899},"content":"From then on, however, he was an unwavering champion of civil rights, and his presidential bid attracted some 85 per cent support from the black community.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2XAUMZQ44HJAIGBOX6DBBYM6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"5WP2SJUNBNGZVLYU5LOLPI6BQU"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"N5L5OKRS2FFMPCQEER4AQIVHXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375900},"content":"Born on October 1st, 1924, in tiny Plains, Georgia, to Bessie Lillian Gordy and James Earl Carter snr, a shopkeeper and investor in farmland, the young Carter would successfully develop a peanut farm as an offshoot of the family business. His father was a descendant of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in the Colony of Virginia in 1635.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BRV3ONLGKJBQHJQJ77YZ7WINJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375901},"content":"Carter enrolled in the US Naval Academy in 1946 and while there met and married Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister’s. He served in nuclear submarines, and was drafted in to assist in the dismantling of the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Canada following a partial meltdown. His experience, he would later say, shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to end development of the neutron bomb.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KLPIKEDXJ5EAVCCZR7DNFVVUHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375902},"content":"The early death of his father saw his return to the family business and a gradual immersion in the Democratic politics of Georgia. Although opposed to segregation – as a member of the Baptist Church he spoke openly against racism and attempts to segregate worship – he tempered his approach when he ran for office, even courting the arch-segregationist Wallace vote.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWYEM6PDENARJFGQGRJ7TAFC3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375903},"content":"Still an outsider in national politics, he surprised observers by winning the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination and narrowly defeating incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NPDPNSXM4RGQTJLX7FDK55H744","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375904},"content":"As the campaign developed in the wake of the still-fresh reverberations of the Watergate scandal, Carter, now with running mate senator Walter Mondale, tirelessly travelled the country projecting himself as an outsider with an easy common touch, not averse to populist slogans. He won the popular vote by 50.1 per cent to 48.0 per cent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O4I4L6JFKFF3JEQASSEVHXUA3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375905},"content":"Within two days of assuming the presidency he took the controversial step of pardoning all Vietnam War draft evaders.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNAATMYEFNEKLM5V2LV5FWRXMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375906},"content":"Carter was actively engaged on the world stage, from day one, hoping above all to broker peace in the Middle East. He invited Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to the presidential lodge Camp David in September 1978 with the negotiations resulting in an end to the state of war between the two countries, Egypt formally recognising Israel for the first time, and the creation of an elected government in the West Bank and Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RAO2F6SOZDHDBV2JPE57WXL54","additional_properties":{"_id":"JRZ6PTVFABFOZEK74ZHIYMYM7A"},"content":"Leo Varadkar could learn something from Jimmy Carter about how to retire","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VSAN6JUHMBAGNLQIWQQ2L5ODDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375907},"content":"He oversaw the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, and signed the landmark Salt II treaty on ballistic arms reductions with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. (Although the latter was signed in 1979 in Vienna, the US Senate refused to ratify it in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"MM633QT5HBG3BHVTGPIP2R3ZH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375908},"content":"Following that invasion, Carter allowed the sale of military supplies to China and started talks about sharing military intelligence. He began a programme of what would become hugely controversial covert assistance to the Afghan mujahideen, some of them precursors to today’s Taliban.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YELIUMV2JRGIBJVAXN7FJR2MKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375909},"content":"He sought closer relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), continuing the rapprochement engaged in by Richard Nixon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAOR5PBRU2LBWTUIJ5YC667DPY","additional_properties":{"_id":"DNDVCREMJZHTHCDKLBNKYVAOZU"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HZ2S3JXOAFFBBJ5SRUEV24NU3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375910},"content":"The end of his presidency was blighted by the Iran hostage crisis. Misbriefed by the CIA about the stability of the Shah’s regime, Carter pledged in 1977 that his administration would continue with positive relations between the US and Iran, calling the latter “strong, stable and progressive”. After the surprise revolution installed an Islamist regime in November 1979, a group of Iranian students took over the US embassy in Tehran. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for the next 444 days. An airborne mission to free them failed, leaving eight American servicemen dead and two aircraft destroyed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D34TJA6CUVGKVP45FWOMVMZ4BI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375911},"content":"The hostages were freed immediately after Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter as president – leading figures in the Reagan campaign are reported to have signalled to the Iranians not to release the hostages until Carter was defeated, as Reagan would give them a better deal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3YGJISYXJC6BKTG26YRGRTJW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375912},"content":"Breaking with traditional US unwillingness to step out of line from its closest ally, the UK, Carter in 1977 agreed to issue a declaration on Ireland calling for the establishment in Northern Ireland of a government which would command widespread acceptance and for an overall solution which would involve the support of the Irish government. The US would facilitate any such agreement with assistance in creating jobs, he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JDM4TSBNXZDQ7OHHXXTCR7D7FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375913},"content":"“The precedent created by Carter has facilitated the enormous involvement in Ireland of his successors,” Ireland’s then-ambassador to the US, Sean Donlon, has written.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LVTWF7JB4BE5VFY44DMI4DYJ5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375914},"content":"It was an engagement and pledge that would be honoured by Reagan in his talks with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and in the establishment of the International Fund for Ireland. The latter has seen close to $1 billion invested in Irish projects since then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3MCWLAX5JC2PLTDEEPHSSQWBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375915},"content":"In 1979, Carter invited taoiseach Jack Lynch on an official visit to the US and paid a private visit to Ireland in 1995, fishing in Kilkenny and indulging his woodworking skills by helping to build a house in Ballyfermot for Habitat for Humanity, an NGO he worked closely with.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y66JZ6QO2NDZDEZMPR3OQFN6V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375916},"content":"Domestically, Carter had an uneasy relationship with both his own party and Republicans in Congress. His tenure in office was marked by an economic malaise, a time of continuing inflation and recession, and the 1979 energy crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKFAB43E5RBCPL4J46AHDC6KF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375917},"content":"His administration established the department of energy and the department of education. He also created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. He installed solar water heating panels on the White House and wore sweaters to offset turning down the heat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PPQUQHG46NGHNL6ZFBQ7CG5QAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375918},"content":"He deregulated the airline industry, paving the way for middle-class Americans to fly for the first time in large numbers, and deregulated natural gas, laying the groundwork for the country’s current energy independence. He forced through the Alaska Land Act, tripling the size of the nation’s protected wilderness areas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CYCU5QGHZVDZFCEKGTIRM2SDOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375919},"content":"The battle for renomination loomed. Carter had to run against his own stagflation-ridden economy, while the hostage crisis in Iran dominated the news every week.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHW6LOILTRBUJLKRUFTMNB2TGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375920},"content":"He alienated liberal college students, who were expected to be his base, by reinstating registration for the military draft.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X76WDZNCLVHBLAKYZ36MDV7YVE","additional_properties":{"_id":"6U7KNVT35VGBLBHWK3V4SIQ4BM"},"content":"‘He’s an inspiration’: tributes pour in after Jimmy Carter enters hospice care","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5SI54HW66RH3NNDASZOK7KOOSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375921},"content":"Though initially trailing Carter by several points, Reagan saw a surge in polling after the TV debate, in which he practised the patronising put-down – “there you go again” – that became his election mantra. Carter’s defeat was a landslide.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3C2GVU25LVCG7E2VVK6PZEWWNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375922},"content":"After leaving the White House, he became an activist former president, ploughing a largely solitary but effective furrow. In the view of many it is his retirement that will be seen as his singular legacy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QVLS7OKZPZA2VAVHM5NO7HIRZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375923},"content":"In 1982, he established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights. Its work would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. In July 2007, he joined Nelson Mandela to announce his participation with former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, among others, in The Elders, a group of independent global leaders who work on peace and human rights issues.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3USMDO56ZGXNFTFKKFDKPK22U","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375924},"content":"He travelled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections and further the eradication of infectious diseases. He played a key role in the NGO Habitat for Humanity, and wrote books and memoirs, often sharply critical of US policy, not least over the Iraq War. In a work on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict he controversially labelled the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians “apartheid”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SYUI2Z2OZAVZNNVUJMLZRRNVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375925},"content":"Though he praised Barack Obama in the early part of his tenure, Carter attacked the use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists and the decision to keep Guantánamo Bay detention camp open. His blunt critiques of his Democrat successors meant they would all keep him at arm’s length until Joe Biden latterly re-engaged with him enthusiastically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AFTTBIFFKI6DCNKTP6ECSPKKY","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RAFEKRWHJDCPDDWHUFQTBSXWI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"FECGMPENK5FZ5DYLXKMSQCKTTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375926},"content":"To the end he worked tirelessly. Biographer Bird, who insists that Carter “remains the most misunderstood president of the last century”, described one recent meeting: “He was in his early 90s yet was still rising with the dawn and getting to work early. I once saw him conduct a meeting at 7am at the Carter Center where he spent 40 minutes pacing back and forth onstage, explaining the details of his programme to wipe out Guinea worm disease. He was relentless. Later that day he gave me, his biographer, exactly 50 minutes to talk about his White House years. Those bright blue eyes bore into me with an alarming intensity. But he was clearly more interested in the Guinea worms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUEA3XNRU5BVPNNPYLI57A6RN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375927},"content":"“Carter devoted his life to solving problems,” Bird says, “like an engineer, by paying attention to the minutiae of a complicated world. He once told me that he hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm. Last year there were only 13 cases of Guinea worm disease in humans. He may have succeeded.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QLTKBL74VVCM7D2F2LM2RGAH6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375928},"content":"Rosalynn Carter died in November 2023 and Jimmy Carter emerged from hospice care to mourn her. They had three sons, Jack, Chip and Jeff; one daughter, Amy; nine grandsons (one of whom is deceased), three granddaughters, five great-grandsons, and eight great-granddaughters.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"An outsider in national politics, Carter surprised observers by winning the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination and narrowly defeating incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford"},"display_date":"2024-12-29T22:11:49.457Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jimmy Carter obituary: Former US president was unwavering champion of civil rights and a peace broker in the Middle East","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KUQQDIWB2ERV7MYDS7EIXOKHJU","auth":{"1":"8e5bc2e502ec3f15c3553c1466758245ba29dcfa743db2ad0d99d22098a2c9d9"},"focal_point":{"x":2200,"y":2057},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KUQQDIWB2ERV7MYDS7EIXOKHJU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"World"},{"name":"US"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/jimmy-carter-obituary-former-us-president-was-unwavering-champion-of-civil-rights-and-a-peace-broker-in-the-middle-east/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"MCQ2AEH5H5HFPCPNJ3NRESPANY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":267,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d03f9950-425c-47ee-b621-c5777147377e/versions/1735413681/media/7dbd17f30ef5aa64ecca3a129224107f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/marie-osullivan-the-voice-of-radio-television-and-cinema-commercials-in-the-1960s/","content_elements":[{"_id":"BRMNSVZFRRHZ7LYBFA2M633SLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Marie O’Sullivan, born on November 19th, 1933, the voice of radio, television and cinema commercials in the 1960s, and one of the first continuity announcers on Telefís Éireann, died on December 2nd, 2024. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WH7EQ555TRFSJIGEZR7RD5SLBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"She will be best remembered as a broadcaster and, throughout the 1970s, the face of afternoon TV, but she was also a pioneering speech therapist working in the field decades before it was recognised in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OZZD47W65COZAWED7M5DA3KNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The date of her death, on December 2nd, coincidentally fell on the 63rd anniversary of the promotional tour of Ireland she undertook with fellow announcers – Nuala Donnelly and the late Kathleen Watkins – ahead of the opening night of Irish television on New Year’s Eve, 1961.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUUK5S44GNGWLKZPDXLOTS3VKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It was a PR exercise, really, even though it wasn’t called that in those days,” Marie O’Sullivan said when the trio reunited 40 years later. “It was supposed to make the people who were outside of the Pale feel included.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFJCKMRMQ5ARBIC7MTYFJGLCVQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"And, as a piece in the Ballina Herald illustrated, the “Meet the People” tour, as it was called, was well-judged because some people in the regions did indeed feel excluded. When details of the countrywide route were released, journalist Thomas Woulfe wrote: “Those who have been howling murder over the lack of information on the nature of Telefís Éireann’s opening programmes may have to swallow some of their ire after this announcement.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"O6FLVK2DKJHC3DYFPRPXDE52BE","additional_properties":{},"content":"By 1961, Marie O’Sullivan was already an accomplished broadcaster. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WF4FFOVLONDYFKQZSFW63H26X4","additional_properties":{},"content":"She had started to work in Radio Éireann the decade before, voicing radio and cinema commercials. She also had TV experience, very unusual for the time, having completed a training course at the BBC in 1956. It was there she developed her “BBC accent”, or her “telephone voice”, as her family called it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GHHWZRDJS5CYBJVDVFTWZSGNKE","additional_properties":{},"content":"She also worked as a speech and drama teacher at several Dublin schools and as a speech therapist, a field still in its infancy in the 1950s. One of her first clients was a training priest who feared his stammer would stop him being ordained but, in a case reminiscent of the King’s Speech, she helped him to overcome his difficulty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JMAQ4F2H5FAMXAA74DPXW3G52Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Her love of speech, drama and, in particular, language was honed at Muckross Park College in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, where she took part in several school plays. While playing Yum Yum in The Mikado, she met Christian Brothers College (CBC) pupil Eoin O’Sullivan. They were a couple for 75 years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XBAYDRZBAREJPFE6SDG5BYTILU","additional_properties":{},"content":"She grew up in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, but moved to Dublin, aged 12, with her parents Tess and Frank O’Donnell and her younger sister Miriam. She excelled at Muckross, going on to become head girl and captain of the hockey team. She later played for Leinster. She was also a gifted swimmer, representing Pembroke Swimming Club.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQSEGNJTH5FSZKBXYIZDLBMR5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"She married Eoin O’Sullivan in June 1958, aged 24, and unusual for the time, continued to work. As independent contractors, RTÉ's first female broadcasters were exempt from the marriage bar which obliged women to resign their posts after marriage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MA4MRHRJLFADXDDDTFLYVJPNFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the late 1970s, she stepped back from broadcasting to look after her four children full-time, but she remained deeply interested in current affairs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63VQC467KBFCTMZDAGFSSWOYKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Her wide range of interests included poetry, a good book, the arts, furniture restoration, flower arranging, gardening and being a reader at her local church in Foxrock, Dublin. The biggest of all her interests, though, was people. When she died last month, she was remembered as beautiful, loyal, kind and welcoming but, most of all, as a lady.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BA6XTLKWZBPJGQP2I7A4U44MM","additional_properties":{},"content":"She is survived by her husband of 66 years, Eoin; her children, Kate, Owen, Frank and Donel; sister Miriam; son-in-law Maurice; daughters-in-law Maria, Fiona and Linda; grandchildren Kara, Mark, Kym, Eli and Tien; godchildren, nieces, nephews, extended family, neighbours and friends.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Clodagh Finn"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2024-12-29T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Marie O’Sullivan – the voice of radio, television and cinema commercials in the 1960s","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KEJJJBHWEJDDFLHFYWZVELDYHU","auth":{"1":"7660efde809694bdecbc83496399fc65ec08bab543c4ee1ab07d882c49a478a2"},"focal_point":{"x":489,"y":1114},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KEJJJBHWEJDDFLHFYWZVELDYHU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/marie-osullivan-the-voice-of-radio-television-and-cinema-commercials-in-the-1960s/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"YVE454FQ2RGERADNR4TXCDXNNY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":4559,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/64c6a1d3-b860-4382-b115-a34bba1fbd58/versions/1735227730/media/95fd5edfc83b5c6aa69654061f97a7c3_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/27/obituaries-of-2024-charlie-bird-nell-mccafferty-ian-bailey-and-more-50-people-who-died-in-2024/","content_elements":[{"_id":"DKX2X7O2FZGH3ISPWMYGVWLNGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264398},"content":"The weekly Irish Times obituary page highlights the deaths of people whose lives made an impact, for better and occasionally for worse, on Irish society or on the greater world. This year, obituary writers remembered the lives of more than 110 people. They included broadcasters, environmentalists, soccer managers, judges, writers, journalists and business people. Some were household names, such as politician Mary O’Rourke, journalist Nell McCafferty or broadcaster Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh while others quietly made a huge impact in their chosen fields. Frank Hayes shaped Kerry Group’s public identity during pivotal years. Hazel Allen was a gifted restaurateur who preferred to remain out of the limelight at Ballymaloe House, while Justin O’Brien was a lifelong campaigner for the most marginalised people in society. And some were controversial figures who merited inclusion because of their newsworthiness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPB4ADXF4FBTRPXRJU2COLPJQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264400},"content":"All these obituaries can be read on <a href=\"http://irishtimes.com/obituaries\">irishtimes.com</a> but here we select 50 people whose deaths were marked by an obituary in the newspaper this year:","type":"text"},{"_id":"DVE6XR7N6VBVJKCDZATH2BZFHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264401},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/01/13/eddie-oconnor-obituary-global-entrepreneur-in-the-energy-sector-and-radical-thinker/\" target=\"_blank\">Eddie O’Connor</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"FRABIYK6GBGKLMBD6DZI3F4OFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264402},"content":"Entrepreneur","type":"header"},{"_id":"UTILFUUKNZDERA4D54MLBH6CEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264403},"content":"Eddie O’Connor, who died on January 5th aged 76, was a pioneering figure in the renewable energy sector, particularly wind energy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2G4HRJ2XCRE3HBPE2XMDY5GDNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264404},"content":"He was chief executive of the Irish semi-State peat development company, Bord na Móna, when, in 1989, a board member told him that carbon dioxide was dangerously heating the world. He later recalled his shock at realising that the company he led was responsible for 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from peat used in power generation. From then on, he decided that renewable energy was going to be the mission. In 1997, he founded Eirtricity (now SSE Airtricity), an electricity supplier and wind farm development company which constructed the Arklow Bank offshore wind farm. He was also co-founder of Mainstream Renewable Power.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WMG34N7D6JDRVBBRXNTAWY4NZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264405},"content":"He was a strong advocate for a European supergrid using thin, fast, cost-effective and energy-efficient cables to distribute electricity from renewable sources, using technology he was developing in the SuperNode superconductor technology project with his Norwegian partner company, Aker Horizons.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZQDSG5PKBH57N44GLK4MEREXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264406},"content":"In 2003, O’Connor was named World Energy Policy Leader by Scientific American magazine while in 2009, he was presented with the first leadership award at the annual Ernst & Young Global Renewable Energy awards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"674LMD6K5VE6XHZJSURPQBVODQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"VP6JJ2IBLJDVTIQFD7SAQA6RDI"},"content":"Tributes at Eddie O’Connor funeral reflect on his ‘bold, critical mission’ to bring wind power to the grid","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QBNTOBJTA5CQXHTING5ZCUPV7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264408},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/02/maire-ni-mhurchu-obituary-award-winning-broadcaster-and-documentary-maker/\" target=\"_blank\">Máire Ní Mhurchú</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"DPPH2G4GSZF2BEF3TDWUQC7XQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264409},"content":"Broadcaster","type":"header"},{"_id":"TUMWIM5KANASZNZ4XWZGMAO3KY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264410},"content":"The Cork-based RTÉ broadcaster Máire Ní Mhurchú died on January 11th, aged 90. She was an award-winning presenter and head of regional radio broadcasting in Cork City. When she joined RTÉ Cork local radio in the 1950s, she travelled to schools and homes to record many hours of interviews with children for series such as Young Munster on the Air, Munster Journal and Children Talking. She also worked with broadcaster Síle Ní Bhriain on a series entitled A Woman’s World. And, with a team of helpers, she put together the annual hour-long programme about the Cork Choral Festival.","type":"text"},{"_id":"75GS35E53ZEDNJMTC4JBGKO32Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264411},"content":"Her most celebrated documentaries include The Echo Boys, a profile of the newspaper boys who sold The Evening Echo on the streets of Cork City, and Someone To Love, a two-part radio series on the harsh life in a convent orphanage in the 1960s. She won a Jacob’s Award in 1969 for her broadcasting work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5R2CIS4L4NCQ5DUVQMIR5KI4VM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264412},"content":"In 1989, Ní Mhurchú was promoted to divisional head of Cork Local Radio, which was rebranded as Cork 89FM when the first independent radio stations were being licensed. She retired in 1998.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCVAQ6N4YRHQLNMCGHFA3JJ6ME","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264413},"content":"She was credited with launching the careers of broadcasters such as Mary Wilson, Tony O’Donoghue, Eileen Whelan, Ger Canning and Marty Morrissey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z3HYFURV45C3HFGNPCT3XRHSDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264414},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/10/christopher-moriarty-obituary-biologist-with-a-rare-ability-to-see-nature-in-a-human-context/\" target=\"_blank\">Christopher Moriarty</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"NEL7XVQRSNFRTJ744N2MMAHGE4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264415},"content":"Biologist","type":"header"},{"_id":"4OMUMHL2RFBVZEOBUKKKBYLZXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264416},"content":"Christopher Moriarty, who died on January 13th aged 87, was a biologist who developed innovative strategies to expand the Irish eel fisheries industry. He was also a prolific author of books and articles on many aspects of nature in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"762AFFLM4NFGRLELOQT734LLSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264417},"content":"His parents encouraged his passion for the outdoors in the still partly rural Rathfarnham where he grew up. As a student, he expanded the natural history society membership of St Columba’s College to 40 members. After attaining a zoology degree from Trinity College Dublin, he joined the Civil Service in 1959, and rapidly became the national expert on eels.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IL762NF7BGOPGPQAUGQ7Z63MM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264418},"content":"He regularly published highly regarded scientific papers and was an influential figure in the European Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture Advisory Commission of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. He was also a key figure in the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club and served as its president in the 1970s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNYF6CQ4JJB7DCLDV7Z2AXSILQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264419},"content":"His publications include books on the river Liffey and the Dodder, a guide to Irish birds, a natural history of Ireland, an exploration of the history of Leinster<i> </i>and a collection of his eponymous columns in this newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AY2LA2ET4BGLRKIEJXNZD2NUTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264420},"content":"He was also one of the first Agency for Personal Services Overseas (APSO) volunteers, taking two years’ leave to help set up a successful course in fisheries management for the Ibadan University of Nigeria in the mid-1970s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S2PLHIN2TZDW5K4XFW3SG42VBU","additional_properties":{"_id":"IKOVQTEFCREJHCAUJBQ655JOFA"},"content":"Finding the Liffey’s source: Anna Livia takes her first steps – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZL6UACNH4ZDMBAXGRMLXWELWGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264422},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/01/27/ian-bailey-obituary-suspect-in-one-of-the-countrys-most-notorious-murders/\" target=\"_blank\">Ian Bailey</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"WF3YJMYRFBARPE356QSE3QMAZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264423},"content":"Murder suspect","type":"header"},{"_id":"IVJL6XXSC5BJ5HJEODNKGNQRGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264424},"content":"Ian Bailey, the chief suspect for the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, died in west Co Cork on January 21st, days before his 67th birthday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OON3OIUE3NB2BFW724EQ2TCJAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264425},"content":"A controversial figure, some saw the Englishman as the victim of a grave injustice while others believed he was a calculating individual whose portrayal of himself as the wronged party was the ultimate affront to Toscan du Plantier’s family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LKGHYENYRFEUJFBYYXQPKZ3N4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264426},"content":"He had been working as a freelance journalist when he moved to Ireland in 1991, and later moved in to the home of Welsh artist Jules Thomas, near Schull. After Toscan du Plantier’s body was found at her west Cork holiday home on December 23rd, 1996, he reported as a journalist on the murder but later became the prime suspect.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B2QDT7FL3BBDLJPX6EIPRO3TGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264427},"content":"Despite being arrested by gardaí for questioning in 1997 and 1998, no prosecution was brought. When a European Arrest Warrant issued by the French authorities was endorsed by the High Court in 2010, he appealed to the Supreme Court and won his case.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WNC574H34VE5TFNJ6UBT3EWE6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264428},"content":"He subsequently lost a civil action against the State for wrongful arrest and conspiracy to frame him for the murder. In 2019, Bailey was convicted in Paris, in his absence, of voluntary homicide but served no jail time having successfully blocked his extradition in the Irish courts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SE5UAFRG5RAXNAUSE6CDGOCEOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"3O5ONF7BKJCVZNC4CTPXEU73MI"},"content":"‘There is probably a sigh of relief communally... it has consumed our lives’: West Cork after Ian Bailey – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OR44HU33PVAF3H6LJFLRONDVYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264430},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/03/ivor-browne-obituary-pioneering-psychiatrist-who-was-a-musician-at-heart/\" target=\"_blank\">Ivor Browne</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"2X4M7AJG2VDZZCZHVYWA2N3FUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264431},"content":"Psychiatrist","type":"header"},{"_id":"4DQT6PAXGFE2LIOEFVYZSCIQOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264432},"content":"Pioneering psychiatrist Ivor Browne died on January 24th, aged 94. He has been credited with transforming attitudes to mental illness, particularly his understanding of the role of trauma. He believed that mental illness was rooted in traumatic experience and, while he believed that drugs could play a role in helping patients, he campaigned against the overuse of medications and electroconvulsive therapy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KLVJEKF3PVDV3FHEDYDC7CP5FQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264433},"content":"From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, he was chief psychiatrist with the Eastern Health Board and became professor of psychiatry at University College Dublin. Over those decades he led a revolution that saw a dismantling of institutions in Ireland such as St Brendan’s, Grangegorman, and the development of community clinics. Professor of psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin Brendan Kelly described this as the reversal of “Ireland’s fatal weakness for institutional solutions to social problems”. Browne’s most profound legacy was “the additional liberty enjoyed by thousands of people who avoided institutionalisation as a result of the reforms which Ivor came to represent”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTKDG6HXUJBUNAR5Z6ZVTYIHIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264434},"content":"Prof Browne also founded the Irish Foundation for Human Development, as well as developing linked community models in Ballyfermot and Derry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3IKMIBHBJDZFCXPBBZ2LC6ID4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264435},"content":"President Michael D Higgins said he had fearlessly challenged what was a dehumanising system. “His respect for the dignity of those under his care was renowned and is often recalled by his former patients,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K2IPNWBCN5GLNPDDA3LC5TOA3I","additional_properties":{"_id":"INJH57GBSRCSJBOVIXIHHZUJD4"},"content":"Fintan O’Toole: We trusted Ivor Browne with our darkest secrets. He was one of Ireland’s great liberators – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"4TFKVDWMJRASLMQJ37NAGUOVZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264437},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/06/mary-hobart-obituary-gallery-owner-who-played-a-crucial-role-in-raising-awareness-of-irish-art/\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Hobart</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"K5RWOFFCRRFCHAFPCYCEQN52GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264438},"content":"Art gallery owner","type":"header"},{"_id":"GJBIEOHX5JA4NKXRUAEQSBIH7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264439},"content":"Mary Hobart, who died on February 2nd aged 81, played a crucial role in raising awareness of Irish art in this country and internationally. Originally from Scotstown, Co Monaghan, she owned Pyms Gallery in London with her husband Alan Hobart. Neither had any formal training as artists or art historians when they opened the gallery in 1975.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NCM3I454KNDEHFCSX5JP3PWARI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264440},"content":"They had a passion for Irish art at a time when it was far from fashionable and they travelled through Britain and Ireland to find overlooked paintings and sculpture. They bought and sold hundreds of works by William Orpen, including On the Beach, Howth (1910) and A Summer Afternoon. In 1996 they set up the Orpen Research Fund to further enhance knowledge of the artist’s work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTSI4TBWRBGZDGSTTY5LKQN77I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264441},"content":"Throughout the 1980s and 1990s they brought work by the greatest Irish artists to London. In their 1982 show, The Irish Revival, they exhibited works by John Lavery, John Luke, Walter Osborne, Paul Henry, Jack B Yeats and Louis Le Brocquy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7VPQCBNIVCTXIG2C6NONFC74Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264442},"content":"Other artists promoted by them included Rita Duffy, Hector McDonnell, Norah McGuinness, Nano Reid and Mainie Jellett. They also championed the art of modern artist Mary Swanzy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YYUAT4R3VRA5DJZ4KIIVH5Q2VI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264443},"content":"One of their shrewdest purchases came when they paid $7.7 million for Edvard Munch’s 1902 painting Girls on the Bridge, in 1996. They sold it on a few years later for $30.8 million.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2HNLLIJCMJHGNDO74ZW2ZNBJBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264444},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/02/06/john-bruton-obituary-tenacious-former-taoiseach-who-led-rainbow-coalition/\" target=\"_blank\">John Bruton</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"VC4S4VZ5BFAMNGSEAE45SOYQCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264445},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"3SZZIT3K65F2DKM3CVLGZNTX4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264446},"content":"John Bruton, who died on February 6th, aged 76, was taoiseach and European Union ambassador to the United States.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NQVLR6GH5AQNON32XD4A6OVCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264447},"content":"From a farming family in Dunboyne, Co Meath, he was elected to the Dáil in 1969 for Fine Gael at the age of 22. He was appointed minister for finance in 1981 and became party leader at the end of 1990.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUGT7Q5UKZAN5GNYSSUVDBTB5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264448},"content":"He had the unique distinction of being the only person in the history of the State to become taoiseach because of a change of government without an election halfway through a Dáil term. He succeeded to the office in December 1994 when the Labour Party pulled out of government with Fianna Fáil and did a deal with Fine Gael to form a new administration.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNBYIXH66FBHLIAATRXU5EGK4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264449},"content":"His rainbow coalition narrowly failed to win re-election in 1997. After fighting off two challenges to his leadership, he fell to the third challenge in 2001.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQ46ZUMY55GNRD5VPKH6S6OFC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264450},"content":"He was the European Union’s ambassador to the United States from 2004 to 2009. After his return to Ireland he served as chairman of the financial services body IFSC Ireland and as chairman of Co-operation Ireland which promotes good relations between the two communities on the island of Ireland. He also took a leading role in the Brexit debate and gave evidence to the House of Lords in London about the implications of Brexit on the peace process.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EYXZCGV2UVDLPCD7Y3LQOYWWJU","additional_properties":{"_id":"LYHOQLOUAJG3RFIV3IFOPXWRRI"},"content":"Miriam Lord: John Bruton is mourned as a loved one and revered statesman at a funeral both public and private – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DNEFQTPLPRAFHPNDU36TV42HG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264452},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/20/michael-oregan-obituary-astute-political-journalist-and-proud-kerryman-to-his-core/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael O’Regan</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"MHJS4X3HVNCQ3KF5MW7Q5HQYG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264453},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"CQ2IJU5AZREPTBEZGEHI55HOVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264454},"content":"Michael O’Regan, who died on February 18th aged 70, was an Irish Times parliamentary correspondent, political analyst and broadcaster.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AUHVRU7PXBB4JAWDOV6MCVUENQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264455},"content":"After studying journalism in the College of Commerce, Rathmines, he got a job as a junior reporter with the Kerryman newspaper. It gave him an insight into local politics and he often said nothing could rival the bear pit that was Kerry politics. He won a national journalism award in 1980 and joined The Irish Times the following year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQD6HCYWRBGBNN54OFQAKPYGDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264456},"content":"In 1988, he moved into politics and had a front-row seat to observe every political crisis that emerged in the following three decades. His encyclopedic knowledge of political constituencies and his ability to make politics interesting led to regular appearances on current affairs shows on radio and television.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6KFY6TU4NRGTFLZFS4QA24WMWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264457},"content":"He covered the Kerry Babies tribunal for this newspaper in 1985 and wrote a book, Dark Secrets, about the case, with Ger Colleran.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LGY7HDKGZDK3HUJXRHRXYDRTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264458},"content":"A Kerryman, he was a vociferous supporter of his native county and served as president of the Kerry Association in Dublin in recent years. He appeared on Radio Kerry’s Call From the Dáil slot on the Kerry Today show, where he provided a lively retelling of the week’s political events.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZ6CCGCLJ5FILOAFS5UBFC5O6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264459},"content":"He wrote about his cancer diagnosis and ongoing health issues in this newspaper and after he retired in 2019, he continued to be a regular voice on television and radio.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3ZIV34SCBBMFEARMXWLXZWRLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"JAZ7KT4G4BAARLUNMDXUEX5PM4"},"content":"‘I knew from a really early age my father was not an ordinary dad’: a tribute to Michael O’Regan – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5744R7YR4JEODOFPWNXATGW5CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264461},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/09/michael-gibney-obituary-prominent-food-scientist-was-a-colossus-in-nutrition-and-an-original-thinker/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Gibney</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"PTLPVGFUNFHQTAEG26D4YYRV4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264462},"content":"Food scientist","type":"header"},{"_id":"C4GRMZTSBZARVDUED3AXAWEOSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264463},"content":"Prof Michael Gibney, one of Ireland’s most prominent food scientists and an internationally renowned researcher, died on February 23rd aged 75.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CD2JJ6TFUJBN7FYQLV2WJLIZMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264464},"content":"He was professor of human nutrition at Trinity College Dublin Medical School for more than 20 years before moving to University College Dublin where he was professor of food and health. He was also director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health from 2006-2013 and was professor of nutrition at the University of Ulster from 2013-2016.","type":"text"},{"_id":"35HO3S6JEFD6NEKZT5ZIKFC4SY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264465},"content":"At TCD he developed a worldwide reputation for his work on metabolic nutrition and molecular nutrition and became renowned for his work on public health nutrition. He was the first Irish person to be elected a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3336JLEQFNDKFDKOTMQYIV3L6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264466},"content":"Gibney served on food safety and health advisory committees and boards of national and international agencies and food manufacturing companies. He was a member of the EU scientific committees for food in the 1980s and 1990s and on public health, where he advised the European Commission on the BSE crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6355VMB62RHAFPCT3FC6HZEFR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264467},"content":"He chaired the first EU expert group on recommended dietary allowance, which set out the average daily nutrient requirements for healthy individuals and also chaired the FAO/WHO joint consultation on dietary guidelines.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMBMQFYGEFH67ONL7ELPHXX6YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264468},"content":"He chaired the Food Safety Authority of Ireland from 2013-2018. A prolific writer, he was working on his fourth book when he died.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JJMWBVG4U5D4JGCCAP33WZJHXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264469},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/12/charlie-bird-obituary-one-of-irelands-best-known-journalists-for-nearly-40-years/\" target=\"_blank\">Charlie Bird</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"QNUGSB456ZA3PAOFUKNUO3XWNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264470},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"QBZWBUXAVZDUXE3RQECVGSVOPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264471},"content":"Charlie Bird, who died on March 11th, was one of the best-known broadcast journalists in Ireland for nearly 40 years. As chief news correspondent, and special correspondent for RTÉ, he reported on most major Irish and international news stories from the early 1980s until 2012.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTK4ND3APBHXPO75QIQTUVLS3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264472},"content":"His death, at the age of 74, followed his diagnosis with motor neuron disease in 2021. He went public about his illness, and his decision to climb Croagh Patrick saw him raising more than €3.3 million for charity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4JW2FLI6ENE7FCBLFMCHGMRUYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264473},"content":"His journalism career started with a job in this newspaper’s library. He joined RTÉ as a researcher in 1974 and quickly gained a reputation for diligence and resourcefulness on programmes including Seven Days and The Late Late Show. Recruited to the newsroom in 1980, his reports on the Stardust fire in 1981, and from the prison cell of the wrongly-jailed Irish priest Niall O’Brien in the Philippines in 1984 brought him to national prominence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJWWSVWOLRDVRKGYA7GQOAXBIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264474},"content":"He became known for his distinctive reporting style and his empathy with subjects. His interview with Nelson Mandela in South Africa’s first post-apartheid general election in 1994 scooped the world’s media and featured in Mandela’s autobiography. Investigative work led to him being named Journalist of the Year, jointly with colleague George Lee, in 1998, for investigating allegations of tax evasion at National Irish Bank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F7NT3RGQ2JH6PHFC7574LOEYQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":"SH4ILEFWQVDQRBUUUL6N5556NY"},"content":"Charlie Bird: A life in pictures – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TQ3OYCY5OFHETEBMLCEWIAPAG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264476},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/23/malachy-mccourt-obituary-larger-than-life-author-who-put-a-comic-spin-on-his-limerick-childhood/\" target=\"_blank\">Malachy McCourt</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"TDDYBMEPPZFWXIEVF3XITMO6W4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264477},"content":"Writer, actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"YDFYFX6BSVH5FH5M24W6F7EPIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264478},"content":"Malachy McCourt, the<b> </b>Irish-American actor and writer, died on March 11th, aged 92. His celebrated biography, A Monk Swimming, followed the hugely successful memoir Angela’s Ashes, written by his older brother Frank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OMCHDW2SVFD2JIOYZIUE5QMDWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264479},"content":"Malachy McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1931 but returned as a three-year-old to Ireland with his parents. He spent his formative years in Limerick and moved to England to find work, arriving back in New York at the age of 20 after Frank, working as a teacher in the city, sent him the fare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZHKDZB6335HE5HNXFKHCUQLAZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264480},"content":"A natural performer, he appeared regularly on soap operas – notably Ryan’s Hope, on which he had a recurring role as a barman – and played bit parts in several films such as Reversal of Fortune and Bonfire of the Vanities. He was a well-cast Henry VIII in a television commercial and he enjoyed periodic turns as a television and radio host.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXTCTFW5IFHPDCB43BZAKH7AWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264481},"content":"In the 1950s he opened what was considered Manhattan’s original singles bar: Malachy’s, on the Upper East Side.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2BE5RAC33NFFZPQH5TTK64WNPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264482},"content":"His biography was a bestseller when published in 1998 and he followed it with Singing My Him Song in 2000, and Death Need Not Be Fatal in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJVLHOOKCNC7VEAZUDCQSJEH6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264483},"content":"He ran for governor of New York in 2006 but lost out to Eliot Spitzer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LDFVITPSABHV3MJVEGUAIDAPVI","additional_properties":{"_id":"AIEUMPDGOVDRHGGLZO7DROTMXI"},"content":"Malachy McCourt’s final interview: ‘We’d a miserable Irish childhood, but I escaped all of that and I had a happy life’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XW2BADGFHRD4FIULYRQECDNP4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264485},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/30/emmet-bergin-obituary-actor-who-was-part-of-irelands-sunday-nights-for-18-years-as-raffish-dick-moran/\" target=\"_blank\">Emmet Bergin</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"DC44AQS7LNB25NY5CEUISHH7HA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264486},"content":"Actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"NRWNW54PHNGEXH27R574YGKH7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264487},"content":"Emmet Bergin, who died on March 15th aged 79, became a household name in the 1980s when he took on the role of the urbane solicitor Dick Moran in Glenroe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PICO7UF42ZGFJONPRIZJQKD53A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264488},"content":"After beginning his theatrical career as an assistant stage manager at the Eblana Theatre, he soon moved towards the spotlight. He appeared in the debut production of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! at the Gaiety Theatre during Dublin Theatre Festival in September 1964 and toured with the Abbey and the Irish Theatre Company.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUWI4NV3KFHFZCDKTWPAIGWYEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264489},"content":"Known for his versatility, he played Biff in Death of a Salesman, Eilert Lövborg in Hedda Gabler and Mr Parksy in The Unexpected Man. In 1969, he had a small part in David Lean’s film Ryan’s Daughter and later appeared alongside Gabriel Byrne in John Boorman’s Excalibur, as Sir Ulfius.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WR7CJEVZNHP5ELU4MVIVETO5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264490},"content":"He joined the cast of RTÉ's Sunday-night staple Glenroe in 1983 and his character’s forbidden romance with the then-married Mary McDermott brought him to a whole new level of fame. Such was his charisma, viewers did not turn on his character after Dick Moran had a fling with businesswoman Terry Killeen while married to Mary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R3INDKQKH5EUXPZLBJM4ZM3JO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264491},"content":"He continued to work after Glenroe was cancelled in 2001 and played Sunday Independent editor Aengus Fanning in Joel Schumacher’s Veronica Guerin movie in 2003.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZYAAKH7Y5ZCMBGUPD3EHRZTHME","additional_properties":{"_id":"TFHR2MAFABAIFI4NFW2D66SMWQ"},"content":"Emmet Bergin was ‘a remarkable man’ and ‘an inspiration’, funeral told – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DVKKQLBWXFAFDLYWLXLSONXH2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264493},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/21/obituary-rose-dugdale-the-london-debutante-who-became-an-art-thief-and-ira-bomber/\" target=\"_blank\">Rose Dugdale</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"CBUE56LVHVAPFDHLISULBP2R3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264494},"content":"IRA bombmaker, art thief","type":"header"},{"_id":"E6RXFOZSYNHV7F4XQ5X3PYHOEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264495},"content":"Rose Dugdale, who died on March 18th aged 82, was an IRA member and bombmaker but also a wealthy British heiress and Wittgenstein scholar. She was presented as a 17-year-old to Queen Elizabeth as part of the 1958 summer debutante season. She studied economics, politics and philosophy at Oxford, before becoming involved in IRA activities during the Troubles. She said it was Bloody Sunday in 1972 that prompted her to join the paramilitary group.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OOIBYYZEZCGDJQWWBSHXYCAMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264496},"content":"In 1973, her future husband Eddie Gallagher recruited her to assist him in seizing a helicopter, from which he attempted to bomb a barracks in Strabane.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ITXVAMWQDNA67IKMIL6SAGZVEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264497},"content":"The following year she was a member of the gang that stole 19 paintings – then valued at IR£8 million – from Russborough House. Sir Alfred Beit and his wife Lady Clementine were bound and gagged during the raid and the paintings were later found in Co Cork.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LU5G24YW2VCVBGHROCMCEOV2C4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264498},"content":"She was jailed for the robbery and gave birth to her son in Limerick Prison.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KK5UW3YAG5HCBBNHKMY3DC6TLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264499},"content":"Gallagher, who remained at large, subsequently kidnapped Dutch businessman Tiede Herrema, demanding in vain Dugdale’s release in exchange for Herrema’s. She continued her involvement with the IRA after being released from prison and with partner Jim Monaghan she developed several lethal home-made explosive devices.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4X7B7TX2L5F2FNM5SO7NONIBI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264500},"content":"She was the subject of a new book, television series and film in recent years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A7TX4SXKAZATLDZYTODWZAAB7I","additional_properties":{"_id":"4DCMUNI3H5EY5LSOZTBBUSLEZI"},"content":"Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber by Sean O’Driscoll – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"PHWWWPM7GZEAPL3WXVFWJTD65A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264502},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/27/dr-eilish-cleary-obituary-champion-of-public-health-who-gave-a-voice-to-those-who-didnt-have-one/\" target=\"_blank\">Eilish Cleary</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"UFFEPF3APRGFPGFMDF5HMRIRBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264503},"content":"Doctor","type":"header"},{"_id":"23M4QJGCB5GI3KJPAVJIKPRM7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264504},"content":"Eilish Cleary, the Dublin-born doctor and public health advocate, died aged 60, on March 22nd. After training as a GP, she spent most of her working life in Canada. In Northern Manitoba she worked with Cree Nation, one of the largest indigenous communities in that part of Canada, and she became a strong advocate for equity in healthcare for First Nations communities. Soon after, she got a job as assistant chief medical officer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and later became chief medical officer for New Brunswick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NLAXLMJI6FFW3FIKOYX22BW4BA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264505},"content":"She played a key role in the province’s fight against the 2009 swine flu pandemic.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U63U46OYTNE3HJZZOUB7M754J4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264506},"content":"In 2012, she issued a report about the negative impacts of fracking on public health and the environment. She was later seconded from her job to work on fighting Ebola in West Africa with the World Health Organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2ATWEGHFFBZRPENXHBAIJHGDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264507},"content":"She was fired without explanation from her post in 2015, after she had begun investigating glyphosate, a herbicide widely used on forest lands in New Brunswick. There were public demonstrations in front of the Health Department’s office and calls from academics and physicians for her reinstatement but to no avail.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQ22YMNGG5AYPOHX7GUMAFLD3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264508},"content":"Not long after her termination, Cleary received the President’s Award from the Public Health Physicians of Canada, for her “outstanding contribution to public health and preventive medicine”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MXXEJKVEFNBDRA6WOOMSW5DCOU","additional_properties":{"_id":"WELXGHSMQRC5VIFEBGJZI6N35E"},"content":"Death of Irish doctor and chief medical officer who highlighted fracking dangers in Canada – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"L75V62HSURBDXKA4ZAVWI72BYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264510},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/30/imogen-stuart-obituary-renowned-sculptor-of-works-that-spoke-to-the-heart/\" target=\"_blank\">Imogen Stuart</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"SS4A74PUQJFLXMGIJYITYO42MI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264511},"content":"Sculptor","type":"header"},{"_id":"E66YYMCAURB4BMLO6YE5KMBPKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264512},"content":"Imogen Stuart was one of Ireland’s leading sculptors and her works can be found in churches and public spaces all over the island. She died on March 24th, aged 96.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TIZQJG655FDVDA6H4Q6NDNH7GQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264513},"content":"She grew up in Germany but came to Ireland in 1949 after meeting her future husband Ian Stuart, son of Francis Stuart and Iseult Gonne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HDBQMU6EJVFETFFNOSDQWALSZ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264514},"content":"Working mainly on church commissions, she honed her distinctive style which was influenced by German expressionism, Romanesque style and early Irish Christian art.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YSNE34TLPVGQZKK34RMS6AYYWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264515},"content":"Her significant church commissions included the Angel of Peace at St Teresa’s Carmelite Church on Dublin’s Clarendon Street, the decorative doors of Galway Cathedral, the altar and baptismal font in UCC’s Honan Chapel, and the monumental sculpture of Pope John Paul II in Maynooth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FOJTB6BI6JGNBEYSPHTIARTXEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264517},"content":"Among her other key works are The Fiddler Of Dooney at Stillorgan Shopping Centre, the Flame Of Human Dignity in the courtyard of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and The Arch Of Peace, in Cavan town.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PMVLRZ7OW5FZBM6LUSBE5GI4WM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264518},"content":"Her numerous awards include the Oireachtas art exhibition award and the ESB Keating McLoughlin Award at the Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibition. She was elected a member of Aosdána in 1981 and a full member of the RHA in 1990. She was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2018 – the highest tribute paid to individuals for services to Germany.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YTSAHG7TLJBQ7BQDC7G3DY3RVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"FZPPLWT4OVHC5K2IK7REOV25EQ"},"content":"In the moment – Derek Scally on artist Imogen Stuart, ‘the last living Prussian’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"KMDHU2CX5NASHAC5U7Z3O5U2BI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264520},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/06/michael-coady-obituary-a-poet-profoundly-at-ease-in-the-world/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Coady</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"A2U6ALDKKNGCTMWUKKIYHBG45M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264521},"content":"Poet, writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"D7SLPAMIWJCDRPBKEMLNC7FWFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264522},"content":"Michael Coady, the poet and short story writer, died at the age of 84 on March 25th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MU4E57QQCREMTNJE5V5YS4O33Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264523},"content":"From Tipperary, he trained as a schoolteacher and saw his first poem published in the New Irish Writing page of the Irish Press. In 1979, he won the Patrick Kavanagh Award – a prize for emerging Irish poets – and Gallery Press published his first collection of poems, Two for a Woman, Three for a Man, soon after.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZYYVXVXARVCJ3FV3QGDQLGIBSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264524},"content":"Five collections followed that first success: Oven Lane (1987, revised edition 2014), All Souls (1997), One Another (2003), Going by Water (2009) and Given Light (2017).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SZ5EJPSWRC5NKLZTLWGOFYMSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264525},"content":"In 2004 he won the Laurence O’Shaughnessy Award, presented by the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, to outstanding Irish poets. His short stories won the Francis McManus Prize and the Listowel Writers’ Week short story award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"34EFUCDETZHG7DLAYYOWE4WZRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264526},"content":"In the 1990s, Arts Council bursaries allowed him to travel to Newfoundland and the United States. He held the Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2005 and he also held a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. He was elected to Aosdána in 1998.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RW5PW4ZTDNBW5AC624G7GG5I4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264527},"content":"As a self-styled “lapsed trombone player’', music was a constant theme in his work and he collaborated with composers such as Rhona Clarke and Bill Whelan. Other publications include a personal memoir of the musicians Packie and Micho Russell, and Full Tide<i>,</i> an illustrated miscellany.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RACRX5MFSREQJCQDHQWGSYFMXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"LXSVJO7LGNAB3AZZHVI2IK2P5Y"},"content":"Poem: A Sweet Bell Ringing, by Michael Coady – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DUQSYLB7NRCATDBGXRUZPHSA4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264529},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/20/joe-kinnear-obituary-archetypal-colourful-cockney-footballer-straight-out-of-crumlin/\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Kinnear</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"BIQ7OR4OHVEM5NYWBGRI7OBXKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264530},"content":"Soccer player, manager","type":"header"},{"_id":"IFCKBR2IDFHZPIZYZKM6ASZWK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264531},"content":"Former Republic of Ireland defender and Wimbledon manager Joe Kinnear died on April 7th, at the age of 77.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VVVHTQJYPJHTTKBYIAT5Z7BEZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264532},"content":"He was born in Crumlin, Dublin, but moved to Hertfordshire in England with his mother when his parents separated. After excelling in schoolboy football, he was playing for St Alban’s City when he was spotted by a Tottenham Hotspur scout and signed. By the age of 20 he was the club’s established right-back and starred in their FA Cup final win over Chelsea at Wembley in May 1967. Kinnear would win several more medals with Spurs: a pair of League Cups in 1971 and 1973, and a Uefa Cup in 1972.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWZ23SY4OVGHBLF2ADIC3B2ISU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264533},"content":"He made his Ireland debut in a European Championship qualifier against Turkey in Ankara in 1967 and went on to win 26 caps with the Republic of Ireland during his career.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V546R3FFBVGTTFAQGK5LD57MOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264534},"content":"His final playing season was with Brighton before knee trouble forced him to retire in 1976, aged 30.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPFC6Y3NNRDKBBHA6UU2JVEJJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264535},"content":"He served his coaching apprenticeship as an assistant to Dave Mackay at two clubs in the UAE. He also managed Nepal and India before returning to Britain. Kinnear went on to manage Wimbledon from 1992-1999 until a heart attack led to his resignation. He later returned to work, managing Oxford, Luton, Nottingham Forest and, most recently, Newcastle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRZNTUPS4RALXOWJL7SM4WEOMM","additional_properties":{"_id":"XOZ7KLAAMBEWLOUOOSCJ5FRUCM"},"content":"Former Ireland international Joe Kinnear dies at the age of 77 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QDCKGL7NRRBK3KSMJA6H2XULDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264537},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/25/jo-english-obituary-inspiration-to-a-generation-of-sailors/\" target=\"_blank\">Jo English</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"KTK33X4SGFB2JANQCPYDW6OKKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264538},"content":"Sailor","type":"header"},{"_id":"KPZ6EDAHYZEIFF63LLY56ICQHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264539},"content":"Jo English, who died on April 8th, aged 59, was a sailor and co-manager of SailCork, the sailing school based in Cobh.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F4CVVEYBYRDLBFJJR3D5JKAIFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264540},"content":"She studied hotel and catering management in Galway and spent many years in the hospitality business before sailing became her life. She worked in hotels in San Francisco, in the Blarney Park Hotel, the catering department of the Mercy Hospital in Cork and as a manager in Brennan’s catering emporium in the city.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SEC4GD7KNBB6BGH5JM24O6QHLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264541},"content":"An accomplished cook, in the mid-1990s, she opened her own cafe and deli, The Bluebell Nook, in Mallow.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A5TXAVUVWZDVBJDR2YJWW4FFPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800428858},"content":"When she met her husband Eddie English, she gave up her job and joined him in the sailing school. She first completed all the sailing courses the business offered, and later took over a lot of the administration, dividing her time between the business and rearing of their two children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NGVBSUGBZRFV7DUXEIR37GPAII","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800428859},"content":"For almost 20 years the couple ran SailCork’s “sunshine yachting holidays”, bringing groups on chartered boats in the Mediterranean and Caribbean seas. He did the teaching while she did the cooking and she was known for producing exceptional meals from the confined galleys of boats.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q2ETQJJTMBCWLMOILEVUAZIAQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264544},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/04/larry-masterson-obituary-rte-producer-and-social-justice-campaigner/\" target=\"_blank\">Larry Masterson</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"TTR3JNTJT5CY3D3Z7QFDOHK4GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264545},"content":"Television producer","type":"header"},{"_id":"HMBQXBIINVFBDG6ROP5O25THJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264546},"content":"The RTÉ producer and social justice campaigner Larry Masterson died on April 14th, aged 74.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRW5GRTAA5BEBB2VRTTDULNLDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264547},"content":"From Dublin’s Gardiner Street, he studied social science at UCD. After attending a talk at Trinity College by a co-founder of the Simon Community in London, he and friends Brian McCarthy and Denis Cahalane set up the Simon Community in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLQUEVWP4BBTZCUBDCYS6QH7LQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264548},"content":"After graduating, he worked in social services in Drogheda and appeared on panel shows to discuss the social issues of the day. This led to him being offered a job as a researcher on Bunny Carr’s Encounter. He went on to work with Mike Murphy on the series The Live Mike in the late 1970s and left RTÉ with him in the early 1980s to start Emdee Productions with cinematographer Seamus Deasy. He also worked with Tyrone Productions and produced shows for TG4, Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel among others.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7MZ2JJPO7RCVHC3QGVZHX5KJWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264549},"content":"One of his most significant projects was 2001′s If I Should Fall From Grace with God: The Shane MacGowan Story, which told the story of the Pogues singer and featured interviews with Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Johnny Depp and Sinéad O’Connor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"36X7RBLLKNABHIEEKCIJRW52FY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264550},"content":"He returned to RTÉ as a freelance producer on Brendan O’Connor’s TV debut, The Saturday Night Show and was executive producer on The Late Late Show during the Pat Kenny and Ryan Tubridy years. He retired in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MG3LYFLAYJAQVE64E7PGHT35MQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"IULD3D3AGZA75OVQU2FDFGZKMM"},"content":"Friends, colleagues and family bid farewell to the late, great Larry Masterson – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ETEQUFHLAJDH3OLYX6W6ZWXMTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264552},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/08/teri-hayden-obituary-trailblazing-agent-who-guided-the-careers-of-some-of-irelands-most-successful-actors/\" target=\"_blank\">Teri Hayden</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"UPPGIM4FXFAZ3BSC6A4P6F2CQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264553},"content":"Agent","type":"header"},{"_id":"W45UADJEHFACJCSJF7W3GHGO5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264554},"content":"Teri Hayden, who died April 18th aged 75, was a trailblazing agent who guided the careers of many notable Irish actors including Brendan Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Negga and Gabriel Byrne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SCDVMFVHZDJZBBM63ZOI7NNMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264555},"content":"Her clients have won Golden Globes, Baftas, Tonys, Oliviers, Emmys and Academy Award nominations, as well as numerous Iftas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMXMYOQ5XNDMZLZ54CJUUPF7LM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264556},"content":"From Derry, she studied economics and finance at Manchester University before working at RTÉ. In the early 1980s she saw an opportunity in the growing demand for actors’ representation in Ireland, predicting that Irish theatre, TV and film was about to expand.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5QFC5IQZP5ED5ECP2MPI2BZPNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264557},"content":"Soon she had become Ireland’s leading talent agent, and rapidly won respect and recognition for her skills. She was known as a fearless negotiator, determined to secure the best possible deal for her clients and she also brokered many projects, even when she had no stake in the productions. Brendan Gleeson dedicated his Ifta win for best supporting actor in The Banshees of Inisherin to Hayden, “who has led me through this minefield of a profession that we embrace for years and years”. Gabriel Byrne credited her with getting him the help he needed when he realised he had a problem with alcohol in the late 1990s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQEGS2P5HBAX3L6UMDTOQZVK2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264558},"content":"She reportedly rejected an offer from an A-list Hollywood agency to buy her out, and the Dublin-based agency is now run by her son Karl.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QSVT4IWF5ZBTXCOA4Q33SEUJOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264559},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/04/ethna-viney-obituary-irish-times-nature-columnist-environmental-and-feminist/\" target=\"_blank\">Ethna Viney</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"CTCY2CPVNJE65FOL3UVIGQSZDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264560},"content":"Nature writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"CWIVY5PKRFBINMTR2QWSJIQH74","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264561},"content":"The nature writer and TV and film producer Ethna Viney died on April 26th, aged 95.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5SNNVH3Y75AENOMG77Y7KJD4SQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264562},"content":"A woman of many careers, she first trained as a pharmacist and ran her own chemist shop in Killala where she also organised a group of women to form a cheese-making co-operative. She later moved to Dublin to study politics and economics in UCD. She married young British journalist Michael Viney in 1965 and worked as a researcher and producer in RTÉ.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SVENZ2BCWFGJNFZJM4GC5HBG3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264563},"content":"When the couple were in their 40s, they relocated to a remote cottage on one acre on the west coast of Mayo. While he began his weekly Another Life column for this paper, she took on many projects. She brought together the fishermen of north Connemara and south Mayo in a co-operative mussel farming project.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D4ZYP2EP3FBBDK732BQIZGYULU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264564},"content":"She was an editor of Technology Ireland and became a freelance writer for this paper on economics and women’s issues. And she was also a founder member of the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN).","type":"text"},{"_id":"U5KAC63QT5HBBN6IXK32H2EJ5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264565},"content":"When Michael’s second column An Eye on Nature – which answers readers’ queries – began, she ran it for years under his name until she was finally acknowledged as the author. She also co-authored Ireland’s Ocean: A Natural History with him. Her documentary-making focused on features that dealt with the human impact on the environment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCIIDWFUJGERNZASCFWCDNXRA","additional_properties":{"_id":"744VGPXUWVDTRNBEAWPYO2JO6U"},"content":"Former Irish Times columnist Ethna Viney dies aged 95 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"BJ2YKXTCUBBWJFQX6ZGMMH5KCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264567},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/18/mary-banotti-obituary-a-talented-politician-and-campaigner-for-social-justice/\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Banotti</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"HO5AGEV2EZFWJH4INSK7CK22CI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264568},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"6UKFM3KK4RGSDJSGFNOSCCUXTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264569},"content":"Mary Banotti was a Fine Gael MEP, a presidential election candidate and a committed campaigner for the rights of women and children. She died on May 10th, just weeks before her 85th birthday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NYOCXSNKMVBONO2654WTH6CYFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264570},"content":"She trained as a nurse which led to a stint as a development aid worker in Kenya. There she met and married an Italian doctor, Giovanni Banotti. After the marriage broke up, she returned to Dublin with her daughter in 1970 and threw herself into social causes involving the welfare of women.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3K24FTQFUJG7HD2UUV3FRRTTCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264571},"content":"She was a co-founder of Women’s Aid, which opened the first refuges for the victims of domestic violence, and she served as chairwoman of the Rutland Centre. Her appearances on RTÉ led to her selection as a Fine Gael candidate to contest the 1983 Dublin Central byelection. While she failed to win that seat, she went on to win a seat in the European Parliament.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5PYJTU2C2FHOJLBNVYOBNBDVVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264572},"content":"She continued to campaign for women’s and children’s rights and was the first EU mediator for parentally-abducted children. She was named one of the top 10 environmental legislators in Europe in the late 1980s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOJZKB7RG5FT7JRAAJ6PN4L5QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264573},"content":"In 1997, she won the Fine Gael nomination to contest the presidency in succession to Mary Robinson but ultimately lost out to Mary McAleese.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQ2NMB7P7NHSLA6PV4FMXV5XTI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264574},"content":"After 20 years in the European Parliament, she retired in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QJ4FFODLBFBDHDQJLQMPL7MBVY","additional_properties":{"_id":"E2BKI2TFNVD2BFHZNEXKESR2SY"},"content":"Mary Banotti ‘worked fiercely for real change for Irish women’, funeral hears – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GOS6M5XMARDMBKHC5HBZN4HEPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264576},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/06/josephine-bartley-obituary-a-driving-force-in-the-elevation-of-nursing-in-ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Josephine Bartley</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"ISIEGQTCAFHITPODWQ4ZQSX5BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264577},"content":"Nursing director","type":"header"},{"_id":"OTUZKUNEJVFP3FQJJBGEMKYC6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264578},"content":"Josephine Bartley, who served as director of nursing at Beaumont Hospital from its opening in 1987 to her retirement in 1998, died on May 13th, aged 90. She was also a founder member and former dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery in the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3X3COMC2OVEJ7PGSW7JIAI4J2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264579},"content":"The Limerick-born nurse will be remembered as a driving force in the development of education and specialist training for nurses in Ireland during the time when the nursing profession began to have a higher status within the healthcare system.","type":"text"},{"_id":"35RZRFL2INEPRPX2WT6UUPZHSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264580},"content":"Early in her career, she oversaw training for all registered nurses in regional centres throughout Ireland. During her time as dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the RCSI, the first four-year Bachelor of Nursing degree courses were offered at the college. She also conferred the first honorary fellowship of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery on St Teresa of Calcutta in Rome in 1992.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JKUMZTHLDNGLRIMP2MXDDYKLQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264581},"content":"A woman of strong faith, Bartley acted as matron of the volunteers for the Dublin Diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes each year. She was also an active member of the Guild of Irish Catholic Nurses and represented the International Catholic Committee of Nurses and Medico-Social Assistants at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ITXYXL55RFDK3GY7IH7TV7PVZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264582},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/18/tony-oreilly-obituary-irelands-first-business-superstar-whose-spectacular-fall-led-to-bankruptcy/\" target=\"_blank\">Tony O’Reilly</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"O4Q4MVE2ARGMJITYYCRQMT72CI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264583},"content":"Businessman","type":"header"},{"_id":"RGPXPDKTUJHFDN5B5GPVQ5EUOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264584},"content":"Tony O’Reilly was remembered as Ireland’s first business superstar after his death on May 18th, at the age of 88.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VRH4M5CQUREBREOZJ7FA6WONLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264585},"content":"He first came to public attention as a rugby player who earned 29 caps for Ireland, and a record-breaking 37 tries with the British and Irish Lions. He enjoyed early business success as the head of Bord Báinne – the Irish Dairy Board, where he pioneered the dairy brand Kerrygold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4UU5CNRSFZBDXH7NNPJBFM54VY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264586},"content":"His stewardship of the Irish Sugar Company brought him into the orbit of Heinz and he would go on to become its chief executive. He bought into Independent Newspapers in the 1970s and built it into an international media empire with publications and broadcasting interests in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6S4EVLY2ONABZMULKIAB32HQSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264587},"content":"His business interests took a downturn in the last decade and a half. His attempts to stave off the collapse of the Waterford Wedgwood business saw him suffer a huge financial loss. And he was involved in one of the most high-profile corporate clashes of recent decades when he lost control of Independent News and Media to Denis O’Brien. Once reported to be Ireland’s wealthiest person, he was declared bankrupt in 2015.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SH6ZYKFZ3ZHADM47B5FV3Q7GLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264588},"content":"A generous supporter of the arts and academic institutions, he was also a founder of the US Ireland Funds, which raised funds to promote peace and reconciliation. In 2001 he was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BBR3LHO6OBFL7FVX2G57S7GQ4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"IHHKQKF3WBHWTP5PTOICE3VRFI"},"content":" Tony O’Reilly: President leads tributes to businessman who ‘touched so many aspects of Irish life’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ACBQXIDH4JE5HGL2VV7BMELFRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264590},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/01/fran-rooney-obituary-poster-boy-for-the-dotcom-crash-who-regretted-nothing/\" target=\"_blank\">Fran Rooney</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"7MFC4Y65OBHK7FHPDXA3F7HFSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264591},"content":"Businessman","type":"header"},{"_id":"SQ2EKDPUFBCXBADQAWXVMUWAHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264592},"content":"Fran Rooney, who led Baltimore Technologies to a multibillion-dollar valuation, and went on to lead the FAI, died on May 20th, aged 67.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GLPVSR6EOVCPXOMQXZYVCZBWOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264593},"content":"An accomplished footballer, he played for Home Farm, Shamrock Rovers, St Patrick’s Athletic and Bohemians, and managed the Irish women’s soccer team between 1986 and 1991.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B4XKLDC52BEK3FDXZK2W6JJBMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264594},"content":"He worked in several government departments and in National Irish Bank, before setting up Meridian International, a VAT processing company. Along with a group of investors, he bought Baltimore Technologies, which specialised in internet security, for the equivalent of about €381,000 in 1996.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JOSZY27ZFA33JNQGUF5LOIUNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264595},"content":"This coincided with the start of the boom in internet-related companies which led to Baltimore being listed on the Nasdaq in New York in 1999. The company’s market capitalisation ballooned to more than $13 billion (€12 billion) putting Baltimore in the FTSE 100, an index of the most valuable companies on the London market. When the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, the value of the stock collapsed. Efforts to turn around the fortunes of the company failed and he stepped down as chief executive in 2001.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5EZZFKPF5ZCLXAZBVTOMY6NMN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264596},"content":"He became chief executive of the FAI in 2003, in part to implement the findings of the Genesis report commissioned after the Saipan saga, when Roy Keane left the squad in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup. He left the association in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FQCEK4BYGREUBGZ7WCH7ZZ6U5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"ILHHUFHXJ5CSHNZ3SU2SAQ6G24"},"content":"Former Baltimore Technologies, FAI CEO Fran Rooney has died – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"47OW3L3U3RHKTHWTOFCDIJITI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264598},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/15/joe-joyce-obituary-outstanding-journalist-writer-and-biographer/\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Joyce</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"2HPTR35UDVHOBORIEOA5RYTZEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264599},"content":"Journalist, author","type":"header"},{"_id":"57RR6JLU5BAZ3JWWGDB6QLVISI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264600},"content":"Joe Joyce, who died on June 6th aged 76, was an award-winning investigative journalist and author.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T2JRFK37FJGWPFHDHCQNMEW36E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264601},"content":"His first reporting job was with The Irish Times, where he gravitated towards politics, as well as justice and policing matters. With colleagues Renagh Holohan and Don Buckley he wrote a series of Irish Times investigations into the activities of the Garda’s Murder Squad, known more colloquially as the Heavy Gang.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HEOBOSN2HBFAXFIMGFJQMRJ3HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264602},"content":"Along with Don Buckley, he revealed the Kerry Babies incident in 1984, while writing in the Sunday Independent. They detailed how gardaí had obtained confessions from an entire family to a murder that subsequent forensic evidence proved they could not have committed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O6XDXZZJFZHBTIQIRE7KX33WUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264603},"content":"He twice received the national Journalist of the Year award for his investigative work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCL6B5ELVZB6XCJ2KJUNAN2GSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264604},"content":"He left his staff job in 1978 and went freelance, working for Reuters news agency, Hibernia magazine and the Southside newspaper. He also worked for the Sunday Tribune and the Guardian.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MA52C5L6T5FDDET3IDHAH7KD6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264605},"content":"He was co-author, with Peter Murtagh, of The Boss, a biography of the 1982 government of the former Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey, and of Blind Justice, an examination of the Sallins mail train robbery and subsequent investigation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZO6SR6JNBB63L3ALNECITLXBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264606},"content":"In later life he became an accomplished author, penning a series of thrillers, historical novels, plays and a biography of the Guinness family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WMNU36IG7ZFSPJFLGTDNSH6OKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"JM5RYEXYVRDIVO2MCJRIDRJLH4"},"content":"Joe Joyce: The quiet man who was a great journalist, funeral told – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"BKLIBVTWBNGO7ODJUVSC4J4LCY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264608},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/22/charlie-lennon-obituary-influential-composer-and-musician-who-never-stopped-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">Charlie Lennon</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"A4FZETRJVNEZFEKWKZCI6FQ6A4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264609},"content":"Musician","type":"header"},{"_id":"5NR4YSFA5NCM3JPD2VZECHHHCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264610},"content":"Charlie Lennon, who died on June 8th, was a traditional musician and prolific composer. He died a month before his 86th birthday and just a few nights after a memorable concert performance by fiddle player Martin Hayes in Lennon’s Stiúideo Cuan, in Spiddal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBWERMI5DZEPDHU2EXRJRX7SJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264611},"content":"Originally from Kiltyclogher, Co Leitrim, he studied classical piano but couldn’t resist his first love, the fiddle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YCGUKYKVKFHK7DHWH4PP3WVZLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264612},"content":"He embarked on a professional career as a musician as a young teen, touring with bands across Ireland and the UK, playing a wide mix of styles including English and Scottish country music.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZWTQFDDB6BD4PPRVM27U6C2LSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264613},"content":"He later returned to education and excelled academically, receiving his PhD in nuclear physics in 1969. While he worked as a software and management consultant, he pursued a parallel life as a prolific performer, recording artist and composer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XBMRFITPWVD4VIFDRKCBCLTIQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264614},"content":"Lennon recorded more than 50 albums, both as a fiddle player and as a piano accompanist. He regularly played with Matt Molloy, Mick O’Connor, Johnny Connolly, Joe Burke and many others, and his tunes were sought out by musicians such as Frankie Gavin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQPEAKKH2NB6TNAKUO625JIIOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264615},"content":"He began to compose orchestral works in the 1980s, leading in 1991 to the performance of Bainis Oileáin/Island Wedding, by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Later orchestral works included The Famine Suite and Áille na hÁille. He was awarded the TG4 Gradam Ceoil for Composer of the Year in 2006.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCSUGBWZCRDXRBS3Z7LC4BZTKA","additional_properties":{"_id":"IPFNVSKPXNENXLEJS3EL3TDLEU"},"content":"Irish traditional musician Charlie Lennon has died aged 85 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HG44ANZF4BGS3ICZNO76KDJEOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264617},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/22/paul-mackay-obituary-one-of-four-founders-of-the-progressive-democrats/\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Mackay</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"LCZIAGILEZAW5A3XYARDFL6ZIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264618},"content":"Co-founder of the Progressive Democrats","type":"header"},{"_id":"U65LLDJAJVG3VBP7PCXE4QFN4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264619},"content":"Paul Mackay, who died on June 11th aged 83, was one of co-founders of the Progressive Democrats (PDs), along with Des O’Malley, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S24HRISUU5FNVHEEAR4LGV7FFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264620},"content":"He qualified as a chartered accountant in 1965 and began a private practice specialising in corporate recovery in 1971.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BNZB3UUXTFCN7H67QWOZCCBJGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264621},"content":"An admirer of Seán Lemass, he joined the Clontarf cumann of Fianna Fáil in the 1960s. He was made auditor of the party finances in Charlie Haughey’s Dublin North East constituency in 1981, but after he asked to see the accounts, a dispute followed and he was dismissed in May 1983.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HBWEPHP3ABBD5KK3DHBMGNRQLA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264622},"content":"Two years later Des O’Malley was also expelled from Fianna Fáil and Mackay told him he would have strong support should he form a new political party. The party was formed at Mackay’s home in December 1985 and a reluctant O’Malley agree to lead it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ZPRZ77KAVGNZAEMHKNX3HQTIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264623},"content":"Mackay raised the bank loan for party headquarters in Dublin’s South Frederick Street and played a central role in the 1987 general election when the PDs won 14 seats. He was director of elections in the 1989 contest which saw the party reduced to six seats but ended up into government with Fianna Fáil.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTACDZP56JGNDMSGARUJFZPIWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264624},"content":"Over the following two decades, Mackay played a leading role in the PDs as treasurer and election strategist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5AAZEBJ3W5E65BHB42LZMREJNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264625},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/29/tommie-gorman-obituary-veteran-journalist-covered-a-pivotal-period-in-northern-irish-politics/\" target=\"_blank\">Tommie Gorman</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"4RKEYVDCLZFENDJ4F5QSWBZCYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264626},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"Y47SJZYRF5AR3JQYJK4QN4FC7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264627},"content":"Tommie Gorman died on June 25th, three years after he retired from his role as RTÉ's Northern Editor. The Sligo-born journalist was 68 years of age.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWDZQMP3BFDILJOOZHCLIBRGVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264628},"content":"His first byline as a journalist appeared in The Sligo Champion, over match reports on his beloved Sligo Rovers’ games in Dublin, when he was studying journalism in the College of Commerce, Rathmines. He went on to work as a correspondent for the Western Journal and became its editor aged 23. He joined RTÉ in 1980 as its northwest correspondent. In 1989, he moved to Brussels to become its Europe correspondent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQFAHKI2NZAT7DG5GKIFB5YC2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264629},"content":"In 1994 he was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumours, a rare form of cancer, and lived stoically with it for 30 years. He highlighted his success in accessing treatment for his illness in Sweden via an EU scheme, which encouraged others to explore this option.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XAZ37UQHZDQHHZ7FBCILF6ZTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264630},"content":"As RTÉ's Northern editor, he reported on Stormont politics from 2001 and earned the trust of leading politicians across the political spectrum. He also landed one of the most memorable sporting scoops when he secured an interview with footballer Roy Keane after he left Saipan in the build-up to the 2002 World Cup.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQ46MW346NFZXAXNTGAPOOM72Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264631},"content":"He retired from RTÉ in March 2021. He made several documentaries, the last of which was Ireland, Cancer and Me, a personal account of living with neuroendocrine tumours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5XZEFBBZY5FCVMKD3DICBCDPII","additional_properties":{"_id":"MSFZPDNX6VBMXB7PEDNEMXLE6U"},"content":"Tommie Gorman funeral told there was nobody he could not connect with – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XD6637AVUVC6HNUWERIPEWOHKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255796},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/25/micheal-o-muircheartaigh-obituary-gaa-commentator-whose-voice-was-central-to-the-all-ireland-championship/\" target=\"_blank\">Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"YOW5TV2BTBG4RAAHVYYNCKV43A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264634},"content":"Broadcaster","type":"header"},{"_id":"SP55PPU4IVDBNEMM3Y5W67I7HE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264635},"content":"Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s voice was a constant summer companion for generations of GAA supporters. He made his radio debut in 1949 and commentated on his last All-Ireland final on television in 2010, earning himself a place in the Guinness World Records for his longevity. He was as popular for his GAA knowledge as for his unique turn of phrase and distinctive Kerry lilt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FTD4W473NJAFJHO5SRX37CO2MA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264636},"content":"His passion for Gaelic games was matched only by his love for the Irish language and his native Kerry. He was a student teacher when he broadcast the 1949 Railway Cup football final and he combined broadcasting work with teaching until 1981 when he took up a full-time post with Raidió na Gaeltachta.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HOOITV4K2VHL7KPXUU4SE7ZNLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264637},"content":"He took part in RTÉ's first television broadcast of the All-Ireland hurling final in 1962, alternating Irish language commentary with Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin doing English. In 1964 he took over the live television coverage as Gaeilge of All-Ireland minor finals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JV6BWM4EINCWNF2YA4A7LV3EIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264638},"content":"From 1985, he broadcast English radio commentary on all All-Ireland senior finals – a total of 55, including replays. His friend, Raidió na Gaeltachta commentator Micheál Ó Sé, told his funeral mass that his gifts as a broadcaster would remain unequalled. “The microphone in his hand was like the brush in the hand of a great master,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"THBET33UTZD4LEQTQCGOUE6FSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264639},"content":"Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh died on June 25th, aged 93.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H2JUPLYZEFHKHIUTMNU3TMMC7I","additional_properties":{"_id":"XST7RW43BVH33OC2GVDN4Y7U5I"},"content":"Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh: People felt they knew him and that he knew them too – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"2DURK52IY5EI3DCBMQM6OIKAFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264642},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/27/judge-elizabeth-macgrath-obituary-a-fierce-defender-of-the-judiciary-who-believed-in-second-chances/\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth MacGrath</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"SU5OCDP27BCU3MFUBPEC5C6464","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264643},"content":"Judge","type":"header"},{"_id":"KPCT5YJYTRHYTINKKTNJWBUEMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264644},"content":"District Court judge Elizabeth (Liz) MacGrath died on July 3rd, aged 65, after a short illness. She began practising as a solicitor in the mid-1980s in the firm established by her grandfather and county solicitor for Tipperary, Patrick MacGrath. In 1989, she set up her own solicitor practice, MacGrath and Co, in Nenagh, taking on cases in criminal and civil litigation, family law, probate and conveyancing. She also represented the local authority in planning, environmental and regulatory matters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASYMWXYDIBBJVK6RJLQQ2SNKOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264645},"content":"She was appointed as judge of the District Court in 2007, and in 2012 she was assigned to District Court 8, which covers her home county of Tipperary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DR67ONWS7RB4BE25XXV47M2VUA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264646},"content":"MacGrath had a reputation as a straightforward and reasonable criminal judge and was not afraid to speak publicly on legal matters and in defence of her profession. In 2016, she spoke out about the limitations of the judicial system to enforce drink-driving legislation and to prosecute drunken drivers. She also wrote so-called bench books for judges on her experiences of case law and legislation – particularly in relation to drink driving.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XN5CBQTZNBP3BGGSRWMQ4IANM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264647},"content":"She was president of the District Judges Association and was the elected District Court representative on the board of the Judicial Council, which promotes high standards of conduct among judges.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIBFXTTVPZA55PJZQSFYQPC3YQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"4OD63OFG7VAGNJCQ6ECS7S4ZSY"},"content":"Judge Elizabeth MacGrath had a ‘passion for justice’, funeral hears – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XAUTCCGZCVGARBJNA2UR6OBIXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255811},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/13/john-omahony-obituary-influential-figure-in-gaa-and-politics/\" target=\"_blank\">John O’Mahony</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"FIHCOIQQVNA2HDBUH6K7UPCDBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264651},"content":"Football manager, politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"XOOZR22YSNHMPASBKC4NS54D4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264652},"content":"The All-Ireland winning manager and Fine Gael TD and senator John O’Mahony died on July 6th, aged 71.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U2J7UJWTKFHW7HVDEWYT7QN73Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264653},"content":"As a player he won a minor All-Ireland medal with Mayo in 1971, and an U21 medal in 1974. He would go on to manage the U21 team and led the county to the 1983 All-Ireland U21 title.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RYYBM4ZPZFELPHNPBRKNKWNSLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264654},"content":"He was an early adopter of the inclusion of sports psychology and performance coaching with his teams and he earned his reputation as a pioneering leader with a series of historic triumphs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D5TDKNORJJHNRI6JKTC5NCP46E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264655},"content":"In 1989, he brought Mayo to a first senior All-Ireland final in 38 years. His leadership saw Leitrim winning a first Connacht championship in 67 years in 1994, while he led Galway to its first Sam Maguire in 32 years in 1998, and another in 2001.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EOT6TBZQWVE65L6OAWN3PD6TSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264656},"content":"He took over Mayo for a second term in 2007 and won the Connacht championship in 2009. He was also a respected pundit in local and national media outlets, including as a columnist for this newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OJM2CGZXCBCAZCAXIXTPRUIPGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264657},"content":"He won a seat for Fine Gael in the 2007 general election and was re-elected in 2011. After constituency lines were redrawn, he lost out on a seat in Galway West but went on to serve in the Seanad from 2016 to 2020.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VZG7QSKIZZDHVLXYTHVZM7QB5I","additional_properties":{"_id":"EOKNGYTOOJGWJPY5XQSELI7EBY"},"content":" Seán Moran: John O’Mahony — a life raising bars and awaking the west – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5KEQCPB4DFHOVBLTOCM7S74VTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264660},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/20/hugh-geoghegan-obituary-popular-retired-supreme-court-judge-who-had-a-charmed-life/\" target=\"_blank\">Hugh Geoghegan</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"Z4FV4MJFO5G7VCEP6I243A4ZAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264661},"content":"Judge","type":"header"},{"_id":"BY7BV7WT2NBKLILH6YFJJADGDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264662},"content":"The barrister and Supreme Court judge Hugh Geoghegan died on July 7th, aged 86.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBANYWWQLFANNOYOP5ASOIC5DE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264663},"content":"He came from a long line of legal experts that dated back to the 1840s. His father James was a minister for justice, attorney general and Supreme Court judge. His wife Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan was also a Supreme Court judge, and two of their children became barristers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IKDMWYWTOVDALGSQRVOD6WIEUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264664},"content":"He was called to the Bar in 1962 and became a senior counsel in 1977, practising in Dublin and the Midland Circuit. He appeared as counsel before the tribunal into the Stardust fire disaster and chaired a commission that recommended the formation of the Labour Relations Commission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HVN4VUGJDBDFTBB3VFKMBJFAKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264665},"content":"From 1984, he combined a busy practice with service as Public Service Arbitrator and was known for his courtesy and fairness to all parties.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CSWZ2RYTANFQJI2U23WFQJCUPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264666},"content":"He was appointed a judge of the High Court in 1992 and became a judge of the Supreme Court eight years later. When he retired in 2010, he was feted as one of the most respected and well-loved judges of his time, whose judgments were infused with humanity and compassion. He went on to chair the Barristers’ Professional Conduct Appeals Board and was the Independent Appeals Commissioner for the College of Surgeons. He was active in the Irish Legal History Society and wrote several ground-breaking essays on the early legal history of independent Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZUES65YFF5F67NEJYTTRC3SRVE","additional_properties":{"_id":"3X72Q46KLBEFHCS2D3CYS7ARS4"},"content":"Retired Supreme Court judge Hugh Geoghegan remembered at funeral Mass as man ‘of boundless curiosity’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5ZNZBFHNAZD4ZLPLAOUW5QPZJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264669},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/03/justin-kilcullen-obituary-an-architect-of-buildings-and-human-rights-campaigns/\" target=\"_blank\">Justin Kilcullen</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"NOWTHKRZN5CMBEAYKUISWO7YDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264670},"content":"Charity worker","type":"header"},{"_id":"UZPLJJJGKJBK7NKZ6HS4RUE7QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264671},"content":"Justin Kilcullen was the public face of Trócaire, the overseas development agency of the Catholic Church, but he also supported numerous organisations helping disadvantaged people. He died on July 16th, aged 73.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QW5FPUBVWVGL3HWMXPRWTF2EK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264672},"content":"A trained architect, he was inspired by his two Jesuit missionary uncles to work with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Tanzania. He later worked with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, where he helped develop housing facilities for Vietnamese boat-people and Cambodian refugees. In 2002, he was awarded the Robert Matthew Prize by the International Union of Architects for his work on human settlements. On his return to Ireland, he worked with the Voluntary Housing Association movement in Belfast to refurbish inner-city housing on the Falls and Shankill Roads.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AJHHRCO2CBHWNNUWDCS5MQSMKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264673},"content":"He joined Trócaire in 1981 as Africa programme officer and was appointed executive director in 1993. He held that position for 20 years until his retirement in 2013. In 2019, he was awarded a papal knighthood of the Order of St Gregory the Great for people of distinguished character, reputation and accomplishment. Caoimhe de Barra, current chief executive of Trócaire, said he had “a passion for justice and a deep belief in the dignity and rights of every human being which drove and defined him”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5NPSEQV4FGCZHOEFW5AJPILI4","additional_properties":{"_id":"RYNDZNFYDJFWVFSJ25U6ARNFYU"},"content":"Tributes paid to former Trócaire head Justin Kilcullen following his death – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GLOHLLFVZZDF5NZFKQAKULSLQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264676},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/28/edna-obrien-obituary-flamboyant-fearless-and-outspoken-irish-writer/\" target=\"_blank\">Edna O’Brien</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"COSZG2PWKZGSXGMZLQRUSCEMCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264677},"content":"Writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"K63XBBBTR5DYVAI2NDMFOTH3HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264678},"content":"Edna O’Brien, the novelist, short-story writer, playwright and screenwriter died on July 27th, aged 93. Her trilogy of novels which debuted in the early 1960s – The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl [later renamed Girl with Green Eyes] and Girls in Their Married Bliss – were banned by the Irish censorship board.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IYATSRSTVNG63KPOSMP4QM2TFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264679},"content":"She wrote more than 20 novels, biographies of James Joyce and Lord Byron, plays, screenplays and a memoir.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GKMOIRO4IZA5LMBI37Y6O4UHWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264680},"content":"Born in Tuamgraney, Co Clare, she had a well-publicised love-hate relationship with her native country and lived abroad for most of her life. She never baulked at tackling difficult subjects and themes of her later novels included murder, terrorism and rape. Her final novel, Girl, was published in her late 80s, and involved her travelling to Nigeria to carry out research.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ITGH2NHRPVGEHBSQRR6DB6VKQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264681},"content":"Among her numerous awards were the Kingsley Amis Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the European Prize for Literature and the Pen Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. She was also a member of Aosdána and was elected as a Saoi (wise one) in 2015.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SK2NWC6NPRCNVPAS54Q3PQWWLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264682},"content":"President Michael D Higgins said she was “a fearless teller of truths” and “one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SGHJ7KQHU5AATCZCEP4ITVBRQU","additional_properties":{"_id":"QEJOHGZSV5CGDNLC5O2HIVC4EM"},"content":"Anne Enright on Edna O’Brien: She never left Ireland, yet couldn’t live here either – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3HHUJDKDSZGVDIRHB3S6E2PIQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255842},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/10/leigh-gath-obituary-a-thalidomide-survivor-who-became-a-tireless-advocate-for-people-with-disabilities/\" target=\"_blank\">Leigh Gath</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"OCQL72TWFZDP3A5CYOSTOJWWUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264686},"content":"Disability campaigner","type":"header"},{"_id":"RMXY37EJ7BBNHL4FHMMXE2BBUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264687},"content":"Leigh Gath, who died on July 27th, aged 62, was a thalidomide survivor who spent her adult life campaigning for the rights of people with disabilities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIOP6MJOIBF53D4FTRHNR7SLXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264688},"content":"She was born with shortened arms and legs, due to the side effects of the morning sickness drug thalidomide. Growing up in Newry, Co Down, she advocated for those who didn’t have the confidence to speak up for themselves. When she was campaigning for accessible footpaths, she led local MP Enoch Powell down the centre of a busy street to show him the obstacles facing wheelchair-users.","type":"text"},{"_id":"65CXAYWO4JHG5DQIOM4HQHKMS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264689},"content":"In 1991 she married her first husband and the couple later moved to Texas. After they divorced, she met and married a fellow thalidomide survivor, Irish man Eugene Gath, in 2003. The family returned to live in Co Limerick in 2006 and she became involved in disability issues. In 2012 she led a sleep-out outside the Department of the Taoiseach to protest against cuts to personal assistance and home-help services for people with disabilities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMVXSOV7BJH7DKIFHTTYUZYAUA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264690},"content":"She was appointed the HSE’s first confidential recipient in late 2014, following the abuse scandal in the Áras Attracta centre for adults with intellectual disabilities in Co Mayo. Her job involved examining concerns relating to HSE-funded services for people with disabilities and older people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FLK67BQWZZFPVEPO3NCCXUSZUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264691},"content":"Her autobiography, Don’t Tell Me I Can’t, was published in 2012.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBJ26CMMEZDQNMOFZ2HTIZVZPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"FWBWGRBI3ZFVFDRUGIQDTWPFVY"},"content":"‘She gave a voice to many’: Disability campaigner Leigh Gath dies – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DX4F5TIRFVEUTFUIK2SNS3HIPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264694},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/17/aidan-oleary-obituary-outstanding-irish-humanitarian-who-led-who-polio-eradication-programme/\" target=\"_blank\">Aidan O’Leary</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"X56ZHM2AINECREE5H6O6B2SSAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264695},"content":"Aid worker","type":"header"},{"_id":"D2EYZLOVPRHP7CGHW5JVWEJQ3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264696},"content":"Aidan O’Leary, the Irish director of the World Health Organisation’s polio eradication programme, died on August 6th aged 59. Known for his collaborative leadership style and his ability to solve complex problems, he worked in war-torn parts of the world including Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.","type":"text"},{"_id":"23KK5352ZFHZZBFCY5FIDYLASY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264697},"content":"The Dubliner joined the Irish Army in 1983 and served initially in the Supply and Transport Corps in Cork and Dublin. As part of his military service, he completed a degree and master’s in economics and also studied chartered accountancy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U67WSXXCDJDPVACZXQW55WKQBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264698},"content":"He was seconded to the Department of Finance in 1991 as a policy analyst for a year and became the right-hand man of the chiefs of staff as a strategic planner. During this period, O’Leary did two tours to Lebanon and one to Yugoslavia. He was promoted to captain during this period.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LVMTNDIQ7JD2XFTHIC62P4XCJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264699},"content":"In 2000, he was headhunted to work for the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He went on to work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency with Palestinian refugees, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) and finally the WHO. He moved to Geneva to head its polio eradication programme in 2021. One of his last tasks involved preparing for two rounds of polio vaccination campaigns for young children in Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ENGWITVQUZE4HKXE5QIXC6JBK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264701},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/21/nell-mccafferty-obituary-journalist-and-feminist-campaigner/\" target=\"_blank\">Nell McCafferty</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"BATFQJORXVH5VJJTPEC3MLUZM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264702},"content":"Journalist, campaigner","type":"header"},{"_id":"A37G2Z54BVFX5GOLZHAMURGI4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264703},"content":"Nell McCafferty was remembered as a fierce and feisty campaigning journalist and author when she died on August 21st aged 80.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGZDDHT2ZFGLPC62ZOPZVHPYLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264704},"content":"From the Bogside in Derry, she fought for equal rights for women and gay people and railed against social injustice. She became involved in civil rights politics as a student at Queen’s University Belfast in the 1960s, before becoming a journalist with The Irish Times and a founder member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. She was on the famous contraceptive train which brought condoms and pills from Belfast to Dublin, where they were illegal, in 1971.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JKGIX52F2JDULPTLCIFKUF5TMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264705},"content":"Her reports from the courts in the In the Eyes of the Law series broke new ground between 1970 and 1980. In vivid, searing and humorous prose she brought a fresh insight into what was happening in the courts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNUNC4TR2FEIBAOJBUVUPACQOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264706},"content":"Among her noted works were the book A Woman to Blame, on the ordeal of Joanne Hayes in the Kerry babies’ case, and The Armagh Women, on woman republican prisoners and their hunger strikes in Armagh jail. She also wrote for In Dublin, the Sunday Tribune and Hot Press and was a regular contributor to news and current affairs shows.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LB5ULPIECNBYLNYPAIS2HQHY5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264707},"content":"Veteran civil rights campaigner Eamon McCann said she had changed the world “and in the course of that she entranced as many women as she alarmed men ... they had never seen or heard the like of her”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5NUUHCUOE5GNNGGPAQA3FG2DUA","additional_properties":{"_id":"N7KOA2S3EJHJHEM42AKL2QV63E"},"content":"Olivia O’Leary: It could be terrifying to be with Nell McCafferty. You never knew what she was going to do or say – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3IZVRWDAC5CEXGLGEJEYT3BW2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264710},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/09/07/sr-theresa-kane-obituary-irish-american-nun-who-challenged-pope-and-embraced-feminism/\" target=\"_blank\">Sr Theresa Kane</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"XDAXYQ22NRAYDJM2S2GA22UH24","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264711},"content":"Nun, campaigner","type":"header"},{"_id":"27HAWACYXJELXGCIAEBUFZ2JJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264712},"content":"Sr Theresa Kane, who died on August 22nd aged 87, was a Catholic nun who publicly challenged Pope John Paul II to allow women to become priests.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZJ7UWYZJO5DADCR7GU4Q2PBZ54","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264713},"content":"The Irish-American was just 27 when she was named chief executive of St Francis Hospital in Port Jervis, New York. She became the head of the Sisters of Mercy’s New York province a few years later, and in 1977, president of the entire order. She was also president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q7SGTC55QRCBLLTFXHX53GRIFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264714},"content":"In 1979, she was chosen to give a welcome address for Pope John Paul II during his Washington visit. A few days earlier, in Philadelphia, he had made his opposition to the ordination of women clear. Not to be dissuaded she told him that, in order to join the pope in his mission, women needed to be equal participants within the church hierarchy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EXPT7IC4QZC7PFT7N75D3K67HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264715},"content":"Sr Theresa’s address was televised and was front page news in the New York Times and in this newspaper. She faced a backlash after her speech, as did the groups she led, under both Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GQRCW234NZH5DDK7UIAMVWSCUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264716},"content":"She was a leading figure among progressive Catholic women and took liberal positions on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. She was among the first prominent church figures to champion the rights of LGBTQ+ Catholics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7XSSCW4O3JBV3F53CCHPECFLHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264718},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/09/28/paul-good-obituary-cofounder-of-one-of-the-countrys-most-prominent-commercial-and-residential-property-agencies/\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Good</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"OI24CUGFORH43GVT75BFZSUEKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264719},"content":"Estate agent, mediator","type":"header"},{"_id":"DI4KIKTVBZAERNL3N4UIQTY6J4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264720},"content":"Paul Good, the co-founder of Douglas Newman Good (DNG) property agency, died on August 24th, aged 83. Widely respected within the property industry, he was renowned for his expertise in arbitration, mediation, compulsory purchase order negotiations and commercial valuations.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXBJRKC5FBCBPDDQS6HSOPC2TQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264721},"content":"He initially studied architecture before switching to quantity surveying. The firms he worked with included Donal O’Buachalla, Jones Lang LaSalle, Lisneys, Dublin Corporation and Druker Fanning. In 1982 he joined forces with Edmund Douglas and Paul Newman to establish DNG, which went on to be one of the country’s leading commercial and residential property agencies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFOBFZJIKBHNVI5JNARJAY7SBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264722},"content":"In 1994 Good left DNG to work for himself. During the following three decades, he did commercial and residential sales and rental valuations and acted as a mediator in disputes between landlords and tenants, and homeowners faced with compulsory purchase orders. He was also an independent expert for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, the now defunct Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute and the Law Society.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBFDNN3TJBHMFM7ZPSSYU4RBXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264723},"content":"Between 2009-2011, while the financial crisis was raging, he reviewed more than 100 projects for WK Nowlan Consortium on behalf of the National Asset Management Agency. He was also a member of the Private Residential Tenancies Board’s Dispute Resolution Committee.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WW6LZNDTTNEZBCTYQSKNLYM5GU","additional_properties":{"_id":"2O722OXUCNFWXPPVUUJ6PFGGQQ"},"content":"Paul Good, co-founder of DNG, dies aged 83 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OK7LVKI4PNF4NHS6C3QRCNQT64","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264726},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/12/fred-johnston-obituary-poet-who-helped-found-cuirt-literary-festival/\" target=\"_blank\">Fred Johnston</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"IDMZSWGRVFEZPBATXRIGZWZPCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264727},"content":"Poet","type":"header"},{"_id":"344Y66HI6ZGSFPHQTNUJKVNFTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264728},"content":"Fred Johnston, the Belfast-born poet, died on September 9th, shortly before his 73rd birthday. He was also a translator, literary critic, musician and human-rights campaigner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AXTQRJG7NFHINAGRFMWJH6MTOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264729},"content":"He moved to Dublin in 1969 and was awarded a Hennessy Prize in the New Irish Writing section of the Irish Press three years later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6AKESQZJBDS5MNITP55HSJ6OU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264730},"content":"He settled in Galway in 1978 after attending a writer’s workshop there. Johnston’s first book of poetry, Life and Death in the Midlands, and his first collection of short stories, Portrait of a Girl in a Spanish Hat, were published the following year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2VTJCBMDLFFCXPHP62CCGIBGAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264731},"content":"He was one of the founders of the Cúirt Festival of Poetry and also set up the Western Writers’ Centre. In total, he produced three novels, four volumes of short stories, nine books of poetry and a play. His work as a critic was published in Poetry Ireland, The New Statesman, The Spectator, The Irish Times and Harper’s and Queen magazine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7I6JE2HCBHMVAMVIVL7ZMOYJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264732},"content":"A year spent in Algeria fostered his love of French and he later became a translator of the work of the Senegalese poet Babacar Sall and the Breton Colette Witorski. He was awarded the Prix de l’Ambassade by the French government in 2000 and was writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IMVA5T5WNVHOREA63YNG5YBSEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"DXGIMK366NDKRJQB5SO74CAQX4"},"content":"Singing an Irish song of parting and loss – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TF6GPKNTZ5G6ZLEYHDKAL3S6GE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264736},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/12/john-odriscoll-obituary-garda-who-broke-the-grip-of-gangland-figures/\" target=\"_blank\">John O’Driscoll</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"X3OHDKA2Q5DKNONO6HXFK5NO6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255887},"content":"Garda","type":"header"},{"_id":"S4AE3AMLTBDKXO37YCNN4TEH5Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264737},"content":"Assistant commissioner of An Garda Síochána John O’Driscoll was remembered as a gifted leader and a skilled communicator, after his sudden death on September 27th, aged 64.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WJUHX5AUDBC2LDQF53T3ARBK2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264738},"content":"He was credited with providing the leadership that helped gardaí to break the grip of gangland figures and seriously disrupt the activities of criminals such as the Kinahan family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DK7IAXQ635GRPN5TN622FRIMH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264739},"content":"He joined the guards in 1981 and his early Garda career centred around the Dublin Metropolitan Area, chiefly Fitzgibbon Street, Store Street, and the Bridewell where he was inspector. While working in the north inner city, he put huge efforts into fostering links with the community and steering young people towards sport whenever possible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A2KEGHQQ4RFLDFAEBFPRF36I7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264740},"content":"In 2000, he was transferred into the Garda National Immigration Bureau and was asked to lead the office in 2009. He had been promoted to chief superintendent at this stage and he oversaw prosecutions against child traffickers and people smuggling.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4D3LNEOC5RHKDA5IW5UNNMLRC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264741},"content":"He took over as head of the National Drugs Unit in 2014 and became head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation the following year. His promotion to assistant commissioner in 2016 gave him the responsibility for combating organised and serious crime and made him the public face of these Garda operations.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4UH2RXTZURA55M55FY4G44IVXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264742},"content":"After 41 years of service, he retired in 2022. His memoir, On Duty: Reflections on a Life in the Guards, was published after his death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3PYBNTO3EVCNNKGWBP36UIQSWA","additional_properties":{"_id":"H27AIMWACZB57D43U6KKBNTURY"},"content":"‘Fearless and dedicated’: Former Garda John O’Driscoll was a true patriot and family man, funeral hears – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GWE2OTD5I5FUBA2USBD23FJA7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264745},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/03/mary-orourke-obituary-fianna-fail-grandee-blessed-with-deep-political-stamina/?\" target=\"_blank\">Mary O’Rourke</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"MKRIZ63YBVCSRPZZ26FL3OOKC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264746},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"QZOXLQD3KNFDHLO36TP4WXC37Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264747},"content":"Mary O’Rourke, who died aged 87 on October 3rd, held senior positions in government and opposition for 30 years. After her political career ended, she remained in the public eye as a media pundit and author of a bestselling memoir.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SYY4SODICRGT5L6ETN4ED6P4E4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264748},"content":"While she came from a leading Fianna Fáil family – the Lenihans of Athlone – she carved out a political career on her own merits. She served in several senior ministries, including education and public enterprise, and was deputy leader of Fianna Fáil from 1994 to 2002.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XH55JDVRBREVDMSEWZZFFTUMKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264749},"content":"When Charlie Haughey appointed her as minister for education after the 1987 general election, the minister for foreign affairs was her brother Brian Lenihan. They remain the only brother and sister to have served together in Cabinet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5HXPT35LKFHNXGAFU3VEQ3YG7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264750},"content":"She was one of the shock losers in the 2002 general election but was elected to the Seanad and became leader of the House.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6F5MZCM6GNBUTMUC2EWHNGLTYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264751},"content":"O’Rourke relished the cut and thrust of politics, enjoying spats with opponents and the intrigue that went with internal party manoeuvring. She cultivated good relationships with political journalists in Leinster House and was always a lively and entertaining guest on current affairs shows.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KYK7WYN255GLNBN64SDQM5UH7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264752},"content":"Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said she was a “a commanding and engaging figure – an insightful observer of both political life and societal trends”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GLKS4RU3ONH2RGMUMQTFQOW5T4","additional_properties":{"_id":"DPRV6M73S5EQPFRXWR7U4OFZXA"},"content":"Mary O’Rourke laid the critical groundwork for State’s success in tech – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"KDEWEHXKUFBPZOACD46YRWHMNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264755},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/09/david-davin-power-obituary-a-trusted-and-impartial-political-correspondent-for-rte-during-a-golden-era-in-broadcasting/\" target=\"_blank\">David Davin-Power</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"EFLCV5TJDNHQDMF6D7ZQUBGVS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264756},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"TUNVMJG2CBB63EP36T32MTKTDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264757},"content":"David Davin-Power had a long and varied career in the media and was known for reporting on some of the momentous events in modern history in an incisive and impartial manner. He was 72 when he died on October 31st.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQZH7XB7DNDITMRZE2HIX7ENAY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264758},"content":"He began his career in journalism with the Irish Medical Times, and in 1976 he moved to the Irish Press as a subeditor, where one of his colleagues was David Hanly. The two of them moved to RTÉ in the late 1970s and were appointed as the first presenters of Morning Ireland which went on air in November 1984. The radio programme quickly developed a wide listenership, making household names of its two presenters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPKQCNUDFNHLNO246IIJLKT4LA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264759},"content":"He left RTÉ to head the news operation of Ireland’s first commercial broadcaster, Century Radio in 1989. After the station closed, he was appointed political correspondent at the Evening Press, and almost simultaneously, RTÉ offered him the job of Northern Correspondent. He decided that broadcasting was where his future lay and headed for Belfast. His time in Northern Ireland coincided with a crucial period for the evolving peace process and he kept listeners and viewers up to date with the events that ultimately led to the Belfast Agreement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESZRAFEN5BDXPJJSJGCHZHMKVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264760},"content":"In 2001 he returned to Dublin and held the role of RTÉ's political correspondent for 16 years. His calm demeanour and precise use of language were the hallmarks of his broadcasting style.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PYAXDIYWZ5DEZOC5FX4S7ENAJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"757Q2AEMAVBNVH7QIS3CZRJ3HQ"},"content":"Bryan Dobson: David Davin-Power was a natural storyteller in both professional and personal life – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OE2U2OQKFBHTHGW6XHGX7C2DK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255911},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/12/kathleen-watkins-obituary-broadcaster-author-and-one-half-of-the-original-power-couple/\" target=\"_blank\">Kathleen Watkins</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"ZL3U4W2HMNB6DOQG6T2BMW3NUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264764},"content":"Author, broadcaster, musician","type":"header"},{"_id":"TUUZOSGO7NFHRB6EEHHOSFGFKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264765},"content":"Kathleen Watkins was a broadcaster, award-winning author, musician and patron of the arts. Her death, on November 7th at the age of 90, came almost five years to the day after the death of her husband, broadcaster Gay Byrne. They were television’s golden couple and were familiar faces at arts and cultural events in Dublin for many decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4G4VCN4Z2VFF7EIOIFJV3ON6XA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264766},"content":"She was an accomplished harpist and singer and made history as the first continuity announcer to appear on screen on the opening night of Telefís Éireann on New Year’s Eve, 1961. Her honeyed voice meant she was always in demand for voiceover work while her on-screen television work included presenting shows such as Faces & Places and Holiday Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ER2D7HLNWFDKZEQQTMINNUJSEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264767},"content":"She said no one was surprised as she was when she became a children’s author at the age of 82. Her three children’s books were based on stories she told her grandchildren about a piglet called Pigín. Her great love of poetry led to her compiling two books of poems – An Ordinary Woman, in 2019 and One for Everyone, in 2020.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FA5T37NC4ZE3NABGSR7O7UYMBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264768},"content":"President Michael D Higgins said Ms Watkins “represented the best of her generation in so many ways and during such a formative period in our country”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KHO7V62RMNF7RJZTC3NYQ2YGRE","additional_properties":{"_id":"4VLUCVTEVNGGXPQ5CSGWVGQOF4"},"content":"Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"34KO4CZZYJH2XLMWENCQ5O27S4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264771},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/12/07/johnny-duhan-obituary-formidable-musician-and-family-man/\" target=\"_blank\">Johnny Duhan</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"GKQCWBVFLBFQFLJMGD7ZNMBC2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264772},"content":"Musician","type":"header"},{"_id":"WMH4Y5SH4FHHDLUP4VR5XQG3FE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264773},"content":"Songwriter and musician Johnny Duhan died in a drowning accident in Galway on November 12th at the age of 74.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGH5BW6FINDW5I5GK5IOXBAKPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264774},"content":"Originally from Limerick, he joined the band Granny’s Intentions as a teenager and moved to Dublin, where he once shared a flat with Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. The band toured Ireland and the UK, and later moved to London. He composed eight of the band’s 11 songs on their sole album, Honest Injun. When he was 21 he struck out on his own and settled in Galway with his wife-to-be, Maureen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SFHOEXDGEBF5HANKIIRHZMWKPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264775},"content":"Duhan wrote songs and performed solo in the early 1980s and occasionally toured with other bands. Artists who recorded his songs included Christy Moore, Dolores Keane, Mary Black and The Dubliners. Many years later, regular references to him in Ken Bruen’s series of Jack Taylor detective novels brought him new fans from all over the world. He also composed the music for the 1988 film Reefer and the Model.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ECITDAVUVJF63BMWTH3XNS6NPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264776},"content":"His most famous song The Voyage was recorded by Christy Moore in 1989 and has become a folk standard. As well as his eight solo albums, he wrote a series of autobiographical books, beginning with There is a Time<i> </i>in 2001, while Waltons published his songbook in 2003.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I3P4FGVSLVGIHKW37R7757ER7A","additional_properties":{"_id":"UOQGKLD4QBEFXCRB5U24TSM35U"},"content":"‘A life well-lived, a talent realised’: Tributes paid to Johnny Duhan who died in Galway swimming accident – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"EJNW43PIIJDATNLHQ56ULX6Y3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255925},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/30/dervilla-donnelly-obituary-internationally-renowed-chemist/\" target=\"_blank\">Dervilla Donnelly</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"VYLTDZGHK5EYXFYWUJXOCGG7IE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264780},"content":"Scientist","type":"header"},{"_id":"VSC5TPAJ5VEWNLWZ7V4YVOSKI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264781},"content":"Prof Dervilla Donnelly, a chemist who made a major contribution to research, science policy and public service both in Ireland and abroad, died on November 14th, aged 94.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WBURRC5WA5B6JMEVB2BDYJ34YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264782},"content":"She began her teaching career in University College Dublin (UCD) in 1956 in the old School of Chemistry and later moved with the university to its present location in Belfield. She was professor of phytochemistry – the study of chemicals with biological activity derived from plants – for 16 years. She was described by UCD as “one of the most respected and influential chemists” of the university.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TIOYGJSXAJFAFFKESQGIPEMOTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264783},"content":"Prof Donnelly was the first female president of the Royal Dublin Society, from 1989 to 1992, and the first woman to receive the Royal Irish Academy’s highest honour, the Cunningham Medal, in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3BNZ347WO5FU3ICEJKNB6RXJIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264784},"content":"Always in demand for her skills, she served as chairwoman of the Custom House Docks Development Authority, the National Education Convention and the Forum on Early Childhood Education. She was also chairwoman and director of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction from 2000-2005.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2KDK6U2BJVDYBJMPXJANA3Z6E4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264785},"content":"In 2000 she was appointed to the Austrian Council for Science and Technology, a position she held for 10 years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NYN5DC2NZJCKNFQYWOBD77WJOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264786},"content":"Other appointments include her presidency of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland, governor of The Irish Times Trust and a director of The Irish Times Limited.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XTDVPSIHEBCFHBOGO5OI4UE5IU","additional_properties":{"_id":"Q3PGSYIFN5GO5K4OM5KCBLDFFE"},"content":"Renowned Irish scientist Dervilla Donnelly dies aged 94 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UTEQIRITZ5GBVGWBSHVZU4QXBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264789},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/20/jon-kenny-obituary-portraits-of-irish-eccentricity-that-mingled-hilarity-with-sadness/\" target=\"_blank\">Jon Kenny</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"KZ2NND5TINCBBKNCPNL5M32KT4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264790},"content":"Comedian, actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"JEDAKEPYMBBDZCOKX53DUS76XE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264791},"content":"Jon Kenny, who died aged 67 on November 15th, was one of Ireland’s most beloved comedians, and a respected actor on stage and screen. He was also a talented musician who continued to write and perform songs throughout his life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LUCKWMXDUFAE7HAZGOIDUT25XM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264792},"content":"The Limerick man first found fame as one half of the D’Unbelievables, a duo he began with Pat Shortt, whom he met in the late 1980s. Their act became one of the biggest names in Irish comedy and they played to packed houses all year round. When Jon Kenny was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2000, he had to stop performing while receiving treatment. He returned to a successful solo career, while he and Shortt reunited for a sell-out D’Unbelievables tour in 2011.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HLOCSPBW7REBHM6EMJM3MIEAFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264793},"content":"On television, he will be forever associated with the Father Ted series, where he played two roles – the local cinema manager owner, and a Eurovision host – but he excelled in straight parts too. His work included sharing the screen with Liam Neeson in Les Misérables. He voiced a woodcutter in Wolf Walkers and portrayed Gerry the fiddler in The Banshees of Inisherin. He also appeared in Angela’s Ashes and The Van.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5M75BUSUFFEFMPK3MV724LIBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264794},"content":"On stage, his portrayal of Bull McCabe in Shoestring Theatre Company’s run of John B Keane’s The Field received rave reviews, while he made the role of Dicky Mick Dicky O’Connor in The Matchmaker his own.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7T5ESXJPGFC3ZMXEY5G4VSTHYE","additional_properties":{"_id":"ANLCPODPBNHWBCUBJ5K2RODKOE"},"content":"Jon Kenny ‘sprinkled laughing love wherever he went’, funeral told – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TUE2Q6TW3FHXTETLGP34K6IZ6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264797},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/12/07/gemma-hussey-obituary-second-woman-ever-to-be-appointed-to-cabinet/?\" target=\"_blank\">Gemma Hussey</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"A5WET4XPVZDIHEY45B6OUPVQMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264798},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"KP2OTXHSSNEMZHYYLCIGUT43ZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264799},"content":"Gemma Hussey, who died on November 26th aged 86, was the third woman to hold Cabinet office since independence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFD52O2GTZFN5PY7IYHROH2KWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264800},"content":"After studying languages at UCD, she set up her own language school. She cofounded the Women’s Political Association and was its chairwoman from 1973 to 1975. She was elected to the Seanad in 1977 as an Independent and, four years later, stood for Fine Gael in the general election. While she failed to win a Dáil seat at her first attempt she was re-elected to the Seanad and was appointed leader of the House by the incoming taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAJ24ME6L5EX7FQE5MVFYG6ZS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264801},"content":"She was elected to the Dáil in the first general election of 1982 and when Fine Gael made it back into government in the second election of that year, she became minister for education.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CQUW3IMEBVBCXERG7DJDMRVCFA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264802},"content":"She established aural and oral exams and created the National Parents Council, but it was the battle over teachers’ pay that dominated her tenure, as the government struggled to get public finances under control.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ZSVSIZVM5HYDMY66IBXOI2GTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264803},"content":"She also served as minister for social welfare and minister for labour before retiring from politics in 1989. She wrote a memorable book about her time in office – At the Cutting Edge: Cabinet Diaries 1982-1987.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QSLHLDR4ABAL5H4VFWO54LKDPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264804},"content":"She later immersed herself in the European Women’s Federation, encouraging women in eastern Europe to become active in politics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DVLCF2G4EBFIPBSPNE6FQ2FC3E","additional_properties":{"_id":"KNGM3MKX3VARFH4ELOP6DCQM3A"},"content":"Gemma Hussey remembered as a ‘trailblazer’ politician in humanist funeral ceremony – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5DLVP2P3ZFAJ7K4YCAMLQIHKYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800429103},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/12/12/dickie-rock-obituary-irelands-first-rock-star-who-blazed-a-trail-through-the-1960s-music-scene/\" target=\"_blank\">Dickie Rock</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"OGF6XDGHBJFANFVRGJ2ADOACL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264809},"content":"Singer","type":"header"},{"_id":"HOG6WLBSUJAILF3H26AB4PW2RA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264810},"content":"Singer and former Eurovision contestant for Ireland Dickie Rock died on December 6th at the age of 88.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVPUIQKTPRB3NGB4TXTAVUWGHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264811},"content":"The Dubliner was one of the biggest stars of Ireland’s showband scene as a member of the Miami Showband and later as a solo artist, with a career spanning seven decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5AGBRRBLMBGVPJGMJU5R7TUPWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264812},"content":"An apprentice welder, he was recruited to lead the Miami Showband in 1963. That December, he enjoyed his first number one when the band covered Elvis’s There’s Always Me. In all, the band had seven number one hits during his tenure, with songs such as From the Candy Store on the Corner, in 1964, and Every Step of the Way which became the first release by an Irish band to go straight to the top.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YC6ME4J5GBCH5OUQRGN3DLWDLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264813},"content":"In 1966, he came fourth in the Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg, with his song Come Back to Stay, another number one hit in Ireland. He left the Miami Showband in 1972, three years before the group was ambushed by loyalist paramilitaries and three of its musicians murdered.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OUXX7RTWKNFI3DJCH32I64QV3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264814},"content":"His first solo single, The Last Waltz, reached number 15. But his biggest hit would be a cover of John Denver’s Back Home Again, which went to number one in 1977.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LRKHMVPVWBA77BZVTSZLAPUKBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264815},"content":"He continued to tour to packed houses into his 80s, finally announcing his retirement at the age of 84 in 2021.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MFL6XY2VRBDA5K4MDNABPAIHTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"RLMEUOPKJ5DF3KYECGWNXEWCGI"},"content":" In pictures: Twink, Finbar Furey, Gordon D’Arcy, attend ‘legend’ Dickie Rock’s funeral in Dublin – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"The Irish Times’s obituary writers have marked the deaths of more than 110 people this year, from entrepreneurs to musicians to journalists. Here is a selection"},"display_date":"2024-12-27T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Tony O’Reilly, Nell McCafferty, Ian Bailey and more: 50 people who died in 2024","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KD7YZX6HVVGKXKUD76DJOMBYEM","auth":{"1":"4cf9c8f44705624e435584565fb7c580eb6f07ca8e008cdd7a78e6991daff04b"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KD7YZX6HVVGKXKUD76DJOMBYEM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Opinion"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/27/obituaries-of-2024-charlie-bird-nell-mccafferty-ian-bailey-and-more-50-people-who-died-in-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"M2OOCGJJDNH57HRCB4K3GNA2EY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":265,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/cc5e3b6e-be7b-4b65-997d-87d197872cd6/versions/1734815076/media/07382dee5e96e3449bbd196a22163309_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/22/merrily-harpur-painter-cartoonist-author-and-co-founder-of-the-strokestown-international-poetry-festival/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5KGR5ZXU6FBW5FOLSB52O6LLTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was typical of Merrily Harpur’s joie de vivre that she arrived at the Trinity College Elizabethan Society Garden Party in 1968 wearing a stuffed hen as a hat, an act of bravado commemorated by a photograph in the Irish Times the following day. A bright, witty young woman with a flair for drawing, Merrily became editor of Trinity’s Icarus magazine along with her great friend Margaret Hickey, and blossomed under English teachers such as Brendan Kennelly, David Norris and a youthful Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. She relished student life and the atmosphere of Dublin, the birthplace of her father Brian, who grew up in Timahoe, Co Laois. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHZVAZ4WDFB5ZOCNXKT3M6LO5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"After Trinity she started training as a picture restorer, before making a decisive entrée into Fleet Street as a cartoonist – at a time when cartooning was almost exclusively a male bastion. Alan Coren, editor of Punch, was an early mentor of her work, and soon her drawings began to appear in the Guardian, the Times of London, Sunday Telegraph, Evening Standard and various magazines, including Tara, the Aer Lingus in-house magazine. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5HBJZDDZZFFZGC4ILEVVJ5QEU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the mid-1980s, weary of metropolitan life, she decided to renew her Irish connections by moving to a cottage in Toormore, near Schull, West Cork, continuing her cartoon work via the relatively new invention of the fax machine. She immersed herself in Irish culture, especially traditional music, becoming friends with members of the Chieftains, and penning CD sleeve-notes for Matt Molloy and John Carty. She also indulged in her favourite pastime, fly-fishing, especially in Oughterard, Co Galway. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIQCPTYPE5DF7NFFUWENI5LKDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the mid-1990s, she relocated to a remote cottage on the side of Sliabh Bawn at Strokestown, Co Roscommon. There she built an artist’s studio, planted a circle of oak trees, kept hens, peacocks and a trusty tortoise, and created a full-size maze with a “hazel tree of knowledge” at the centre (still regularly enjoyed by children of the local Clooncagh national school). Most of all she co-founded the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, which still thrives. The festival was intended to raise the profile of the town, and this ideal seemed to reach its apogee by the attendance of Seamus Heaney in 2006. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HJUCJIGQPFHFDNTOHQKQDIZAVQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Merrily herself was a talented poet. She won the Irish K250 International Poetry Prize in 2004, and her poems were shortlisted for the Irish National Poetry Competition and the UK Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition. All the while she was painting, cartooning and writing. Books appeared: The Nightmares of Dream Topping poked fun at urbanites moving to the country; Unheard of Ambridge brought to life the silent characters in BBC’s long-running radio series The Archers. Another book, Mystery Big Cats, explored the strange world of “anomalous big cats’”, including sightings of them in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XSLXU6YXHFHINCPVCX2ZUD754A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Merrily loved an adventure and in 2003 she decided to change her life again, moving to the west of England and embracing village life in Dorset. There she organised “Mythic Imagination” weekends and a “fox festival”, while, initially, continuing to direct the Strokestown poetry festival. She was also able to focus on her great love for painting, mainly oils of landscapes and still-lifes. She threw herself into the biennial Dorset Arts Week, holding sell-out shows from her cottage and persuading her fellow village artists to form the soi-disant “Tate Cattistock”. An early riser and enthusiast of life, Merrily was also pragmatic, wise and kind (she devotedly looked after her 90-year-old aunt, Daphne Harpur, in Schull). She continued to travel to Ireland in her seventh decade, visiting her relatives and friends in Laois, Kildare and West Cork. Although proposed to by several boyfriends, Merrily preferred her independence and never married. She leaves behind three brothers, Patrick, John and James; and a niece, Arin.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"James Harpur"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2024-12-22T18:50:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Merrily Harpur – painter, cartoonist, author and co-founder of the Strokestown International Poetry Festival","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"FTCU4IV72RAMFJNJUN2UZ4GJ7Q","auth":{"1":"5b036a7c10cc9cb729b0f27acc116a16ffc29aeefbec5458f8752b0398372c95"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/FTCU4IV72RAMFJNJUN2UZ4GJ7Q.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/22/merrily-harpur-painter-cartoonist-author-and-co-founder-of-the-strokestown-international-poetry-festival/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"2FLN7RJQ6JCPVO7GDODY5OPT7A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":356,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/df12e853-136c-4626-8dbd-1d8b9ddcff16/versions/1733908084/media/e6df50a4ff45ce39e4d0631d4aa016b4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/14/anna-lo-obituary-fearless-and-trailblazing-politician-who-stood-for-equality/","content_elements":[{"_id":"63L3ZDWLYFB45DKPEF7IDT5THE","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>June 16th, 1950","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 6th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDGTNGUV3BDTHNXPFLXWQPG4JA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337256},"content":"Anna Lo, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/11/08/anna-lo-tributes-after-former-alliance-party-mla-dies-aged-74/\" target=\"_blank\">who has died</a> aged 74, was the first politician born in east Asia to be elected to the Northern Assembly. She was described by the Alliance Party leader Naomi Long as a “trailblazer”. Lo, who was born in Hong Kong and served at Stormont from 2007 until 2016, was also a driving force in the Chinese Welfare Association in Northern Ireland and a member of the North’s Equality Commission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VZ4AE7AD5JBR3I73QSSXABAXHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337257},"content":"A feminist and self-described humanist, she campaigned against racial discrimination, while herself suffering from racist threats and intimidation – one of the reasons she cited for not seeking to continue as an Assembly member for the constituency of South Belfast in the 2016 Stormont election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5GXOWT3R65BWVL3VP5Q5PTYO64","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337258},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/breaking-new-ground-1.1292971\" target=\"_blank\">In an interview with Susan McKay in 2007</a> she explained how her mother named her Manwah, meaning elegance. However, her teacher in her Hong Kong primary school, whom she remembered as a towering bullying Scot with a colonial attitude, insisted pupils must have English names.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7QLMOSX2SVHQZDSDMYGHW7U5KA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337259},"content":"She asked one of her brothers what name she should take. “He was reading Pride and Prejudice at the time and said I should take the name of Mr D’Arcy’s sister, Georgianna,” she said. “He wrote it out for me but half the class couldn’t say it and I couldn’t spell it, so I became Anna.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NG3YWZ4OAJA4XD7PIAVREKGBL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337260},"content":"Her brothers went to university but her parents decided she was through with education. “My mother said girls shouldn’t be too clever – if you are too clever you won’t get a husband,” she recalled. “That infuriated me. I loved school. I was burning inside. I was determined to get ahead in life just to show my mother.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3BNX7OG7JADDJATQDX3RMKTMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337261},"content":"Her first job after school was as a clerk, and then a secretary. In Hong Kong in 1972, she met and later married a Belfast journalist, the late David Watson, who was then working on the South China Morning Post. They moved first to London and then in 1974 to Belfast, where her husband worked for the Belfast Telegraph. The couple divorced in 2010.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SD46IZPTC5FVHANGU5WVOE2OVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337262},"content":"She first did secretarial work at a newspaper and then at the BBC where, when it was learned she spoke fluent Cantonese, she became a contributor to the World Service. She reported on the Vietnamese boat people who came to Northern Ireland in 1979.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7OFTNGZYJFB4BOAEMN5TBELDZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733907764792},"content":"She took a period away from work to have her two sons. Around this time she became aware of the racism some Chinese people, many of them working in restaurants, were suffering in Belfast. She worked for a time as a police interpreter and in 1986 got a job with the newly created Chinese Welfare Association (CWA).","type":"text"},{"_id":"SWUVIQ54FBAB5HXIE2HTCRWUPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337264},"content":"At this time, she finally fulfilled her wish to go to university, attending the University of Ulster and graduating as a social worker in 1993. She worked initially with Barnardo’s and then in 1997 was appointed director of the CWA, where she was instrumental in getting British legislation to outlaw race discrimination extended to Northern Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4UCDYW3N2BANPFQ4WXMBBD5KZU","additional_properties":{"_id":"XF4O4YTNJBHBNMJFPLZKR2GQTY"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"22ASV55VPJHOXHOKJA6WFFGV2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337265},"content":"She told McKay that a couple of years before her election in 2007 she asked a respected Northern Ireland political figure to say a few words in Chinese at a launch she was attending. “Och, I’ll just say, ‘Give me a number 44′,” he replied.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UAQ4FMKAUNHVBIHJDLYA4USA2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337266},"content":"That was at the softer end of racism. As an elected representative, the hostility became more pronounced. Possibly her worst experience was in 2009 when the PSNI warned her of death threats against her. This was after she campaigned on behalf of more than 100 members of the Roma community being subjected to intimidation in south Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KPL7EEOVYJCWLJUIMSJRYPY6RI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337267},"content":"“I’m not going to be deterred by these people,” she said. “If they think that they can stop me from speaking out against them or speaking for the vulnerable people, new ethnic minority communities or migrant workers, they are mistaken.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VHIQQMKMJBDZHKPXJWO4AKLIDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337268},"content":"Former Alliance leader David Ford, in paying tribute, recalled how once she fearlessly confronted people who were interfering with her car. “She just went straight down towards them and they ran away. So five-foot-nothing Anna was able to terrify street hoodlums who were probably 30 years younger than her.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GRUGLJW5SZCHJLI5NYLFYY25Y4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337269},"content":"Lo was the centre of controversy in 2014 when <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/anna-lo-seeks-to-recover-lost-ground-over-united-ireland-comments-1.1735392\" target=\"_blank\">she told</a> the Irish News she favoured a united Ireland while adding that it was “very artificial” for Ireland to be divided up and for “the corner of Ireland to be part of the United Kingdom”. This discomfited some senior party figures, who feared it would damage support. Alliance was then facing into the European Parliament election with her as party candidate. Nonetheless, she won 44,432 votes, increasing the Alliance vote by 1.6 per cent, although failing to be elected.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDOMJ7NUJ5DLLA4FAIVUNWFIXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337270},"content":"David Ford said she was a “formidable politician”. Current leader Naomi Long said “her service to the Chinese community, to good relations and to the city of Belfast, much of which went unseen by most, was transformational”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RXXHBMNBFRGD7DRODOBUT3X7EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337271},"content":"Lo died in Belfast City Hospital following complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Her family said she “stood for and fought for equality, for women’s rights, against discrimination including racism, and for a political system to serve the needs of people rather than reinforce historic divisions”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKR43NU5PRC27HI5NGYH3PMABE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337272},"content":"Anna Lo is survived by her sons, Conall and Owen, two grandchildren and partner Robert.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"A feminist and self-described humanist she campaigned against racial discrimination while herself suffering from racist threats and intimidation"},"display_date":"2024-12-14T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Anna Lo obituary: Fearless and trailblazing politician who stood for equality","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ZAQNE7MTJUW7GUA3TX3V3A3ZMA","auth":{"1":"c4227728056310bc6c141cac92fa30324963282802bf2ad2578d4b89f1f5af96"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZAQNE7MTJUW7GUA3TX3V3A3ZMA.JPG"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/14/anna-lo-obituary-fearless-and-trailblazing-politician-who-stood-for-equality/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"FS3HGREK4FDQ7MMYFEVB5FP37M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":559,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/7ad47568-515a-42d1-b6d4-70ae754842c7/versions/1733954765/media/7812b6774595d49fdfeb5bd7f03a2cb0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/12/dickie-rock-obituary-irelands-first-rock-star-who-blazed-a-trail-through-the-1960s-music-scene/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2QGF4SDQGJCAHMRBA65F3CDQ4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 10th, 1936","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>December 6th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"UNZ7YTXF6BHMJOSLKQW6TR42KE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018799},"content":"Dickie Rock, who has died aged 88, was Ireland’s original pop idol. Known for his expressive singing voice and incendiary stage presence, he blazed a trail through the sleepy world of 1960s Irish music – first as frontman of the Miami Showband, later as a solo artist. Where Britain had Beatle-mania, Ireland was swept aloft by “Dickie-mania”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AFI2CNCLNVCDNORFGQQKBMO2TE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018800},"content":"Rock grew up worshipping Frank Sinatra. But it was Elvis to whom he would be compared when the former welder from Cabra in Dublin was recruited to lead the Miami Showband in 1963. Shy offstage, he seemed to come alive when the music struck up and the crowd roared. “When I hit the stage I change. I metamorphosise. I become a different person. I give off a vibe,” he would observe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N6K4HXHFJZGSBOKJS4BEX5YPXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018801},"content":"Success came quickly. Music in the 1960s was a production line, and the Miami Showband churned out singles at a blistering rate and with immediate results. In December 1963, Rock enjoyed his first number one when the Showband covered Elvis’s There’s Always Me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AIXVGC3UZNCQ5IXCA2K7T2M2ZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018802},"content":"Over the next two years, they would top the charts on four more occasions. In 1964, From the Candy Store on the Corner to the Chapel on the Hill made history as the song with the longest title to reach Irish number one. Twelve months later, they smashed the record books all over again when Every Step of the Way became the first release by an Irish band to go straight to the top.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXU7FBYPUZB5LGV75FOYISGCNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018803},"content":"Rock was a superstar in a country where celebrity remained a largely unfamiliar concept. “Spit on Me Dickie” became the unlikely byword for rock’n’roll mania, Irish-style. Meanwhile, the revelation, years later, that he’d fathered a child out of wedlock after a backstage assignation with a fan confirmed the domestic music scene to be wilder than its staid image.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVK5JRVMQRGNPLZD34NADBXCD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018804},"content":"Then there was his unlikely 2020 feud with Johnny Logan. Here was an Irish style Blur v Oasis ding-dong that briefly dominated the news cycle, after <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/johnny-logan-dickie-rock-is-a-legend-in-his-own-head-he-lives-in-a-fantasy-world-1.4245362\" target=\"_blank\">Logan made remarks about Rock in an interview with The Irish Times</a>. That was before the two parties made peace in the traditional Irish fashion of saying nice things about one another on Joe Duffy’s Liveline.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RD2XQMQRHDFMH3KTCVIVI2XMJM","additional_properties":{"_id":"2X36VIATCNDHTADNQ4MT5AMOLM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"FMGOLQBA25E6VLVXDUHOLFN2ME","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018806},"content":"Rock was born Richard Rock on North Strand, Dublin in October 1936. His great-grandfather was a clockmaker from Germany, while Rock’s father was a blacksmith who worked in the docklands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZRKL4AC7GNCSPA3U5TBWJPSZHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018807},"content":"It was a tough, working-class upbringing, blighted by tragedy when Dickie’s younger brother, Joseph, was struck by a motorist and died. “He got a bang of a car, while he was just sitting on his bike, he died,” Rock would recall.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GN4HGUYQ5RGNFC4LIQPTEKHUDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018808},"content":"But he also remembered there being great love in the household. The 1966 RTÉ documentary, Dickie: Portrait of an Artist, begins with the rest of the family at the breakfast table. Rock’s mother calls him, and the star pokes his head shyly around the corner. Of the superstar who had dance-hall crowds swooning to every hip-swivel, there was not a sign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPKUBR2LZ5CCJMC5774UR7K25E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018809},"content":"“We were working class,” he recalled in 2016. “I remember before central heating was a fixture in most Irish houses, my da used to go upstairs and lie on each of his five kids’ beds for 10 minutes a piece, so they would be nice and warm for us when we went to bed.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TDFHPYIF7FG7DR7FIVBPWNCDOI","additional_properties":{"_id":"W7VT7M2BUZAQHC5GOHGLNLJ22E"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"X3GS65T5ZRHVHG3PU2YFZP3TFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018811},"content":"Like Elvis, his singing talent was evident from a young age – and as was the case with Presley, he never regarded music as something to which he could realistically aspire. His first job after leaving school was as a jeweller’s assistant in Talbot Street. He emigrated to Manchester at 17, though he didn’t settle and pined for Dublin. “I used to walk up to Manchester Airport to hear the announcements of the planes leaving for Dublin. I used to be crying. I just missed home.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WG5MIVQO4VD6TAO5H7M5S7RGZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018812},"content":"He returned to Dublin and became an apprentice welder. “I was approached by a fellow worker, who used to hear me singing while I was working and he asked if I wanted to join his band, as lead vocalist,” he recalled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RNODSO5HRJEUDGFLEGQPEDMVZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018813},"content":"By the time he joined The Miami Showband in 1963, Ireland was ready for a musical star to call its own. A new optimism had replaced the moribund economy and mass emigration of the 1950s – and a generation of young people saw a life for themselves in Ireland. They also saw something in Rock – a forceful singer who could move as wildly as Mick Jagger and had a better voice than all of The Beatles combined.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7CDQK3SY5DI7NF6NSCH7RTS5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018814},"content":"“I wasn’t born six foot one and fantastic looking, like Elvis,” he would reflect. “Still, neither was Sinatra or Tony Bennett. But something happens, you give off something, whatever it is.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQYGGI5A2JDOFGB7FRYYGCV4RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018815},"content":"Whatever it was, people couldn’t get enough. In 1966, he was invited to enter Ireland’s first National Song Contest and was chosen to represent Ireland in Luxembourg, where he placed fourth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UKR4APVQK5CE7LLH32FDGPPFKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018816},"content":"That same year, he married 20-year-old Judy Murray, whom he had met at her uncle’s ballroom, The Ierne, at Parnell Square in Dublin. “He was on the bill and came down to the kitchen to get a drink,’ Judy would say, “and we’ve been together ever since.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C2CRQ2U3URAZ3NHG3XRHVLZIFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018817},"content":"Rock was a showman, but unlike many of his peers, he understood that music was ultimately a business. It was obvious to him that the Miami Showband was bringing in huge sums. “I’m walking down the street and people are asking for autographs, yet I’m thinking, ‘What good is being Dickie Rock, having hit records, if you’re not having the rewards?” he would reflect. “I’m still getting the same money as the sax player. You can replace the sax player. Don’t dare say you can replace me!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OA42JHKFWRHJVKEFXOFDMI75LA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018818},"content":"He officially left the Miami Showband in 1972 – three years before the group was ambushed by loyalist paramilitaries while crossing the border from a gig in Belfast, resulting in the murder of three of the musicians. He had a moderate smash with his first solo single, The Last Waltz, which reached number 15. But his biggest hit would be a cover of John Denver’s Back Home Again, which went to number one in 1977, when punk was sweeping Ireland and U2 were bringing Irish music kicking and screaming into the future.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6I32MLG2BNA6VOWXFNOOVXGKS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018819},"content":"Dickie and Judy had six children: sons Joseph, Jason, John, Richard and Peter, and daughter Sarah Jane. Joseph, the eldest, had a developmental disability and died in 1992 after accidentally scalding himself in a care home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"56JU5MCNZNAMJHV2VT2SXJ2IQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018820},"content":"Another son, Richie, was briefly a member of Louis Walsh’s Boyzone, featuring in the group’s notorious 1993 debut on the Late Late Show, where they mimed and danced for a speechless Gay Byrne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Z5LIH2WXJEMPNYSELXUFPRJ2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018821},"content":"There was further turmoil in Rock’s private life when a tabloid revealed that he had fathered a child with a 17-year-old fan in 1975. “I’d only met the girl a few times over the years,” he wrote in his autobiography, Always Me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FBVHW4DEFVAKJNWZP4ZIEG7QHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018822},"content":"“The first time was when she approached me and told me I was the father of her child. Initially, I didn’t believe it, but when I heard all the facts I eventually realised it was true. When I accepted this, I suppose I panicked. I was terrified, realising the hurt it would cause Judy if she found out. I knew it would be like a knife slicing through her heart.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FEQXQJY3NB4JJBWAOZ4LYOTOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018823},"content":"His wife was “extremely upset”, though the marriage survived. “You just have to carry on,” Judy said. “We had a lot in common and a lot going for us and I didn’t want to throw it all away.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"W3LFUTWYRNAPDPP2PCE556HBIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018824},"content":"Tragedy struck in 2001 when his foster brother Vincent (43) died from a heroin overdose. Rock would be heartbroken all over again when Judy died in 2022 from Covid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6TYHNMISJE27F5GEUD3CO4PV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018825},"content":"In his later years, Rock became notorious as a skinflint – a reputation he embraced. In an interview with the Irish Sun, he jokingly recalled an exchange about his tightness with a friend, comedian Sil Fox. “Sil says I’m so mean even the pockets on my pool table are tight,” he told the Irish Sun. “My fridge has a lock on it. I put a fork in my sugar bowl when visitors come around, to save money.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"H6NWIXGDDNCGPGUFEEZRY5HIDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018826},"content":"Dickie Rock’s popularity never waned. Unlike many showband singers, he remained a household name and continued playing to packed rooms. He was Ireland’s first rock star and blazed a trail to the end.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FD5V3JQTR5ELZEDRHFFXPHEWHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018827},"content":"He is survived by children Jason, John, Richard, Sarah Jane and Peter.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Shy off-stage, once the music struck up and the crowd roared, he became an icon"},"display_date":"2024-12-12T07:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Dickie Rock obituary: Ireland’s first rock star who blazed a trail through the 1960s music scene","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WZN5TPXY244KPRZ7N27KSFZNOU","auth":{"1":"dc236636ef9db8f7898a95fa83bc749863797ce6be166eb4d1d582988b464dc9"},"focal_point":{"x":2593,"y":1362},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WZN5TPXY244KPRZ7N27KSFZNOU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/12/dickie-rock-obituary-irelands-first-rock-star-who-blazed-a-trail-through-the-1960s-music-scene/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"OBAAYU7BWVHIBG5BL6GYV2YT6I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":337,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/3036e3c4-00dc-4db2-b119-1aa906b8797c/versions/1733307336/media/6a680e4f5789bfca0dc8cbf406fc20f7_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/johnny-duhan-obituary-formidable-musician-and-family-man/","content_elements":[{"_id":"GA4GB7D4GBE7FA3R557ACBJUVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>March 30th, 1950","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 12th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTF7LNR6FNBKBN6U5MFKHJGBNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382548},"content":"Songwriting is all the poorer for the recent death of one of our finest. Johnny Duhan, born in Limerick, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/12/body-recovered-in-search-for-two-swimmers-missing-in-co-galway/\" target=\"_blank\">drowned</a> while swimming off Silver Strand in Galway. A kind, thoughtful and selfless man, for whom family was everything, he left behind a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/12/body-recovered-in-search-for-two-swimmers-missing-in-co-galway/\" target=\"_blank\">formidable musical legacy.</a>","type":"text"},{"_id":"2W2O2QXDBRBOTHXEWD6DOORW64","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382549},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/09/15/spiritual-inspiration-after-a-nasty-review-drove-me-to-write-one-of-my-best-songs/\" target=\"_blank\">The Voyage was perhaps his best-known song</a>, having been covered first by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christy-moore/\" target=\"_blank\">Christy Moore</a> and then other artists. A philosophical reflection on familial ties, the song’s maritime metaphors charted the odyssey of a couple navigating the gale force winds and doldrums that inevitably beset anyone on their life’s course. Although not Johnny’s personal favourite, The Voyage marked him apart as a songwriter of substance whose songs were also covered by Mary Black, Dolores Keane, The Dubliners and others.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P4YPU356X5C75N6MKIHBI4WTBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382550},"content":"Johnny was one of nine children, one of whom died before Johnny was born. His parents, John and Christina (nee Murphy), raised their family on Wolfe Tone Street, Limerick. Johnny attended the Christian Brothers national school on Sexton Street but hated it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O4QOYUKWBBEHPCDT5Z63B6Y57A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382551},"content":"Duhan was writing songs from an early age. He left school at 15 and joined the band Granny’s Intentions. He moved to Dublin, where he shared a flat with Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. The band toured Ireland and the UK, and later moved to London on the promise of a major record deal. They recorded their sole album, Honest Injun, on the Deram label in 1970, with Duhan composing eight of the band’s 11 songs. Granny’s Intentions melded a bluesy rock sound with a down-home earthiness. Gary Moore had joined the band at the age of 17, and Pete Cummins (later of The Fleadh Cowboys) was also a member.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BKOBW6EFOBDXDIMQSY43G23VTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382552},"content":"Duhan’s girlfriend, Maureen, left her job as a teacher to travel to London with him, and the band had their sights set on a further move to LA, but the deal fell through. In London he was offered a job as lead singer with St James Gate, but that deal fell through too, so he and Maureen moved home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V23HEXVM44WGUYSJRNGSZVRWGE","additional_properties":{"_id":"A7T6PZPGJBC7TMNYMH7E677QPQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HYJEVJA4VZCR3EOG4U6HRP2SBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382553},"content":"They returned to Maureen’s parents’ farm in Woodlawn, outside Loughrea, with 21-year-old Duhan in his pink flares, ankle-length coat and long hair not even raising an eyebrow, such was the affection in which he was held by his future parents in law.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AIDNVKZEA5BLDEC7DGWJTJPFXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382554},"content":"From there, the couple set about a different kind of life, with Duhan growing his own vegetables and embarking on a path as a solo singer-songwriter in earnest. Duhan had a cry in his voice that was plaintive and highly distinctive. An advance from Arista Records allowed him and Maureen to put a deposit on their first home in Sandyvale Lawn on Headford Road in Galway. Later they moved to Barna, where Duhan enjoyed a quiet but very orderly, some might say even regimental life: rising daily before dawn, attending daily Mass, reading vociferously and enjoying his daily swims on his beloved Silver Strand. He climbed Diamond Mountain most Sundays and Carrauntoohil annually.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IE4QO4TNYNDI3PH5D36D27DCY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382555},"content":"His daughters, Ailbhe and Niamh, described Duhan as a kind, gentle and selfless soul. He was a true family man. Headstrong in his beliefs, he never followed trends. He spent his life seeking meaning, delving deeply into philosophical and theological works. Mornings were devoted to reading and studying his favourite writers, making meticulous notes on whether he agreed or disagreed with their thoughts, and more importantly why. He taught all his children to play music, and Niamh is now a music teacher.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DL2BJBYXIRDEFPUDX32VUEPT5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382556},"content":"Of his songs, Duhan held <a href=\"https://youtu.be/0SyLZaYmq4k\" target=\"_blank\">Flame</a>, the title track of his 1996 album, the dearest. His 1992 album, Just Another Town, gained widespread acclaim, its autobiographical themes resonating far beyond the confines of his home place. Duhan toured solo and loved meeting fans but found his biggest audience in Derry when he performed during the Clipper Race festival in 2014.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YDW7IO2LBFAVJAFV2J7GPQP2EM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382557},"content":"One of his deepest frustrations was his struggle to get airplay on Irish radio, and he lobbied for a quota of Irish music to be adopted. Ronan Collins and Fiachna Ó Braonáin championed Duhan’s music however, along with journalist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/author/tony-clayton-lea/\" target=\"_blank\">Tony Clayton-Lea</a>, and he greatly valued their support.","type":"text"},{"_id":"THTXGMFGZ5HZTOXPCEGQYU7ENM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382558},"content":"A writer to his core, no song was ever complete. It was always a work in progress. Duhan published two biographical works, There Is a Time in 2001 and To the Light in 2009. The Voyage: Johnny Duhan Songbook was published by Waltons publishers in 2003.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKRQAUORM5BDDCCNY7FF2EMDAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382559},"content":"Duhan’s most recent project involved setting the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh to music, which he was enjoying immensely. He considered it some of his best work and was very proud of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJGAJ2MDC5CARBLUX5E6R6C7MU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382560},"content":"Songwriting, family, faith and friendship were what Duhan held dear, and The Voyage was played at his requiem Mass, a fitting finale to a life well-lived.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WFEM2PVALBCPNL2NL3KFYZFURQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382561},"content":"Johnny Duhan is survived by his wife, Maureen, his five children, Ronan, Niamh, Kevin, Ailbhe and Brian, his daughter- and sons-in-law, his 10 grandchildren and his brothers and sisters.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"One of his deepest frustrations was his struggle to get airplay on Irish radio, and he lobbied for a quota of Irish music to be adopted"},"display_date":"2024-12-07T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Johnny Duhan obituary: Formidable musician and family man","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"T7UGXWGLQYBYQL7ZH2EYZJ47PA","auth":{"1":"2d5cd0a5383543f9e18eb395bb6dad37ec8f90691c0ac9dbd4a6ec7925303a07"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/T7UGXWGLQYBYQL7ZH2EYZJ47PA.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/johnny-duhan-obituary-formidable-musician-and-family-man/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TE26PN2MPZDHJFOQH36XAYWQMA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":456,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/a323e189-b8a3-47ff-bb7e-156a3bcd7aba/versions/1733234991/media/9552a2a4be12a58ad6198489ed151906_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/gemma-hussey-obituary-second-woman-ever-to-be-appointed-to-cabinet/","content_elements":[{"_id":"JCZSC2MRKZDJTE3LPKSUUTEPKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>November 11th, 1938","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 26th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"S4ACERHYCZDAVHO3PVL7AOBIPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865958},"content":"Gemma Hussey was a trailblazing figure in Irish politics. She entered as a campaigner for more women in public life and became the third woman ever to be appointed to Cabinet, serving in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/garret-fitzgerald\" target=\"_blank\">Garret FitzGerald</a>’s 1982-1987 government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2QJIRCBFMZHZBMACAF3Z5SGB2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865959},"content":"As minister for education in a time of recession, she had the unenviable task of trying to restrain the pay bill for the country’s teachers and was embroiled in a series of controversies as she become the target of a sustained campaign of vilification by the Fianna Fáil opposition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S4BX4IW46JCQXPWJAKDIW5WISY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865960},"content":"As the only woman in Cabinet she was often in a lonely place, particularly as the government of which she was a member wrestled with one problem after another, and there were fractious difficulties with some Labour members of the Cabinet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R2TRBTCA3VG27GQJJRHD3ZUJ6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865961},"content":"After leaving politics she published a memorable diary of her time in office, which provided a fascinating glimpse into the operation of the Cabinet. It is a vital source for historians seeking to understand the challenges facing the country in the 1980s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVZWBTZCRJCK7KJ46GCNG37G7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865962},"content":"Many of her Cabinet colleagues resented the publication of the book. They may have had a valid argument that she had breached Cabinet confidentiality, but there was also a strain of misogyny in the personal nature of the criticism levelled by some of the men who had served with her in government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTZNMHQX6NAVTGM27W65YUTFRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865963},"content":"What they missed was the fact that the diary gave the public an insight into the hard work senior politicians do, often under incredible pressure. One of the many memorable phrases she coined in the diary was her description of the way Garret FitzGerald’s interminable Cabinet meetings often went on into the early hours of the morning. She recorded that when the meetings ended, exhausted ministers sat down to “cold chips and warm gin”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHGDF64AEFGEPHVSSQFIY3U5HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865964},"content":"Gemma Moran was born in 1938 into a comfortable middle class family in Bray, Co Wicklow. She was educated at St Brigid’s school in Bray and later attended the Loreto secondary school in the town before going to the exclusive Mount Anville in south County Dublin to finish her schooling.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JVRB4X65YNH7FNJGCDI42NVHJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865965},"content":"She went on to UCD, where she studied languages. Later, after a spell teaching, she set up her own language school. The publication in 1973 of the report of a Commission on the Status of Women prompted her to become active in the women’s movement. With Audrey Conlon and Hilary Pratt, she founded the Women’s Political Association designed to encourage more women into politics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SRRRCZ3CQNDCZHO43MDCK46RGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865966},"content":"She was chairwoman of the organisation from 1973 to 1975, and that brought her into the public eye as an articulate advocate on women’s issue. She went on to become a member of the Council for the Status of Women. In the 1977 general election campaign they attracted attention with the slogan: “Why not a woman”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFFDNMY43BCVNB4R3RBCB546HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865967},"content":"While she joined Fine Gael in 1972 she did not become an active party member for a number of years, and was elected to the Seanad in 1977 for the NUI constituency as an Independent. She took the Fine Gael party whip in 1980, and contested the 1981 general election as a party candidate in Wicklow. While she failed to win a Dáil seat at her first attempt she was re-elected to the Seanad. She was appointed leader of the House by the incoming taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLO2UJLZ6RPKJP6WIF6RA2AHQI","additional_properties":{"_id":"4TYJOMLCEVDNXAN7ARTKFWSTXE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"SMLZ3VCO3NBSXFQ2MJEM6SXMZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865968},"content":"Hussey and her businessman husband, Derry, who was a member of the Fine Gael back room team, moved in the same social circles as FitzGerald and his wife, Joan. He was an ardent supporter of hers and as party leader did everything he could to further her political career. She was elected to the Dáil in the first general election of 1982. When Fine Gael made it back into government in the second election of that year she knew that she was assured of a Cabinet post. She lobbied FitzGerald to be appointed minister for education and he duly obliged, moving John Boland, who had been minister for that department in his first government, giving him responsibility for the public service.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VZWKF2TF5RAQDC57O7IH247V34","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865969},"content":"Entering the department with plans for sweeping reform, Hussey did have some important achievements, such as the establishment of aural and oral exams and the creation of the National Parents Council. But she found herself frustrated by officials who put obstacles in her way and by the teachers’ unions. The battle over teachers’ pay dominated her tenure, when the government refused to pay an independent arbitrator’s award in full as part of its struggle to get the public finances under control. Hussey defended the decision, and drew the ire of the unions in what became a bitter struggle. Another bruising political row ensued over her decision to close Carysfort teacher training college.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRBIZF5X5FHBPASAZCHBNNID6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865970},"content":"Removing the constitutional ban on divorce was one of her priorities in politics and she ardently supported FitzGerald’s decision to hold a referendum in 1986. Despite the fact that opinion polls in advance of the referendum showed a two to one majority in favour of lifting the ban, it was rejected decisively by the electorate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CH6ZSIQ6BFDM7M3FQWV6NGLFBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865971},"content":"Hussey suffered another political blow that year when FitzGerald moved her out of education in a botched Cabinet reshuffle. His original intention was to split the Department of Foreign Affairs in two, giving her responsibility for European affairs. Minister for foreign affairs Peter Barry was horrified by the plan and his fellow Corkman, Barry Desmond, effectively scuppered it by defying the taoiseach and refusing to move from the Department of Health. “Of course Barry’s position of refusing to move wrecked all that and I got shafted,” she noted in her diary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2EO3OJ3UPJLYLJET4EP34QNQII","additional_properties":{"_id":"J35VBTK4YVH35DJADRIGYV5Y4M"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"PWEPJKU4ARG2RDHXG2WL3W5FXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865972},"content":"The upshot was that Hussey was moved to social welfare while education went to veteran Fine Gael politician Patrick Cooney, who had opposed the legalisation of divorce. He brought the long-running dispute with the teachers to an end, while she ran into another row with the Labour Party over a scheme to equalise welfare payments for women and men which had the potential to involve reductions for some recipients.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JMBSY7HKJZADDB4XEQJR3KB5QU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865973},"content":"The government lost office in 1987 and while Hussey held her seat she felt there was nothing else she could achieve in politics and did not contest the next election in 1989. However, she did turn the trials and tribulations she faced during her time in Cabinet into a riveting book, At the Cutting Edge: Cabinet Diaries 1982-1987.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UXK4LTXKFD6HHFI6MWPJLAPGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865974},"content":"That book drew the ire of some of the Cabinet colleagues with whom she had tussled, notably John Boland, who gave it a damning review, and Barry Desmond who responded in his own memoir by accusing her of arrogance towards Labour ministers and deep ingratitude to her patron, Garret FitzGerald.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPDTDJV27NFWVDEU4YEGUI5SB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865975},"content":"Having left Irish politics in her early 50s, she immersed herself in the European Women’s Federation, encouraging women in former Eastern-bloc countries to become active in politics for the first time. She wrote a second book, Ireland Today: An anatomy of a Changing State,<i> </i>which offered insights into Irish politics and the changes in society that occurred during her time in the Oireachtas. She supported Mary Robinson in the 1990 presidential election and backed a Yes vote in the 2015 marriage equality referendum.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EBH43MQ7FFA4JB52VNBJU4S6LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865976},"content":"Gemma Hussey is survived by her children, Rachel, Ruth and Andrew and her brother Paddy. Her husband, Derry, predeceased her.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"After leaving politics she published a memorable diary of her time in office, which provided a fascinating glimpse into the operation of the Cabinet"},"display_date":"2024-12-07T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Gemma Hussey obituary: Third woman ever to be appointed to Cabinet","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"6H2GNQN4QBLI3PXUQOTDRUZIFY","auth":{"1":"747b634f632ee12c237c8d93875e8120850a3c29f6ead715f315074e1b0a3548"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/6H2GNQN4QBLI3PXUQOTDRUZIFY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/gemma-hussey-obituary-second-woman-ever-to-be-appointed-to-cabinet/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"IX7X3SNKFNDJHGNTGSLOFOTQHE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":412,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/db954f78-990b-4ce3-83f5-7e4589675444/versions/1732701243/media/a3f60e0974e087436c17d71d7511f9cc_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/dervilla-donnelly-obituary-internationally-renowed-chemist/","content_elements":[{"_id":"MPKDL63NKRAMPECDBTGG3PKRQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>April 25th, 1930","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 14th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"3IDSUPXXVBGF7EPOPBKLE26YKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140062},"content":"Prof Dervilla Donnelly, an internationally renowned chemist who made an extraordinary contribution to research, science policy and public service both in Ireland and abroad, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/14/renowned-irish-scientist-dervilla-donnelly-dies-aged-94/\" target=\"_blank\">has died</a> aged 94.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TLPNQEZUWJB5FEHNXY4ERIOID4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140063},"content":"Donnelly, who was professor of phytochemistry – the study of chemicals with biological activity derived from plants – at University College Dublin (UCD) for 16 years, was the first female president of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), from 1989 to 1992, and the first woman to receive the Royal Irish Academy’s highest honour, the Cunningham Medal in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7K4PXDPZR5GPXNMHBCBMUEJ36Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140064},"content":"Her position as chairwoman of the Custom House Docks Development from 1991 to 1997; chairwoman and director of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction, 2000-2005; board member of the National Museum of Ireland and governor of The Irish Times Trust and director of The Irish Times Ltd, 1992-2002 were among her many leadership roles in Irish society. She also led the revitalisation of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies as its chairwoman, 1995-2000. She was a strategic thinker and a good collaborator, who drew on the skills and talents of others in her orbit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMTQFQ6FEVDXVOHAUMFDNKZ47Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140065},"content":"Donnelly’s commitment to European research was recognised by her election as chairwoman of the European Science Research Councils in 1985. She was vice-president of the executive council of the European Science Foundation and vice-president of European Science and Technology Assembly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PNEQQSJU5RFMLCKJ6HCHT76FEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140066},"content":"As one of the first to develop an academic research network throughout Europe in the late 1970s, she later extended these collaborations to include scientists in the United States, South Africa and South America. During this time, she became particularly interested in the chemistry of wood, the results of which were applied to various problems encountered in the Irish forest industry. Early in her career she was a visiting scientist in Stockholm, Sweden and at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Gif-sur-Yvette, France with Prof Derek Barton, the Nobel laureate in chemistry in 1969.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DZVWRNDENZBH3IWPPPPUTBX3QM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140068},"content":"Her internationally significant group research led to more than 150 research publications and review articles. One of her former students said that she was equally kind and tough, which was “exactly what they needed”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HOKMMLFCYZD5BK7EUXCA2OOWZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140070},"content":"Her deep involvement with the RDS led to her being appointed at its first female president, 1989-1992. During her tenure, she led the organisation back into a better financial position and revived the Boyle Award for high-calibre scientific research in association with The Irish Times for a number of years. While governor of The Irish Times Trust and director of The Irish Times Ltd, she influenced the then editor, Conor Brady, to establish the position of Science Editor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGIFJ2VBTFEKHCN23D3X3OLCII","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140071},"content":"A true mentor, friend and role model to many – and particularly to women – her inspiration was acknowledged in 2011 when she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Technology and Science (WITS). The year before she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YGHLN4KN4JASJFWVS7UVHV7F3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140072},"content":"She inspired secondary-school students through her role as a judge in the Young Scientists Exhibition from its first competition in 1964 until 2004. Donnelly was also awarded a number of honorary doctorates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ENGV46KCT5EX5NVADWN7KLNX6M","additional_properties":{"_id":"4H6FZFDTWFCMNJARYR4H4M6R3Y"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"NWDBCVKHCBBZ5C5NAND4KRGDH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140074},"content":"Dervilla Maura Xavier Donnelly grew up in the south Dublin suburb of Dartry, the second of three daughters of May and Kieran Donnelly. She attended the Sacred Heart School on Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, where the emphasis was on languages rather than science. She studied chemistry theory privately in her final year of school before completing the entrance exams for UCD. She later credited her interest in science to her father, an engineer, but her mother was determined her three daughters would be well educated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFOEMO2725CT5J7YIBVWPLXHDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140075},"content":"Graduating with first-class honours in chemistry, she remained at UCD to do her PhD into flavonoid chemistry under Prof Tom Wheeler.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5SZLFX2DPNDVXP2WJY6UY6MN7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140076},"content":"Following postdoctoral studies at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), she opted to return to her alma mater rather than take a lectureship in pharmacology at UCLA. She began her teaching career in 1956 in the old School of Chemistry on Merrion Street, Dublin, and later moved to lecture at the new campus at Belfield in 1965. She was made professor in 1979, a position she held until her retirement in 1995.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LBDF2LEG7JD5RCRM4NBWRQG7SM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140077},"content":"Her research shaped the development of the School of Chemistry and is recognised in the annual award of the Prof Dervilla Donnelly medal to the highest-achieving student in the BSc in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JC2QOYI6TBFJVMDOHAIZRLXH3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140078},"content":"However, in spite of her absolute dedication to her career and her roles in several public bodies, she also found time to enjoy her favourite sport, horse racing (steeplechase). She often said that she had a golden rule: that one day a week she didn’t do any chemistry. “Every Saturday, you’ll find me at a racecourse somewhere in the State.” With her sister, Keara – with whom she lived in the family home in Dartry – she held shares in several horses and used to joke “we only need one more leg to have a complete animal”. She also enjoyed tending to her wonderful garden, playing golf and nurtured close relationships with her niece, nephews and their families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7W5CAXYQSNGDFLB2XFFNBUKK4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140079},"content":"At a ceremony in UCD in 2023, the current president of the RIA and professor of synthetic chemistry at UCD, Prof Pat Guiry, presented Donnelly with a newly commissioned portrait of her by artist Emer Doyle. As one of her 85 PhD students, he thanked her for her support, career advice and kindness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZDMBND64D5B3ZFOSWKDYHGQBT4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140080},"content":"“Her leadership experience and ability to chair boards and committees, work well with people and to clearly identify both the problem and the solution are well recognised,” Guiry said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLCEB57FJNBCDGH2ZE3KAOOVWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140081},"content":"The portrait of Donnelly is on permanent display at the main entrance to the UCD School of Chemistry in the Science Centre South on the Belfield Campus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ICO3CTZPBFFDVLD7HHK7MKLM3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140082},"content":"Dervilla Donnelly is survived by her niece, Frances; her nephews, Charles and John; grandnieces and grandnephews; and great-grandnieces. She was predeceased by her sisters Liobháin (Meenan) and Keara.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"UCD professor was a mentor, friend and role model to many, particularly to women"},"display_date":"2024-11-30T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Dervilla Donnelly obituary: Internationally renowed chemist","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"IHZSH4PMZRB7LFLWRCUGE3G6WQ","auth":{"1":"0f76aabf047595bbce0649fc030d5443a0ce50c4c5aa7ffbefe96b0e98a6a48d"},"focal_point":{"x":1136,"y":639},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/IHZSH4PMZRB7LFLWRCUGE3G6WQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/dervilla-donnelly-obituary-internationally-renowed-chemist/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"6RYDKTD5M5AE7OPBCT3GPQ3MHI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":387,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6bce7bd9-881b-46b2-95fc-2e02bba18060/versions/1732697608/media/d70664df7014d9af5f87c25fdfce4a18_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/john-prescott-obituary-plain-speaking-former-uk-deputy-prime-minister/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TJUE5F2KZ5GCDMTA7J3N6UBVLA","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>May 31st, 1938","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 20th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"345IUS3X45DHFCMKWLNHMURSDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732642448712},"content":"John Prescott, who rose through Britain’s trade union movement to become one of the country’s best-known politicians, serving as deputy prime minister for a decade, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2024/11/21/former-uk-deputy-prime-minister-john-prescott-dies-aged-86/\" target=\"_blank\">has died</a> aged 86.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PEFO7QZPDVHEHN4DAIPDEMLKEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793040},"content":"Plain-speaking and proudly working class, Prescott was a visible link to Labour’s traditional origins when the party came to power in 1997 under the modernising leadership of Tony Blair.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KXHTNSWKTNAXDHGCRB2I2NAUXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793041},"content":"In government, Prescott championed environmental causes – playing a key role in international climate negotiations – and worked to shift power from London to the English regions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OKJTXQEWOZCCRDHTSRZKZ4DAEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793042},"content":"More important for Labour, he helped defuse internal tensions between Blair and his chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, a rival who would become Blair’s successor. At the time, Prescott was jokingly referred to as the political equivalent of a marriage guidance counsellor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WJL3EOU3YZBHLJNRZ5PMQOK7VM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793043},"content":"In an age when politics became increasingly managed by media advisers known as spindoctors, Prescott stood out as an authentic, if unorthodox, communicator. He sometimes mangled his sentences, a result of his dyslexia, but even when his syntax was less than perfect, his meaning was clear.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q6DLPZ7UOZFNZOWY5PFX2OCLRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793044},"content":"He had a reputation as a political bruiser. When a protester on the campaign trail threw an egg at him before the 2001 general election, Prescott turned and punched him. Some assumed his career was over. But polling showed that most Britons concluded that he had done what they would have done in the circumstances, and Labour’s campaign proceeded to victory uninterrupted. Blair characterised the incident as a case of “John being John”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2BLHH2HESGXZCFCSSRNPQIU6VA","additional_properties":{"_id":"2BK7UPOG65CW5LIG3Z7WA7JPP4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"3FFU7TY2JNHL5KLPDRB5P45NQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793045},"content":"John Leslie Prescott was born in Wales in 1938. He did not prosper in Britain’s selective education system of the time, which streamed children’s academic futures via an examination at age 11. He failed that test and, unlike his brother, who passed, was denied the new bicycle he had been promised by his father. He left school four years later, although he subsequently studied at Ruskin College, a higher education institution in Oxford, and at the University of Hull, in the city that became his home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5JRNQQ2FBBHW7N3CK3Z47OJVVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793046},"content":"As a teenager, Prescott became a steward on a cruise ship, embarking on a career at sea that was to shape his rise in politics. Years later, political opponents would taunt him by suggesting that he fetch them a gin and tonic, but he remained proud of his origins. As a senior politician, he would hold a summer party on a boat in the Thames and make a point of extracting money from his guests to tip the staff.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZMG7ZW7P2JARJE3L2L4REIKUHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793047},"content":"In 1968, Prescott became an official at the National Union of Seamen. He was elected to parliament two years later as Labour MP for Hull East, in northeastern England. He joined Labour’s top opposition team, the shadow cabinet, in 1983.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ORCK3S2LYJAQBPI4D5PQHW6RRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793048},"content":"In 1994, after the death of Labour leader John Smith, Blair was elected as Smith’s successor. Prescott won the deputy leadership, a victory that reassured many traditional Labour supporters that the party was not abandoning its roots by embracing the solidly middle-class Blair, who rebranded the party as “New Labour”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJQ2IDPLLZD6FMWIHLMEUBGTOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793049},"content":"Even as Prescott became a symbol of social mobility and a mascot of “Old Labour”, he was on board with the project of modernisation and of finding “traditional values in a modern setting”, as he would put it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZLWMA4APMREZXN54YQMOAAHFVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793050},"content":"His reward came when, after 18 years out of government, Labour won the 1997 general election. Prescott became both deputy prime minister and the cabinet minister responsible for the environment, transport and the regions in the new administration.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GQ7FKHGWXGHTIZTIMFL5R54QFI","additional_properties":{"_id":"FYCKOEUIOBDNJAR5Q5325PLDFM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"Z7EH527TF5DRZAUDESTZEOMHBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793051},"content":"Entering his government office for the first time, Prescott, who was not normally at a loss for words, stopped in mid-sentence when the blinds started to lower. “Yes, deputy prime minister,” a civil servant explained, “it is an automatic device to control the internal temperature.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RPEBEAOHKREQXNII34QCVJLFGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793052},"content":"Prescott became used to his elevated position and to the trappings of power. He was nicknamed “Two Jags” by the tabloids, which enjoyed taunting him, after it emerged that he owned two Jaguar cars. He was photographed playing croquet with his staff on the lawn at Dorneywood, the official country home that came with the job of deputy prime minister. His reputation suffered in 2006 when he admitted to a two-year affair with a civil servant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"24SAESEJ55HF7AMZEW5F6R5JHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732642448726},"content":"He suffered from chronic illnesses: <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/british-mp-john-prescott-praised-for-admitting-he-suffered-from-bulimia-1.915287\" target=\"_blank\">bulimia</a>, which he struggled with in silence for 20 years, and type 2 diabetes, diagnosed in 1990, which he also kept quiet about.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EA27TFSIGBABJM4RLZDDM5LTKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793053},"content":"In Prescott’s political endeavours, environmental issues were a central concern. Among his achievements were his part in negotiating the Kyoto climate change agreement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FASHOCIIHFGADNOC7ITQLKHNWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793054},"content":"During his decade as deputy prime minister, Prescott remained committed to advancing the causes of working people. In an interview in 2005, he said: “The one distinctive thing about the European approach, both right and left, is the belief that the social dimension goes along with the economic. The American model might produce more jobs, but it couldn’t really care a damn about the social justice.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXPQ35LCDNBBTEGH2YCDFMR7B4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793055},"content":"He retired as an MP in 2010 and was made a member of the House of Lords.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVYZZVUEZVDIVPNDC4DZBLQJAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793056},"content":"Blair paid tribute to his former deputy, telling the BBC that there was “no one quite like him in British politics” and calling Prescott “a titan of the Labour movement”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNZH6UDWCRDVXF77G4AN54DU2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793057},"content":"Peter Mandelson, another architect of Labour’s modernisation who is now a member of the House of Lords, said Prescott had “kept us anchored in our working-class roots, our trade union history”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFPQRQARKJG5JGJL63GMEWR5A4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793058},"content":"He added: “He was in many respects the cement that kept New Labour together.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5L4MGNTOENDJ3PAHS4LR5KOVMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732642448733},"content":"He <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/john-prescott-former-deputy-british-pm-suffers-stroke-1.3935708\" target=\"_blank\">suffered a stroke</a> in 2019, and was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Pauline, and two sons. – <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/world/europe/john-prescott-uk-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"In an age when politics became increasingly managed by media advisers known as spin doctors, Prescott stood out as an authentic, if unorthodox, communicator"},"display_date":"2024-11-30T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"John Prescott obituary: Plain-speaking former UK deputy prime minister","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5CT6T5USOQWSSXGZXPXU2S2P6Y","auth":{"1":"ad2d984888ed59191911be1855303ff4742ba88f24ab4ce52619177d08d78f13"},"focal_point":{"x":1070,"y":241},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5CT6T5USOQWSSXGZXPXU2S2P6Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/john-prescott-obituary-plain-speaking-former-uk-deputy-prime-minister/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"BIPXMYIRDFHUBKFN73T3BIJBF4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":381,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9ce7123e-c27e-40bd-a8d5-257bc1b45546/versions/1732093487/media/7cda64fd90b78b45cccbe93c1b3cc693_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/23/tom-toner-obituary-former-chairman-of-forfas-who-believed-economic-growth-was-a-precondition-for-a-fair-society/","content_elements":[{"_id":"G5MGEDGCVJBSPAI6S4V63PP524","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born</b> June 2nd, 1932","type":"text"},{"_id":"G7SK3TV72RCBFF4UKNSBRRJDNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166915},"content":"<b>Died</b> October 26th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"F3NK3ELC25BNFESAX6UWQ4TQHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166916},"content":"Tom Toner, a businessman and public servant, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/10/29/veteran-of-irish-business-tom-toner-has-died/\" target=\"_blank\">has died</a> following a short illness at the age of 92.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGRIE4LCS5A63KUDQXURYPQXPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166917},"content":"In a storied career that embraced the public and private sectors, Toner had many achievements under his belt by the time he transitioned to semi-retirement in 2000. However, possibly his most lasting legacy is his chairmanship of Forfás, the State agency responsible for advising the government on economic policy, from 1993 to 1999. One of the first challenges he faced after taking on the job was to deal with the European Commission’s decision to end the state aid waiver that had enabled the government to extend the special 10 per cent corporate tax rate for manufacturing to create a special economic zone that became the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin’s docklands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJXIX7WCP5BY7FENL7GSOSGW7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166918},"content":"Forfás recommended that a 12.5 per cent tax rate be applied to all industries. It was the single most important policy decision that transformed Ireland from a backwater to one of the most successful economies in the developed world. Other notable achievements during his period at Forfás were the creation of a number of agencies to develop industrial policy, research and innovation, particularly in the areas of science and technology. This culminated in the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland in 1999. He developed a close working relationship with John Travers, the chief executive of Forfás, and they remained friends until his death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AYGVWCCIYJDKHLI4D3N3OODHQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166919},"content":"Toner was born in the Curragh army barracks in 1932. His father had fought the War of Independence in his native Armagh and later joined the Irish Army upon the foundation of the Free State. A sign of his later character was evident in his early years at the Curragh. He chafed at the social hierarchy of the camp as the families of army officers were extended privileges, including their own entrance to the church, that were not available to lower-ranking personnel. He said that although his time at the Curragh was happy, he never felt he belonged there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BGDTOV7W3JH77FYDWQUA3W4ETY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Toner attended De La Salle school in Kildare, where he was described as a gifted student. Sport was an early passion. He captained the Kildare minor football team in 1950. He was also a voracious reader.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQTKNRVE6RDZ7OST433O6MRQHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166921},"content":"He won a Kildare county council scholarship to study science at UCD in 1950, although he quickly transferred to commerce. He completed an MA in economics in 1955. His first role was with CIÉ in 1954, where he would come under the guidance of Todd Andrews, one of the founders of Fianna Fáil. Toner used the management principles he had learned in his economics MA to help modernise CIÉ. In later life, Toner said his proudest career achievement was a collaboration with Donogh O’Malley’s Department of Education in 1966 to roll out free transport to second-level students in rural areas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXUGQNBESVEQDMVW4P4KEAMXPU","additional_properties":{"_id":"5ME2VUT5TRFG5JKGJHX46E3HUU"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"SAPRSMWEZNA4THBV54BZVB5S7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166922},"content":"In 1968, he left CIÉ to join Allied Irish Investment Bank, where he met his close friend Richard Hooper. In 1972 he took over Brooks Watson, a food and drinks company, with two AIIB colleagues, Martin Rafferty and John Harnett.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BH2MHIHMRNBVBJPSARX4RAGETM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166923},"content":"In 1970 he stopped drinking and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Even though he faced many personal and professional hardships in the years ahead, he never touched alcohol again.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OJ6AELD2SNBQVIRKNJUN6BFY74","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166924},"content":"The 1973 oil crisis roiled the Irish economy. Toner had to make many painful redundancies to keep Brooks Watson afloat. He later said it took a huge toll on him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6A57ATOPOVCX3LZYXWCR2LDQBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166925},"content":"However, much worse was to come. In 1956 he met Audre Isdell, a student at UCD. They would soon start a relationship and married in 1963. Over the next 10 years they had four children, Kevin, Oonagh, David and Alan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VOHL3PPKRFEPBCDBWZ6NI7PUAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166926},"content":"In 1976, Audre was diagnosed with breast cancer. After a successful operation she went into remission, but it reappeared in 1980. She defied expectations at the time and lived for another six years. Her death in December 1986, at the age of 50, deeply affected Toner. One of the ways he dealt with his grief was by increasing his work commitments. In 1984 he had become the president of the Federated Union of Employers, which later became Ibec. In 1986, Brooks Watson was sold to Irish Distillers, and Toner joined the board. Several other directorships followed over the years, including Arnotts, Bank of Ireland, Tullow Oil, Irish Continental Group and Inishtech.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7PWINWMTNAJDIDNASXSQGC2NA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166928},"content":"Delivering the eulogy at the funeral Mass, Alan said his father enjoyed arguing both as an analytical method and a recreational activity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4GIFOLSFKNHL7INX4SJIKFQ2VE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166929},"content":"Toner was a savage critic of the Irish State from its independence to the 1980s. He believed that economic growth was a precondition for a fair society. According to Alan, he often quipped, “too many people talk about dying for Ireland rather than living for it”. One of the main reasons he took on the Forfás role was to help solve the crushing unemployment problem.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BETCTFISFFACDJVJ6B2QAIPPAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166930},"content":"Sport remained a passion throughout his life. He followed Ireland to both rugby and soccer World Cups. He travelled widely and developed a love of Cuba. He would learn Spanish in his advanced years. In 2018 he moved from the family home in Leopardstown Road to Sandymount, where he enjoyed he last years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L4SIXR6BMVGWLIUMFT4ICNCUJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166931},"content":"Warm tributes were paid following his death by Ibec, many former colleagues and friends. He is survived by his four children, seven grandchildren and wider Toner family.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He often quipped that ‘too many people talk about dying for Ireland rather than living for it’"},"display_date":"2024-11-23T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Tom Toner obituary: Former chairman of Forfás who believed economic growth was a precondition for a fair society","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VE7S6Y3KU5EDJDK6TIXOQ3F2RM","auth":{"1":"da469ac8ec15eedf09cfe0cb4e86ca1b892fbc3ebecd2d1b08edcc864db699bb"},"focal_point":{"x":1422,"y":606},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VE7S6Y3KU5EDJDK6TIXOQ3F2RM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/23/tom-toner-obituary-former-chairman-of-forfas-who-believed-economic-growth-was-a-precondition-for-a-fair-society/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"PPY2BKPS6RFDPKYWWFKCI6PNNE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":473,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/b2759bd9-19a1-47a5-8d66-fc7632bf3523/versions/1732105130/media/7c52a151cea9cd11376c6593a7b3ee59_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/20/jon-kenny-obituary-portraits-of-irish-eccentricity-that-mingled-hilarity-with-sadness/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QEBUSEGLQRFFXB4ULWOHWJNSAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>September 28th, 1957","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 15th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHYVS5VEJVE3NEMR6NYRIZCM4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578425},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/jon-kenny/\" target=\"_blank\">Jon Kenny</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/19/jon-kenny-sprinkled-laughing-love-wherever-he-went-funeral-told/\" target=\"_blank\">who has died at the age of 66</a>, was one of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland</a>’s most beloved comedians. His <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/2024/11/16/best-known-as-one-half-of-dunbelievables-jon-kenny-was-both-an-anarchic-comedian-and-a-soulful-presence/\" target=\"_blank\">humour</a> fondly celebrated archetypes of small-town and rural Ireland but was often electrified by a surrealist streak suggestive of a more uproarious <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/flann-o-brien/\" target=\"_blank\">Flann O’Brien</a>. He was also a respected screen actor, appearing both in comedies such as Father Ted and straight dramas including Angela’s Ashes and Les Misérables and the Oscar-nominated animation Wolf Walkers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z6WYRWNTIVDCBDQLGGYWGDPM24","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578426},"content":"Kenny will be best remembered as one half of the D’Unbelievables, a duo he began with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/16/actor-and-comedian-jon-kenny-dies-aged-66/\" target=\"_blank\">Pat Shortt</a>, whom he met in the late 1980s. They met when Kenny was looking for a saxophone player to add a splash to his comedy routines. They hit it off, and after several months of coaxing, Shortt, saxophone in tow, agreed to join his collaborator on stage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HW5WSHW6PJEGJBTP37RHC7BRJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578427},"content":"They were a chalk-and-cheese pairing. Kenny was naturally voluble, always with a gag or impersonation to hand, while Shortt could be shy when the spotlight was off. In an early interview on Bibi Baskin’s <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rte/\" target=\"_blank\">RTÉ</a> chatshow, it is Kenny who does most of the talking and tells all the jokes, while Shortt plays the straight man.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43XZINCSIRAGHBFRQQZJEDHE6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578428},"content":"But Kenny wasn’t just a natural comedian. He was a talented musician who continued to write and perform songs throughout his life. He also had a successful screen and stage career. His screen roles tended to be cameos – but he always made the most of them. In a 1996 episode of Father Ted, he carved out a piece of Irish comedy history as Eurovision presenter Fred Rickwood – a hilariously baroque figure who rambled incoherently offstage yet was as slick as lightning when the cameras rolled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFAH57FBEVDZTFBGZEUW2Y4IQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578429},"content":"He will be forever associated with Father Ted but he excelled in straight parts too. As brutish Thénardier, he traded lines with Liam Neeson’s Jean Valjean in a 1988 adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. He voiced a woodcutter in Wolf Walkers and portrayed Gerry the fiddler in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, his deadpan performance a perfect conduit for McDonagh’s bittersweet dialogue.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H7GPTG34KPPZX75OHTMH243CH4","additional_properties":{"_id":"QYGMXOPS7ZHHJCRTNOQA6VJQFY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CTGBM4NOIZD3RP3Q3LJG4GXZPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732105029732},"content":"Kenny was born in 1957 in Hospital, 30km south of Limerick city. He had a brother, Tom, and sisters, Anne, Joan and Deirdre. His parents ran a family drapery on the main street and a pub at the opposite side of the town. Kenny’s father, John, died when Jon was young, and his mother, Mary, raised the family while running the business. “She was an amazing woman,” he would later say. “I don’t think I realised it at the time, how difficult it was.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RYYOUACQZNAZBL3T4WAHNARKGY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578431},"content":"His childhood in Hospital would prove a huge influence on his comedy. A shop in rural Ireland was the perfect ringside seat from which to observe the quirks of ordinary people. It helped him develop an ear for the eccentricities and joys of small-town life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"46TRYXSQFFF2TNTIWBQB3GEXWY","additional_properties":{"_id":"ATLWYQGQS5FEXGE53CXWKKMCUA"},"content":"Best known as one half of D’Unbelievables, Jon Kenny was both an anarchic comedian and a soulful presence","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GIAX536EFJBLHJWYUOA3J5D7SU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578432},"content":"Kenny had dyslexia as a child and left school, the vocational secondary in Hospital, before his 16th birthday to pursue his love of performance. The following year he and some friends formed the glam rock group Gimik. With Kenny playing bass and singing, they made a splash, appearing on Shay Healy’s Hullaballoo on RTÉ and supporting the Bay City Rollers around Ireland. But they were a band out of lockstep with the emerging punk scene – as they soon discovered.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIONZTUBGZGD5P3BJL4LINFI6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578433},"content":"“There were times when we were in places we shouldn’t have been at all,” Kenny told Hot Press in 2003. “You’d sit down and look out at the audience and say, “what the f***” are we doing here. There’s 400 punks at the gig and here we are doing glam rock!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6VC6LSFKIFHINHLENN63S32F4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578434},"content":"Gimik would break up within a few years. In 1983 Kenny joined Limerick’s improvisational dance company, Theatre Omnibus. He was also becoming successful as a stand-up, carving out a career through sheer force of will at a time when Ireland was a comedy backwater.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTHLIMFFARB7HAJACTMOIQHAHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732105029738},"content":"“I was on a stand-up circuit that did not exist,” he remembered. “I was young and slightly insane. Here was me going around wearing TV sets around my head, riding pantomime horses. Once at a gig, I drove in on a Honda 50 ... down the audience.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LLPODS2UMBDYZOMKRY4FWF4TM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578436},"content":"He crossed paths with Pat Shortt, from Thurles, on the small midwest comedy scene. Some of their earliest shows together were at Costello’s Tavern in Limerick, where owner Flan Costello offered the scrappy duo a midweek gig aimed at students. They were soon packing the upstairs room, and after a memorable performance as two confused gardaí on Gay Byrne’s Late Late Show, became a sensation across the country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPPMEZOZDFGYTH6PQ2DWUZAAIA","subtype":"youtube","type":"oembed_response"},{"_id":"HNXP5RKOWNBDFAFYHM4YGEI6HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578437},"content":"Kenny’s characters were often based on people he knew from Limerick. In an interview with Hot Press, he explained how a Costa del Sol lounge singer named Pablo Maloney, who became part of his solo routine, was an amalgam of real-life individuals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ORO6ROB3LBGADPAAWS34AWOO2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578438},"content":"“He was actually a composite of two different people,” he said. “One guy was a lounge singer, and then there was another fellow I knew who actually went to France, but he wasn’t a singer at all – he was a chef. Anyway, he had gone away and spent a little time in Europe, not very long. But from the time he came back from Europe – which was many, many years ago – he had adopted a completely new persona.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TNZULLBD3RA63J2X4C5MWOU2CU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578439},"content":"D’Unbelievables, as the duo were known from 1993, were one of the biggest names in Irish comedy, their rise coinciding with the dawn of the Celtic Tiger. Suddenly people had money to spend on luxuries such as a night out at a comedy show and Kenny and Shortt played to packed houses all year round. There was no let-up – until Kenny was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2000 and took a step back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GLPYMMMG5W2IQRTJBLU7EOEFTI","additional_properties":{"_id":"4N2BIJKBFJAPJB4GRYWORSCZY4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"5OB5BLMYRFGWRDIOVQJYVV25T4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578440},"content":"“I go to take a holiday and I’m not feeling the best and I get checked and they tell me I have cancer,” he told RTÉ in 2022. “I had to stop. I wasn’t able to do it, even emotionally I couldn’t do it.” He felt that overwork had led him to neglect his health.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCXTR65FJ5EXNGXUGPDYRP772E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578441},"content":"“It’s so frantic, you just keep doing it but there was something inside saying, ‘you should take a break’. My body was suffering because of it. I wasn’t going to go back to it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YDSRMCYWRNH6LKEL6QW447FJIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578442},"content":"He had to stop performing while receiving treatment, though he would return to a successful solo career. He and Shortt reunited for a sell-out D’Unbelievables tour in 2011.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EO3RJAUMXJEXBLO4AXXLTFBFL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578443},"content":"Kenny and his wife Margy lived in Dublin for many years before returning to Limerick and an estate located in a 20-acre forest close to scenic Lough Gur, 10 kilometres from Hospital.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F4VLRIFQYBG3PE5TWEICJGBS6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578444},"content":"Kenny was not the first comedian to look to small-town Ireland for inspiration. But his portraits of Irish eccentricity were frequently mingled with sadness. In an early D’Unbelievables show, One Hell of a Do, he played a character named Martin – an overbearing drunk whose ceaseless patter was gradually revealed to be a cover for the deep loneliness he felt after the death of his wife.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3JWNIO6ENEIXNALA76BH72W54","additional_properties":{"_id":1732105029750},"content":"“It’s about people ... people are funny,” he would say of his comedic philosophy. “We are all funny. People do funny things. We just exaggerate it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JGHNHZEKQ5DDTDXNE7RFPINJIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578446},"content":"He is survived by wife Margy, children Aran and Laya, and sisters Anne, Joan and Deirdre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EPW3MPRDF5BH3CCOCKWZS4WZEM","additional_properties":{},"content":"<i>*This obituary was amended on November 21st to correct the date of birth</i>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"“It’s about people … people are funny,” he would say of his comedic philosophy"},"display_date":"2024-11-20T12:20:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jon Kenny obituary: Portraits of Irish eccentricity that mingled hilarity with sadness","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NYNKMODUZZN3JJCGXDZXF72DXM","auth":{"1":"bba1fbdc7069263a8818d3fdf5692619aa119187650c9baf3663e3524e450308"},"focal_point":{"x":1114,"y":456},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NYNKMODUZZN3JJCGXDZXF72DXM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"Culture"},{"name":"TV & Radio"},{"name":"People"},{"name":"Life & Style"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/20/jon-kenny-obituary-portraits-of-irish-eccentricity-that-mingled-hilarity-with-sadness/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"FPLQR532Q5FM3PWJTDVASCBWC4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":266,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/10d48afa-f457-4328-ad92-5fc0fb9d0ec0/versions/1731853033/media/a0a2c7ac13821f863b7c05506ff4b09c_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/17/declan-mccourt-pioneering-entrepreneur-made-an-immense-contribution-to-corporate-and-charitable-sectors/","content_elements":[{"_id":"WPBTJZO5SFDRVC27YAJLTSPRRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568201},"content":"The sudden recent death of Declan McCourt (April 15th, 1946 – October 18th, 2024) has left Ireland without one of its pioneering entrepreneurs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4FPSDUGDABHFVJ7IHVK56JROU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568202},"content":"Declan was the son of Kevin and Peggy McCourt. Kevin McCourt was one of a small group of business people who actively promoted economic activity in the Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s most notably in bringing together many of the distilleries under the banner of Irish Distillers and also as director general of RTÉ shortly after its establishment. It would be accurate to say that Declan was more than a chip off the business block of his father.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2C7KQFTUIRHY7EKSWZXSKE4W6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568203},"content":"Declan went to school at Castleknock College playing on the wing for its senior schools cup team. He studied economics to MA level at UCD, while also taking the law courses at the King’s Inns. He was called to the bar in 1968.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6GWDJ3HMBACNDCCU7S5RNTZKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568204},"content":"Instead of a career in law, he opted instead for the commercial world. After some early experience with Goulding Fertilisers, he took the unusual step, at the time, of opting to study for an MBA at Harvard University.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WWPGFP2BINC55NTG5YDLF4PXXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568205},"content":"This experience enabled him to move into the world of international business, and his initial work was in the distillery and drinks industry when he became marketing director for Seagram’s in Rome and was later promoted to the position of vice-president in New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KU7F2ZH7NVDTRI564MVT7XDXS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568206},"content":"Ever a fervent Irishman, he decided to return to Ireland when offered the position of chief operating officer with the TMG Group.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ISFNMAKBTJBO7CXEJFQVFDQLOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568207},"content":"Later, in 1982, he was invited to join the OHM Group as partner and chief executive. So started a career in the motor industry for Declan which lasted until his death. He was a key driver in greatly expanding the group to become a leading automotive and power solutions business – it now employs over 500 people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SBTERCZT5FINPAA7STESGK54Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568208},"content":"His immense success in business attracted major Irish companies, ranging from the Bank of Ireland, Fyffes, Balmoral International Land Holdings and the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, to appoint him to their boards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5TWAIP4E2JGKZJVX5QTAUFD2HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568209},"content":"Highlighting Declan’s outstanding career should not mask his exceptional contributions to two areas of social activity where he left lasting legacies, namely the Mater Hospital Foundation, on which he served for 26 years, and UCD’s School of Law Development Council.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KXCD5QMU4JGKFGAES6IEPYXF2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568210},"content":"Mary Moorhead, the CEO of the Mater Hospital Foundation, wrote that “It is no surprise that during Declan’s tenure as chair, the Foundation remitted over €31 million to help fund innovative and transformational projects”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IJJHXAQQ25E3HBXXPZNXA6VGQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568211},"content":"His work for the Law School in UCD was marked by the university conferring an honorary doctorate of law on him in 2013. His dedication to his alma mater continued over the years and more recently he was a member of the President’s Advisory Board at UCD.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NB2J4UFSCRFLTBTJAKT5FGULME","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568212},"content":"Always the absolute gentleman, Declan, behind his ever-smiling face, demonstrated an extraordinary emotional capacity to confer his love on his family and friends. With his wife Margaret, to whom he proposed three weeks after having met her in 1967, he raised four children: Conal, Cian, Melissa and Melanie. He was devoted to Margaret and to their family. He enjoyed nothing more than holidaying with them and the grandchildren on Inishnee in Connemara during the summer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7OETFXZWE5HWXGCCBH3JVNE4DU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568213},"content":"With his numerous friends he relished the occasional meeting at Moran’s of the Weir, golfing trips or fishing at Currarevagh. On one occasion in the latter setting, he took great pride in showing his friends a big black box which he said would enable him to communicate with the business world while fishing. This box, appropriate now for a museum setting, was the basis of a new phenomenon which would be called the mobile phone!","type":"text"},{"_id":"D4DR4RX5KNHZVL3BUS2ODE2MWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568214},"content":"Declan’s personality radiated warmth, generosity and a great joy for life. He had an innate gift to make friends and to be a great friend.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NEA36YNTSRCVZEDWS44AEABFBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568215},"content":"The huge attendance at his recent funeral in Foxrock bore testimony to this.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QU2JHKLDOJCUNA4GO42GJFBPXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568216},"content":"His work both at the corporate and charitable levels is a fitting legacy to a life well lived, sadly taken from his family prior to its completion.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Antoin Murphy"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2024-11-17T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Declan McCourt – pioneering entrepreneur made an immense contribution to corporate and charitable sectors ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5KM4IJI7FBBEPC63QFUIMHQ3EI","auth":{"1":"552fcc86dc51c13325ecbd2bc3c303f7e7cca11d6a65287703700da595bd1703"},"focal_point":{"x":1010,"y":468},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5KM4IJI7FBBEPC63QFUIMHQ3EI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/17/declan-mccourt-pioneering-entrepreneur-made-an-immense-contribution-to-corporate-and-charitable-sectors/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"ENBXRVTDWVBOZBLYHBGGYIIJG4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":465,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/2e2b33fd-281b-464f-bea9-7922327f3f0d/versions/1731503343/media/10cf94e09582ec62eb7027eea35910b9_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/16/quincy-jones-obituary-music-kingpin-best-known-for-producing-michael-jacksons-thriller/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZL2WBQ2MVJHBLOEGICMPTOKFDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>March 14th, 1933","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 3rd, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"4S2JLELXVVBELHNAASABMQY2ZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435071720},"content":"The career of Quincy Jones, who has died aged 91, was an odyssey like few others in the pantheon of popular music. In a dazzling, decades-long run of creative and commercial success, he established himself as a kingpin of many genres: jazz, pop, R&B, funk, disco, film scores and more. Above all else, however, he is remembered as the man who produced the biggest-selling record in history: Michael Jackson’s Thriller.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WKWTJ53EWNDBXNMS4S6LDW3GIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695787},"content":"Jones’s artistic journey was an eventful and glitzy one. A jazz bandleader in the 1950s and 1960s, he later moved into the world of film soundtracks, produced multimillion-selling records, presided over his own label and built a TV production and publishing empire. At the time of his death, he was worth an estimated half a billion dollars.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OORW2XO7QFECHAD4I2EB67KUJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695788},"content":"Quincy Delight Jones Jr was born on March 14th, 1933 – the same day as his subsequent close friend, the actor Michael Caine – in Chicago. His parents Quincy Sr and Sara were, respectively, a semi-pro baseball player and carpenter, and a bank worker. When he was a small child, Sara suffered a mental breakdown and was committed to an institution; his father remarried and moved the family to Washington State.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5RX6GRY7NFDRBXBRHK63QQDXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695789},"content":"Entering the music business aged 17 as a precocious arranger, Jones learned an early lesson when the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker failed to pay him back a loan. Before long, he found work with big names such as Dinah Washington and Tommy Dorsey, then joined Lionel Hampton’s orchestra as a trumpeter and toured Europe with Count Basie. In 1956, the legendary Dizzy Gillespie’s ensemble hired him as musical director.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XD5OM4M6LRDRZLVHBJKYVAJDGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695790},"content":"Jones released his first album, This Is How I Feel About Jazz, in 1957. His 1962 release, Big Band Bossa Nova, contained what would come to be regarded as his signature tune, the chirpy, Latin-flavoured instrumental Soul Bossa Nova.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5HKQJIWACVEQDAKLBSKAEBWXSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695791},"content":"Jones had now become a bona fide mover and shaker in musical circles. In the mid-1960s, he produced four million-selling singles for British singer Lesley Gore; and a long-running creative relationship with Frank Sinatra peaked in 1966 when he conducted and arranged the elegant live album Sinatra at the Sands. He also branched out into film scores, beginning with Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker in 1961; his credits over the next decade and a half included soundtracks for The Getaway, In the Heat of the Night, Roots, The Italian Job, The Anderson Tapes and In Cold Blood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQFA6GSAORCF3OMLV5VMKMU3YI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695792},"content":"The 1970s saw Jones survive a brain aneurysm and make some of the most compelling music of his career. He produced the soundtrack for The Wiz, a film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Its star, Michael Jackson, asked Jones if he knew any potential producers for Jackson’s next album. Jones volunteered his own services, and despite the misgivings of Epic Records (who felt Jones was too jazzy for it to work), Off the Wall was a spectacular success, launching Jackson as a household-name solo artist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OVTRMTPIRVALDKKCWLA3FSBIXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695793},"content":"An irresistible collection of disco anthems penned by Jackson and the low-profile English songwriter Rod Temperton, Off The Wall was given a heady gloss by Jones’s mixing-desk magic. “Everybody said, ‘You can’t make Michael any bigger than he was in the Jackson Five,’” Jones recalled. “I said, ‘We’ll see.’”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JNSPBF4FGJGW7CZEMRVSHQOJ64","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695794},"content":"Released in August 1979, the record went triple platinum in the US within months.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6F4RLASIINDU3NNUIKQL533CGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695795},"content":"Unwilling to rest on his laurels, Jones then worked on a string of accomplished R&B albums by Rufus and Chaka Khan, George Benson, The Brothers Johnson, Patti Austin and Donna Summer. In 1980 he founded Qwest Records, a label whose roster contained artists as varied as Sinatra and New Order. The following year, he released the well-received album The Dude under his own name. Then came Thriller.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIV7QXA6NFCSRMQUV5YRISP5TY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695796},"content":"Jones spent most of 1982 in a studio where Jackson’s outlandish menagerie of pets roamed free (to his displeasure), and endured sleep deprivation as he toiled to make the record sound as close to perfect as possible. “That’s where the creative stuff comes in, the unconscious mind,” he said. “It was tough. But we did it.” Songwriter James Ingram recalled how Jones often fell asleep on the mixing board, awaking to answer a question: “He works in the alpha state a lot.” Jones’s imaginative ideas – bringing in Eddie Van Halen to play a rock guitar solo on Beat It, hiring horror movie legend Vincent Price for a spooky voiceover on the title track – helped turn a very good record into a legendary one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXKY2TEJUNDWNEUOSDM2PP7KK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731503011325},"content":"Released in November 1982, Thriller exploded like no record before or since, with all seven of its singles cracking the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. At one point in early 1983, it was shifting a million copies per week, and is today estimated to have broken the 100 million barrier. (An ungrateful Jackson tried to block Jones’s Grammy nomination for Thriller, arguing that “this is my record”; Epic Records refused, and Jones won Best Producer.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"LRFDN7QAPFGQNMW53O3NC65GVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435071721},"content":"Jones shaped many more hits as the 1980s rolled on. He also oversaw the USA For Africa charity single We Are the World, later recalling the “power” he felt as he commanded a studio full of guesting superstars. But this stratospheric success took a psychological toll, and his marriage to actress Peggy Lipton began to crumble as he became hooked on sleeping pills.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTGO4MCH4RG2RPMHR7PE3QZNN4","additional_properties":{"_id":"2NWQR3CZ4NGNHI3Q73RF3WXXMM"},"content":"Quincy Jones, producer and giant of US entertainment, dies aged 91","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HESLVLDHDVH3BJI5H5HWC7WPPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695798},"content":"After composing the soundtrack of Steven Spielberg’s drama The Color Purple, he fled to Tahiti, where he kicked his addiction. In 1987, Jones patched up his differences with Jackson to produce the follow-up to Thriller. The result, Bad, was an awkward and unsatisfying mélange that lacked cohesion. Though reviews were mixed, it moved seven million copies in its first week of release anyway, making it the fastest-selling album ever.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YVENOROO7VDKNG5ZNVCB5DFMR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695799},"content":"With his fortune amassed and his reputation unassailable, Jones moved into TV. He set up the production company Quincy Jones Entertainment, which was behind NBC’s hugely successful Will Smith sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, giving him another lucrative revenue stream for the rest of his life. He also organised Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration concert in 1993 and the Academy Awards telecast in 1996.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N55MWTMNQJCENE6JW3E2GUCJQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731503011330},"content":"In retirement, Jones occasionally courted controversy by making waspishly provocative comments about other musicians in interviews, and raised eyebrows in 2009 by dating an Egyptian fashion designer 52 years his junior. He was married three times, to Jeri Caldwell (1957-1966), Ulla Andersson (1967-1974) and Peggy Lipton (1974-1990). He is survived by seven children, including the actress Rashida Jones and the music producer Quincy Jones III.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"In an eventful and glitzy career, he performed with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, arranged for Frank Sinatra, and scored films including The Color Purple"},"display_date":"2024-11-16T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Quincy Jones obituary: Music kingpin best known for producing Michael Jackson’s Thriller","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"PQAFJ7CXO72PEWLCWHWJLM3MUM","auth":{"1":"b8c8214c4e37fcfcf2813687a7cf5bfc21e48e7e8968719b6539ee718c889843"},"focal_point":{"x":3344,"y":1270},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/PQAFJ7CXO72PEWLCWHWJLM3MUM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/16/quincy-jones-obituary-music-kingpin-best-known-for-producing-michael-jacksons-thriller/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TAUK4X4PCJA6ZID6ILZWDBKXUI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":499,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5beee197-da24-4bc2-92d7-b90e3fd3bf8a/versions/1731449113/media/0b3e8df081ce3ddbd134f6f38c53aef4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/12/kathleen-watkins-obituary-broadcaster-author-and-one-half-of-the-original-power-couple/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YAAHOKMMCZBTJHLYHZFMULB7GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 17th, 1934","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 7th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"W45GXN335JBBFEFWHQT7MXDH4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131045},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kathleen-watkins/\" target=\"_blank\">Kathleen Watkins</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/07/kathleen-watkins-broadcaster-and-author-has-died-aged-90/\" target=\"_blank\">who has died aged 90</a>, was a broadcaster, award-winning author, musician and patron of the arts. She became part of the original power couple when she married broadcaster <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gay-byrne/\" target=\"_blank\">Gay Byrne</a> and together they were a familiar sight at arts and cultural events around Dublin for many decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3E6MIJG2BBHEHGL6LE4T4TDKEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131046},"content":"From Saggart, Co Dublin, she was the second of four children born to Tom Watkins, from Tallaght, and Dinah Fitzgerald from Brittas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZ4GSGMBL5APDM7D7P5CVPFI54","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074514},"content":"Her father ran a sand and gravel business in Brittas and had a small farm in Saggart. He was in the 4th battalion of the old IRA and was interned at the Curragh during the Civil War. On the day of his wedding, he avoided capture by the British Army by escaping through the sacristy. His new bride did not see him for six weeks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QY35L2FZHJH2TMWSXRPOUSETYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131047},"content":"Kathleen Watkins contracted TB twice as a child, spending six weeks in a nursing home at one stage. She attended the local national school in Saggart and credits this with awakening her interest in music. On the Senior Times podcast in 2020, she told her friend and former <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rte/\" target=\"_blank\">RTÉ</a> colleague Mike Murphy how she and her fellow pupils were taught to recite the words of Thomas Moore and put them to music.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TUADIV6LDZA3JCR466FVJ55NUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074516},"content":"“I loved the rhythm of the words, the way the words lay line after line. I loved the rhythm of the music,” she recalled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZK7D3FR3DJEAPLW54GTJXEE3QQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131048},"content":"Secondary school was in Sion Hill, Blackrock, where she learned the harp by ear from Máirín Ní Shéaghdha (Mrs Feiritéar after marriage). She also learned the cello and piano at school and her music education continued after school, when she studied the concert harp with Sheila Larchet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4QE7NUJPKBGNPKFAK6BECU62BY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131049},"content":"She worked in Dunlop Tyres as she honed her craft as a harpist and singer. She would later spend six weeks travelling through the US with her harp to promote Irish Distillers. Her numerous appearances on US television included an interview on Good Morning America.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y43FVHMGRNE3RAKA2POADO25E4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131050},"content":"She was working in Dunlop’s when she was introduced to Gay Byrne in the Safari Café on Dawson St by optician Donal MacNally. Her future husband was an insurance clerk at that time but would soon join what was then known as Radio Éireann, in 1958.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EAKG6573DNH4XP2OBVYIBVN4PA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074520},"content":"In 1961, she too joined the broadcasting world and quickly became one of the leading continuity announcers on Telefís Éireann. She made history as the first continuity announcer to appear on screen on the opening night of Telefís Éireann on New Year’s Eve, 1961.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IFWWRCIX3QSXBNPG466QG67NZE","additional_properties":{"_id":"V7NZLINKJRGCDMZNGRKRYGPOTQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"VIUWCHFJFRAIFMJFSFHG4L64HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131052},"content":"Businessman Gavin Duffy, who was her co-presenter on the television show Holiday Ireland, once described her as the consummate professional.","type":"text"},{"_id":"INYYCKYBJNAENN5EXI7Z3ZGJJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074523},"content":"“Her measured delivery, infinite vocabulary, perfect diction with the breathing of a trained singer meant every link was perfectly enunciated with warmth and engagement on television,” he wrote in the Sunday Independent in 2014.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZKPMOGG6LVDVBJAAP3RERAJ5F4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131053},"content":"Breakdowns in transmission were a regular occurrence in the early days of television but she had a weapon in her armoury that most continuity announcers did not have. To avoid dead air, she would take out the harp and sing an Irish song.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F2R4K6V5WJFBZDVDPXKGN7HKBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131054},"content":"When she married Gay Byrne in 1964, such was their combined star power that gardaí had to cut a pathway through the large crowds gathered outside the church in Saggart to allow their car to leave.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UHFRCISIBFPBFUYFVC7LFJYX4","additional_properties":{"_id":"LRMJO3TAWBEYFGZY3YC2XZ4WMQ"},"content":"Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XLQ2HT7IFJHP7DZNM5TH6LLXVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131056},"content":"She played Grace Gifford in the 1966 docudrama Insurrection and was the first woman to host the Rose of Tralee in 1977. But apart from occasional projects and voiceover work, her career took a back seat while her husband worked long hours presenting his daily morning radio show and the weekend Late Late Show on television. She focused on rearing their two children, Crona and Suzy, only taking on projects when they fitted around family life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKASEDY2SJAILK2SPEDTVECYAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131057},"content":"When she presented the radio programme Overseas Requests, she rehearsed by reading the letters from emigrants to the girls as bedtime stories. When they were teenagers, she began presenting her longest-running television series Faces & Places, on television. It ran from 1986 until 1991.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOVT5ZJBO5GIHITP45DDPZ5OMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131058},"content":"In 2011, she accompanied her husband on the Gay Byrne Live on Stage tour. He talked about his life in broadcasting while she read poetry. Over a six-year period, they performed to more than 13,000 people all over Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V6JEPHJCWJDDNGOTM3B25D75FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131059},"content":"Her role as grandmother led to an unexpected career swerve in 2016 when she became a children’s author at the age of 82. She wrote three children’s books, based on stories she told her grandchildren about a piglet about town, called Pigín. The first of the books, which were all illustrated by Margaret Anne Suggs, won an Irish Book Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ICR7CAZWZBPVVLTJSVDJH6RFOE","additional_properties":{"_id":"DL54W2TIEVGETN2FDQB5FWJVQY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"IWF7SE52NJAM5AZOUNK7WMT5S4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131061},"content":"Of all the roles she took on, the one she truly relished was becoming Nana Kit to her five grandchildren.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNTVCZO3YRH67I3W2J266TWI6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074533},"content":"“Some people are not interested in grandchildren. We are all different but I can’t understand that,” she told Sheila Wayman in this newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JK3FZZIIPBDQRCTUOQKPCD4R3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131062},"content":"She had a passion for poetry and she reread her favourite poems so often that she knew them from memory. Whenever there was a gathering of friends, she could be relied upon to recite a poem that perfectly chimed with the occasion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CVCI2SQPEBBYTOQF5AUJS7RLSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074535},"content":"She compiled two books of poems – An Ordinary Woman, in 2019 and One for Everyone, the following year. Interviewed in this newspaper about the second collection, she told Róisín Ingle that poetry should be for everybody.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QYLFRXATX5E6RAY3MLN6ZPJ6ZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074536},"content":"“If the poems paint pictures for me, that’s all I need. Some people are very high falutin’ about poetry but I’m not a bit like that,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BGPO5P7L4BAZFIQI45FWLJGITA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131063},"content":"She accumulated a wide circle of friends with ease and they talked of how endlessly entertaining her company was. Close friend Marie Louise O’Donnell described her as a Renaissance woman and “a lady to her fingertips”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5A5ZNLWTGVBODL5N5TZCEC6C3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074538},"content":"Mike Murphy described her as a refined, erudite, graceful woman who was always interested in things. Speaking on RTÉ's Liveline, he said she loved how their friends teased her husband and she would laughingly tell them to “leave my Gaysie alone”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EPKHKFLPP5APTC22RQJSBN4UKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131064},"content":"Of all the arts, ballet was her favourite discipline. She went to the Royal Opera House whenever she could and spoke of how lucky she was to have seen Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev performing together in Covent Garden.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBA2LTPQR5BFVB4DF6LWFU742Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131065},"content":"Her passion for the arts led her to serve on the Arts Council, on the board of the National Gallery and as president of Feis Ceoil. She was an avid theatregoer, she championed struggling artists and she promoted new artists whenever she could. Mike Hanrahan of Stockton’s Wing said the band never forgot her role in getting them onto The Late Late Show after she had seen them perform in Limerick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U4OZB6722ZEH3M2YTC2P3QQFGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131066},"content":"The loss of her husband just before the Covid-19 pandemic was a major blow, but her daughter Suzy said she never knew anyone who was so relentlessly positive.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQH4ZKUBORDBLNDFJIDFO3S4HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074542},"content":"“Into every life a little rain must fall – I think that would be a saying I remember most of her,” she said. “She believed that, compared to many, her life was a charmed one and so she was ever grateful for that.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCWMZBNE4NET5HH7LHYSJHM7IQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074543},"content":"She said her mother was their father’s greatest supporter and friend. She graciously accepted the public interest in her husband but always insisted that show business stayed outside the home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GF53VWCHFNFKLC3LOUYJYKR3QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074544},"content":"“Ours was a normal, happy home with a mother that was present for us in every way,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IOIV3CAANFDBXMBX6P7BNTB2UE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131067},"content":"After she fell on her way to mass last Christmas Eve, she was forced to slow down but it didn’t stop her working with writer Alison Walsh on her autobiography which was due to be published next spring.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4P5CDAQ2KRE5VMR3MBUU5U6YNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131068},"content":"Predeceased by her husband Gay Byrne, and brother Jim, she is survived by her daughters Crona and Suzy, grandchildren Cian, Sadhbh, Kate, Saoirse and Harry, sisters Clare and Phil and sons-in-law Philip and Ronan.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"She loved how their friends teased her husband, Late Late Show host Gay Byrne, and she would laughingly tell them to “leave my Gaysie alone”"},"display_date":"2024-11-12T22:04:59.143Z","headlines":{"basic":"Kathleen Watkins obituary: broadcaster, author and one half of the original power couple","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"FX65QKBWD5G3SZESMO6GNZUU7Y","auth":{"1":"9c506a56e4eeb6f641332639419f0985f2cbe647a4ee7bf02ff30f93ca80008c"},"focal_point":{"x":1453,"y":918},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/FX65QKBWD5G3SZESMO6GNZUU7Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/12/kathleen-watkins-obituary-broadcaster-author-and-one-half-of-the-original-power-couple/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"IZHZQDH4VBBZJAFR7N4XPMRMII","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":448,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/e4c1b3f6-778c-4c71-a00e-0049a6b34859/versions/1730893590/media/f804e6f431acb7f1692df18321f4e26f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/09/david-davin-power-obituary-a-trusted-and-impartial-political-correspondent-for-rte-during-a-golden-era-in-broadcasting/","content_elements":[{"_id":"VTEQY5FAR5BWTMHQB55XDWVI2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>April 24th, 1952","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>October 31st, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"SO3SD3UX2JAPJIDSBIDB3BCXQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536086},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/david-davin-power/\" target=\"_blank\">David Davin-Power</a> was one of the best known faces on television and a trusted commentator on <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rte/\" target=\"_blank\">RTÉ </a>during the golden age of public service broadcasting. He reported on some of the momentous events in modern Irish history and explained them in an incisive and impartial manner to the viewing public.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HRPKXUD2HJCTDNZ3T7NTHJJBPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536087},"content":"During a long and varied career he was – from 1984 – the first co-presenter of the groundbreaking Morning Ireland programme in RTÉ, along with David Hanly, and went on to be the station’s Northern Editor during the peace process and political correspondent from 2001 to 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZSE6DIBF4FAYJB2BVCYNEW3Y4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536088},"content":"While he was noted for his impartiality, Davin-Power didn’t simply recite the facts of the big events he covered but provided concise explanation and context delivered with wit and brio. His calm demeanour and precise use of language were the hallmarks of his broadcasting style.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SOOCS3532RD3HNGFG2N7DABOFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536089},"content":"In private he was great company and a wonderful raconteur who appreciated the absurdities of life. David McCullagh, his long-time colleague on the RTÉ political team, summed up the feelings of those who worked with him over the years. “The most erudite, witty colleague, always great fun and wonderful company. Gone far too soon.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6USFKIKZHNAWNBJV4GPQ4UYT3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536090},"content":"David Davin-Power, or DDP as he was known to media colleagues, was born in 1952. His father, Maurice, was a GP who earned a reputation for the time and attention he gave to poorer patients. He was also a playwright, drawing on his professional experience in his work. He won the OZ Whitehead award for one-act plays twice, wrote episodes of the first RTÉ soap Tolka Row in the 1960s and was drama critic for the Irish Medical Times.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2XUV7UTAO5BW3FWBT27K4KMJ3I","additional_properties":{"_id":"AFXMESUI4FEU7PGFVTH64RAIWA"},"content":"Former RTÉ broadcaster David Davin-Power ‘showed bravery to the bitter end’, son tells funeral Mass","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HVQR2ODUEVA3RNU32TA4NE42JU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536091},"content":"The family lived on the South Circular Road in Dublin and David attended the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College in nearby Ranelagh. On leaving school he enrolled as a pre-med student in UCD but decided after a year that medicine was not for him. His younger sister Mary continued the family medical tradition and became a GP.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UNRIOYEYZ5EAPMAUTJNT5RQP24","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536092},"content":"David switched from medicine to history and politics in UCD and became a well-known figure in the college during the early years of the Belfield campus. After graduation he began his career in journalism with the Irish Medical Times, and in 1976 he moved to the Irish Press as a subeditor, where one of his colleagues was the writer David Hanly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBSMBJ3H6FDTVGG5YEYSEEDWHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536093},"content":"The two of them moved to RTÉ in the late 1970s and, after cutting their teeth in the newsroom, they were appointed as the first presenters of Morning Ireland, which went on air in November 1984. The programme gave a new dimension to RTÉ’s news coverage and quickly developed a wide listenership, making household names of its two presenters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EOK7VBK725GUPBQKZONV2XAWRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536094},"content":"When Ireland’s first commercial broadcaster, Century Radio, was established in 1989 Davin-Power was approached to head up its news operation. After serious consideration he decided to take the plunge and took charge of the news division at the station. It was an ill-fated move, as Century closed after a little more than two years due to financial difficulties.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FPK7POK57NEB5HPBLGFW5EO6OY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536095},"content":"Davin-Power was quickly snapped up by the Evening Press, where he was appointed political correspondent. He returned to his old haunt on Burgh Quay, intending to make his future as a newspaper journalist but faced an immediate dilemma when RTÉ offered him the job of Northern Correspondent. After agonising over the matter he decided that broadcasting was where his future lay, and he left the Evening Press after less than three weeks. He would later tell friends that his meeting with the paper’s highly respected editor, Sean Ward, to inform him of the decision was one of the most difficult and embarrassing encounters in his professional life. In the Press newsroom he was immediately dubbed “David Gone-in-an-hour.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NRYCOG7IKZHTTMOJKOZNWQ322E","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536096},"content":"As Northern editor of RTÉ during the 1990s he had a ringside seat at the evolving peace process and kept the Irish public up to date with the succession of events that ultimately led to the Belfast Agreement. He developed contacts right across the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland and was trusted by politicians of all parties for his fair minded commentary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJA7ALXUP5AZXE5GM3JO5JKACE","additional_properties":{"_id":"FDP27DL6LJFV3AMBNQJBL62LVM"},"content":"Bertie Ahern pays tribute to late broadcaster David Davin-Power","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"KHRKHODPLBCJHPDZ2VEZKXHF2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536097},"content":"During the 1980s he had to contend with a serious trauma in his personal life when his first marriage ended and he had to take care of his three children. At his funeral Mass his eldest son Nick paid tribute to the way his father had juggled a demanding work schedule with devoting himself to the welfare of his children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UU6CYQB4INFBRHYUZMYMHTBZCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536098},"content":"In 2001 he returned to Dublin as RTÉ’s political correspondent and he brought his skills as a knowledgeable and impartial commentator to the station’s coverage of Irish politics. He already knew all the main players before he arrived in Leinster House and was deeply respected by all sides of the political world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBWNQYZR6FC53MGAGCVVMGEAWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536099},"content":"His wonderful grasp of the English language sometimes had viewers, and colleagues, reaching for the dictionary. In one television news bulletin he described the late Brian Lenihan’s attitude during the financial crisis as “Panglossian”. That relatively obscure word could not have been bettered in the circumstances.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RV3KU3GVLVCRRDEDKSQF6BVH5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536100},"content":"As well as his use of language, television viewers were intrigued by his vigorous curly hair. There was unfounded speculation that it was not his own and occasionally passers-by would tug at it to check as he stood in Merrion Street waiting to do a broadcast. He once received a neatly typed letter with the message: “Have you no family or friends who would tell you that the wig you are wearing is terrible? It is so obvious it is funny. Why don’t you buy a new one or just be bald?” Davin-Power was so amused he had the letter framed and it hung in the downstairs bathroom at his Dublin home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FG2XFI3QLVHARFS2F3L7A65N3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536101},"content":"That home was the venue for an annual Christmas party given by David and his second wife Dearbhla, whom he married in 2001. There, journalists, politicians and judges mingled with family friends and relatives. Near-neighbours Bertie Ahern and Richard Bruton were regulars at the event, to which an invitation was much coveted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PALJGIAQPJA3PK3CEMKM6LFKGY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536102},"content":"In 2017 when he reached the age of 65 David was forced into retirement by RTÉ’s rigid rules. It was something he deeply resented as he felt he still had a lot to contribute to journalism. In recent years he was a frequent contributor to Newstalk, and in the past year began a regular political column in the Sunday Independent in which his insight and sparkling prose began to win a wide audience.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4IZR3BIFCFBZTIGIM25S5JTHDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536103},"content":"He was diagnosed early in the year with cancer of the thyroid. While the treatment appeared initially to work, by late summer it was evident the cancer had spread and he died on the last day of October.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NKTX7KXXLZDTDCYVUOMFWJMVXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536104},"content":"He was married twice, first to artist Christine Bowen, with whom he had three children, Nick, Caroline and Julia, and, subsequently to Dearbhla Collins, a renowned musician with whom he had two children, Ben and Emily. He is also survived by his sister Mary.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"As Northern editor of RTÉ during the 1990s he had a ringside seat at the evolving peace process that culminated in the Belfast Agreement"},"display_date":"2024-11-09T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"David Davin-Power obituary: A trusted and impartial political correspondent for RTÉ during a golden era in broadcasting","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"MVVY4K52POKOFLYQ2QSRI4KVKM","auth":{"1":"7eb0438574b40a86c16995377e575d8c10d62b03e0d775bcbf5c46a20e8ef5af"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/MVVY4K52POKOFLYQ2QSRI4KVKM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/09/david-davin-power-obituary-a-trusted-and-impartial-political-correspondent-for-rte-during-a-golden-era-in-broadcasting/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"LMYB6LDQQZHGHHQXYVA2G7G6BE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":470,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/610b6e09-8d58-40e7-93cf-5db71b798c9f/versions/1730799811/media/b0c8d21679ea2e73ef4c71ee34359b9d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/09/mike-jackson-obituary-british-general-associated-with-bloody-sunday-killings/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RZEHRY5H7FAYXDFJ7L3EF4SL4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>March 21st, 1944","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>October 15th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"2AQPZNYDXRB7HPTDYVZXXIBX34","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277365},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/10/16/british-general-involved-in-bloody-sunday-and-ballymurphy-massacre-dies/\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Jackson</a>, who has died aged 80, gained many honours and plaudits in his British army career of more than four decades. For many in Ireland, however, he will be associated with the Parachute Regiment killings on <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/bloody-sunday/\" target=\"_blank\">Bloody Sunday</a> in Derry on January 30th, 1972, and the killings at Ballymurphy in west Belfast in August the previous year by the same regiment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HSVWH2CS6NCYHA2JAVG36CJJQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277366},"content":"Jackson was a captain on the ground when Col Derek Wilford gave the order for the paratroopers to charge into the Bogside in Derry, a decision that resulted in 13 innocent civil rights demonstrators being shot dead on the day, and a 14th man dying some months later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WP2JOMWISNE4BMAKMXHCBRDSRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277367},"content":"Jackson told the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday that as he “sprinted across the waste ground, I had an absolutely firm impression that I was being shot at ... What I thought was: ‘Some bugger is firing at me’.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JQ567YNDEJB2PPZGRWMJVBWBBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277368},"content":"Later when recalled to the inquiry to give evidence about documents called the “shot list” that he had compiled featuring explanations soldiers gave for why they had fired, he denied that the list was designed to “sanitise” the actions of the paratroopers. Lord Saville accepted Jackson’s evidence about the list and found “nothing sinister in the fact that it did not include details such as the names of the soldiers and the number of rounds fired”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4S77XDEAHZEC7E6CWS2ICC3SAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277369},"content":"In his 2007 memoir, Soldier, Jackson wrote, “I hated the thought that our soldiers might have lost control ... I found it difficult to accept that there could have been any mass breach of discipline.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QIMORTJPCNDAHK6FMVBUHXUEDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277370},"content":"Jackson nonetheless accepted Saville’s damning 2010 report of the soldiers’ conduct on Bloody Sunday and his exoneration of all those killed and injured. He joined in the then British prime minister David Cameron’s apology to the victims.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W5L5QJYSBFG6HBYVEQL4KC2RO4","additional_properties":{"_id":"U2CV3FT325FRFGCGMM3HIZLAMM"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"PN2E2GI3O5DYBFXFVHVXUJMZ5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277371},"content":"Similarly, Jackson had an indirect role in the killings in west Belfast in August 1971, which became known as the Ballymurphy massacre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FMVUIJ66KVANHLCOA5OJUKWFHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277372},"content":"The shootings happened during Operation Demetrius, the introduction of internment without trial. Over three days from August 11th to 13th, 10 people including a priest who went to the aid of one of victims and a 50-year-old mother of eight children were shot dead. An 11th victim, Paddy McCarthy, died from a heart attack after a soldier allegedly put an empty gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFGT6B5GXNAU5INY2SNFD3HWQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277373},"content":"In 2019 Jackson said during an inquest into the killings that he probably was the unnamed British army captain who told the Belfast Telegraph in 1971 that the first two fatalities of the shootings were “gunmen”, adding that he was probably repeating information from fellow soldiers. “In retrospect, of course I should have said ‘alleged’,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXTCZHMD25B6JBWODGG5LA77NY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277374},"content":"That same inquest in 2021 found that all those killed were innocent and that the killings were “without justification”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S5IK2G3SNRGBLLKET4CCBF6VJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277375},"content":"Responding to his death, the Ballymurphy families said Jackson had started a “narrative that all those killed in Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday were gunmen” and had created a “lie that stayed with the Ballymurphy Massacre victims for over 50 years”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MW2Q3SHN4JCKTFY4TILEFXCXLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277376},"content":"In 2021 the UK supreme court ruled that the treatment meted out to the 14 “Hooded Men” during interrogation by the police and British army in 1971 would be characterised as torture by today’s standards. They were subjected to the so-called five techniques: hooding, prolonged wall-standing, subjection to white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and drink. In a BBC documentary two years later Jackson questioned “whether depriving somebody of sleep for two nights should or should not be illegal”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G3GTUURT3RBPPKQAHMNAAYDNEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277378},"content":"“This question, can non-violent ill-treatment equal torture, is very philosophical as well as legal,” he said. “You might be better asking a bishop on such matters.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"2LKQ4URQRJAC5AQRM2LSDMSZ6A","additional_properties":{},"content":"He described the Ballymurphy killings as a “hugely regrettable” tragedy. “But I would also say that anybody who loses their lives as a result of violent conflict is also a tragedy. I too have lost friends. So be it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DOKH4SJAHBC35HPWRYCPMBRYF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277380},"content":"That was probably a reference to the August 1979 Warrenpoint ambush known as the Narrow Water Massacre, in which 18 British paratroopers were killed and more than 20 seriously injured in a double-bombing by the IRA. He was incident commander in the immediate aftermath of the explosions, and one of his tasks was to identify the remains of his close friend, Maj Peter Fursman. He said he had never witnessed such “carnage”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNFGGFLVWBADPEBYZ5W7L2KGQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277381},"content":"“It greatly disturbed me. Still does,” he said. “Once you’ve seen such appalling sights you can’t close your mind to them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"54NXGH5QJZC25C4756BLC727BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277382},"content":"Whatever about his reputation in Ireland he became probably Britain’s best-known post-second world War officer. With his craggy, lived-in face emphasised by heavy bags under his eyes he was known affectionately to his soldiers as Darth Vader or the Prince of Darkness and dubbed “Macho Jacko” by the tabloids. Apart from three tours in Northern Ireland he served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, although he missed out on duty during the Falklands War, instead working in London in military intelligence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RVFDNQF2FBFSBIDF55DWBYTPSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"V2VXLQAAWZARXJHYTLKWA2ECWE"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"D4OGILZ2JJDCJIIDL2TRL4QRLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277383},"content":"He was born into a military family in Sheffield in 1944. He attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and aged 19 joined the army’s Intelligence Corps, with some of his duties relating to the Cold War, his competence here aided by a degree in Russian he subsequently took at Birmingham University. He transferred to the Parachute Regiment in 1970.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O7JRH7IG7VGGRBVCCY576AYXFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277384},"content":"In the 1990s he had senior roles with Nato during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, once describing the Serbian commander Ratko Mladić as “a brutal, boastful and manipulative thug”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LR7MQN3TTNG7DHIXZ2R7H4TBBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277385},"content":"In 1999 he was appointed commander of Nato’s rapid reaction force in Kosovo. It resulted in a famous clash with the US general Wesley Clark, who was his superior. Clark ordered Jackson to block the airport runway in the Kosovan capital of Pristina to prevent the arrival of Russian troops being flown in to help keep the peace, although there was a suspicion this was an attempt by the then Russian leader Boris Yeltsin to assist the Serbs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YZCHBEICFNG43MQDKMDQPLBCIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277386},"content":"Jackson refused the order saying, “Sir, I am a three- star general, you can’t give me orders like this. I have my own judgment of the situation and I believe this order is outside our mandate.” He also said, “I’m not going to start the third World War for you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"D6E77SIOUVHABAIEKFHGCA727A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277387},"content":"Jackson was supported by the British government and Clark backed down.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WFAWQGC4FJDRVOIACSNNZ4QQMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277388},"content":"Like his hero, the Duke of Wellington, he achieved the top military rank, rising to commander-in-chief, land forces in 2000 and three years later appointed chief of the general staff, the professional head of the British army, a post he held during the invasion of Iraq. Here he was critical of the lack of planning for dealing with the aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi leader <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/saddam-hussein/\" target=\"_blank\">Saddam Hussein</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5EUEVZWSVBDUNBQAPTAUV5UAHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277389},"content":"He also ordered an investigation into claims of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, acknowledging that while such allegations were damaging, covering them up would be more harmful to the British army.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QDAVDOCTZZEAJKAH3XRP5ZCAVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277390},"content":"He retired in 2006 but continued to speak regularly on military matters. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KSN5G2T3JNBOZI5KY3MC7DAQFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277391},"content":"He married Jennifer Savery in 1966. They had two children, Amanda and Mark. After their divorce he married Sarah Coombe in 1985. They had a son, Tom.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Whatever about his reputation in Ireland he became probably Britain’s best-known post-second World War officer"},"display_date":"2024-11-09T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Mike Jackson obituary: British general associated with Bloody Sunday killings","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ZAHJ4H5DXA5PPCLTFMSURYYFIM","auth":{"1":"fee4a60f15ca754f5a9d18843ef027b46ee7451900891a4fc20dfea3085f8269"},"focal_point":{"x":441,"y":308},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZAHJ4H5DXA5PPCLTFMSURYYFIM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/09/mike-jackson-obituary-british-general-associated-with-bloody-sunday-killings/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}}],"count":5873,"_id":"aeba059272e9554b0f14e91eac0a652201763297d808239fac11416f6f107327"},"expires":1741316336303,"lastModified":1741316036019},"{\"feedOffset\":0,\"feedSize\":40,\"query\":\"(taxonomy.primary_section._id:\\\"/obituaries\\\") AND -(subtype:\\\"Review\\\")\",\"size\":40}":{"data":{"content_elements":[{"_id":"SU2UANRZENDO5LRSCBGRY6PXPE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":272,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/7d844b59-5814-46c8-8df3-c22213657b4c/versions/1740742145/media/213dcf7cc05a44f830ef275e67e90d8b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/03/joe-horan-communications-and-executive-coach-who-shaped-leaders-in-the-public-and-private-sector/","content_elements":[{"_id":"BYY53P7PTZAUXAA43YU2AMI5UY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159679},"content":"The death of Joe Horan on May 5th, 2024, has left a void in Irish corporate and public life. Though his work as a communications and executive coach was never in the spotlight, his influence extended across secretaries general of government departments, CEOs of our largest state agencies and Education and Training Boards, and leaders of some of the highest performing companies in the energy, legal, pharma, technology and financial sectors. Many senior people in these organisations, responsible for billions in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs, were shaped in part by Joe’s steady hand and sharp mind.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CKLWZNLXHBGR7EEIG65W3IWNZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159680},"content":"As the founder of Frontline Communications, he was a mentor, a strategist, and a trusted confidant to his clients, developing their communication and influencing skills. As Andrew Brownlee, CEO of Solas, puts it: “Joe was in many ways, a ‘horse whisperer’ for leadership, guiding countless individuals to positions where they could drive real change. I wouldn’t be the CEO today if it wasn’t for Joe’s help, and I wouldn’t have been able to set out so clearly the growth and transformation agenda that we have been able to realise over the last few years.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBIPHOBUKBGSBCXC5KBOMGNN3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159681},"content":"Because Joe worked with unwavering discretion, there is no accurate count of the number of people and organisations he helped to grow. Yet through word of mouth, his influence spread. As Oonagh McPhillips, secretary general, of the Department of Justice says:<i> </i>“Joe used his sharp analytical mind, combined with empathy and insight to help so many people fulfil their potential. He was passionate about developing the public service and I will always be grateful for his support to me personally, and to many others I referred to him over the last decade or so, who found his unique approach very helpful.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4X4HIWZF5GPXB2AKR7DW2VUCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159682},"content":"Born in Donegal on November 25th, 1951, and raised in Moate, Co Westmeath, with siblings John, Máire, Anne, Bríd and Martin, Joe attended the Carmelite College, later going on to study English at UCG, where he met Merci Fahy. They built a lifelong love and marriage that spanned more than 50 years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XDKV2A7XKVDZ5NVC566AZB3TNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159683},"content":"Joe’s professional life began with six happy years as a teacher at De La Salle in Bagenalstown, Co Carlow. But he wanted to see something of life beyond the realm of education and so, in 1978, he moved his young family to Swords, Co Dublin and took the adventurous leap into the business world at Burroughs Corporation and later Nixdorf Computers. Throughout this time, he learned his craft as a communicator, in sales, negotiations and presentations. It was at Nixdorf that he met Bunny Carr and Tom Savage. This had a seismic effect on Joe and he joined Carr Communications. Five years later, he started his own firm, Frontline Communications.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PNG3EB2AVZCN5H224XOJBUGNWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159684},"content":"Beyond his professional life, Joe was a man of deep warmth, generosity, and elegance. He was the consummate host. His passion for words and language extended beyond his coaching. He was a poet, a lover of Crosaire in this paper, and a man who appreciated the precision and beauty of a well-expressed idea.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QCQ44U22L5AGZI64MN3S6CFVCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159685},"content":"In August 2023, Joe was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer. Though his initial treatments went well, he achieved remission for only a few weeks in early 2024. In his final months, he faced his illness with characteristic strength and grace. His death last year was sudden and shocking.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7LGLA2M6EZB6JLQEO4UJYB5VZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159686},"content":"Joe Horan changed lives, not by seeking the spotlight but by helping others step into it. His legacy lives on in the leaders he shaped, the friendships he nurtured, and the family he adored. He is survived by his wife Merci, children Rachel, David and Jane, their partners Chris, Sarah and Jonathan, and his granddaughters Lauren, Hannah and Grace.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SAPC32NORG5TO6YNJ4VYHE4TI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740741159687},"content":"Joe’s absence will be deeply felt, but his legacy remains—woven into the fabric of Ireland’s public and private sectors, in the decisions made by those he guided, and in the leaders who carry forward his wisdom.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Founder of Frontline Communications was a mentor, a strategist, and a trusted confidant to his clients"},"display_date":"2025-03-03T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Joe Horan: communications and executive coach who shaped leaders in the public and private sector","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"67FSN7KH55C3VCSU6AKJ45QJFY","auth":{"1":"d921331db58984a11536478182b4488a6584437e7407a5e13e487d5f4bc2720f"},"focal_point":{"x":94,"y":104},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/67FSN7KH55C3VCSU6AKJ45QJFY.png"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/03/joe-horan-communications-and-executive-coach-who-shaped-leaders-in-the-public-and-private-sector/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"H4X33ZXED5DCZNVMNOFKVPSMCY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":606,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d38e6169-957e-4c34-aa52-fe11fae1c498/versions/1740742300/media/3992234c288c846c6582f6c631eaeb75_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/gene-hackman-obituary-one-of-the-most-prolific-and-respected-character-stars-of-late-1980s-and-90s/","content_elements":[{"_id":"R4K4NQ7NCNBV5HD6UUKJIRUSIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born:</b> January 30th, 1930","type":"text"},{"_id":"WFSE353YGBCJHNYB6L7ES6SIZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> February 26th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"3AB2VZEO2JBWTAHDRFKIWR5W6Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"Few of Hollywood’s leading actors made such an unlikely journey to stardom as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gene-hackman/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gene-hackman/\">Gene Hackman</a>, who has died aged 95. He had no early contact with show business, came from a fraught family background and had looks that might generously be described as “homely”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NEMG42RPJGK3PNO5DGM3P6FE4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He did not decide on acting as a career until his late 20s and was in his late 30s when he had his breakthrough, in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Yet within four years he had won the first of his two Oscars, playing the cop Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection (1971).","type":"text"},{"_id":"EI6VU6SOUFFSHOV25GC5Q2ES7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"While this was his biggest commercial success, his critical status grew with his performance as the paranoid surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). He went on to become one of the most prolific and respected character stars of the late 1980s and 90s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WD5TUGMGKRC3LNANQZDZORDKXY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Hackman acted in about 80 movies. Many were dire, and Empire magazine once described him as “the master of the art of rotten career moves”. But he survived those films, as well as problems with drink, a heart ailment and periods of depression. He admitted he took many jobs for the money – certainly nothing else could account for his return to the Superman series in 1987 – to support an expensive lifestyle. He enjoyed flying his own planes and maintained homes throughout the United States and Europe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VRY2N5AKDFHS7OUV2T6YMO7BWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"His readiness to accept so much work may have stemmed from a disrupted childhood during the Depression years. Born in San Bernardino, California, he was the son of Lyda (nee Gray), a waiter, and Eugene Hackman. His father, a journalist, in a restless search for employment moved the family from town to town before leaving for good when Gene was 13, upsetting his schooling and life so that he later remarked he never felt he belonged anywhere. He lied about his age and joined the Marines when he was 16, serving an instructive though unhappy few years, mainly in the Far East. After a serious motorcycle accident, he was invalided out of the forces and had to find a livelihood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZP7S3DGJXFBHBEDOGZ3VTZHNBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1956 he married a New Yorker, Faye Maltese, and with her support decided to try acting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"C5JNL44Z2JA5FHFPXJ5WWWBARQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Remembering some of Gene Hackman's most famous roles","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"E6CORC7WH5DZ3O4UZJ3Z4B6G5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"They moved to the west coast and Hackman enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts, where he found himself years older than his fellow students. They included Dustin Hoffman, who later became the Hackmans’ lodger and lifelong friend. Allegedly the duo were nominated by their fellows as those “least likely to succeed”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"KR2IGRNCBFDNNAMIXZEHKIXIBM","additional_properties":{},"content":"On their return to New York, Faye became a secretary and Hackman took casual jobs between a few off-Broadway plays and occasional television work in episodes of The Defenders and The United States Steel Hour. In his film debut, Mad Dog Coll (1961), he played a cop, and he then appeared in a TV western, Ride With Terror (1963).","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4OH4ZYQ7BDQVBV3CXISV4FEKM","additional_properties":{},"content":"He anticipated better from a role in Robert Rossen’s Lilith (1964), which starred Warren Beatty. Despite the film’s subsequent cult status, the initial response to it hardly helped the struggling actor, who by then had a family – a son, Christopher, and daughter, Elizabeth. A Broadway role in Any Wednesday (1964), starring Jason Robards and an unfriendly Sandy Dennis received good notices.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CTEUKHEHTVCQVETX2ZPN44U6JI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Happily, Beatty turned producer for Bonnie and Clyde and, remembering Hackman from Lilith, cast him as Buck Barrow. The violent film set in Texas during the late 1920s became a hit and Hackman’s assertive performance gained him an Oscar nomination, as best supporting actor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQBOAAACGJCLRJFHB3C7INHRPQ","additional_properties":{},"content":" He also had a third child, Leslie, and a marriage made increasingly difficult by his relentless schedule.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PO26WRD3EBCRBNDK3NQYM2Y7MQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Gene Hackman: Ageless, everyman actor who never gave a bad performance","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"JRS3RTI2GFASTLCAMSQKBCQWNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Critical kudos and a second Oscar nomination came from his role as the son in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). But it was his subsequent success as the truculent detective in William Friedkin’s The French Connection that changed his life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGSLKE75FZFBHKHIGPJBCGUDZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"When Steve McQueen and others rejected the film, Hackman seized the moment and made the unyielding cop on the trail of drug dealers his own. He received an Oscar as best actor and reprised the role in the darker French Connection II (1975)..","type":"text"},{"_id":"W2EOZXNYABD6XGG2IRG6JPFZTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Between these thrillers, he was notable in two films released in 1972: Prime Cut, as a vicious gangland boss, and as the lead in the popular film The Poseidon Adventure. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"3Y7YALRQJVBS3E6PZRR57GZDWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PXUPY3H7VRHBBJE5HRP4K7VW64","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYUUFZPVTVFALNCVEVMNCAUF7A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Following the highly paid chore of playing the villain Lex Luthor in Superman (1978), Hackman went into semi-retirement. His scenes for Superman II (1980) had been completed during the initial shoot. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"QIBS4F4GHBGGZL2VSVKUN2D6HY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1983 he launched the second phase of his career, playing a jaded reporter in Roger Spottiswoode’s political thriller Under Fire and a colonel in Uncommon Valor, and taking the challenging role of the reclusive billionaire in Nicolas Roeg’s Eureka.. It took Hackman a while to find his stride, mixing disasters such as Misunderstood (1984) and Superman IV (1987) with successes in Best Shot (released as Hoosiers in the US, 1986) and a villainous secretary of defence in the stylish No Way Out (1987).","type":"text"},{"_id":"2SDSJ25VXBG6NMDDWFSEEOWMBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was the fourth of his six films in 1988 that gave him his best role for years, playing the co-investigator of racial murders in the US deep south. Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning received some stick for its alleged inaccuracies, but Hackman enjoyed a tailor-made part, exhibiting a combination of world-weary humanity and wry humour, cloaked by an exterior toughness. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JPHITBNRRESFLYAQX466SCANA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Embarking on the busiest period of his career, when he also returned to the stage, opposite Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss in Death and the Maiden on Broadway (1992), Hackman made much of a small role as a film director in Postcards from the Edge, and played the prosecutor in the remake of the noir classic Narrow Margin (both 1990). Including roles as narrator and General Mandible’s voice in Antz (1998), he made 25 appearances in 10 years. One documentary was a tribute to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/clint-eastwood/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/clint-eastwood/\">Clint Eastwood</a>, to whom Hackman had reason to be grateful.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DMYXOBVSLNEIJCFCLKREIXQSZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Gene Hackman 1930-2025: in pictures","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"FX2YPLWBONBQHL6UGYFLXJS3ZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1992 Eastwood had nagged him into playing the sadistic sheriff Daggett in the sombre Unforgiven. Hackman brought weight and credibility to the pivotal role and received his second Oscar. It started him on a run of westerns – as a brigadier general in Geronimo (1993), Nicholas Earp alongside Kevin Costner in Lawrence Kasdan’s monumental Wyatt Earp (1994), then another evil sheriff in the quirky The Quick and the Dead (1995). In Tony Scott’s cold war thriller Crimson Tide (1995) he was memorable as the hawkish submarine captain who nearly brings about a nuclear war.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ULUZWLY55NDUVBJVOLYNJIUII4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He clearly enjoyed playing the sleazy producer in Get Shorty (1995). Relishing his increasing status and workload, he knocked spots off Hugh Grant in Extreme Measures (1996) and responded to the competition offered by Paul Newman in the nostalgic private-eye movie Twilight (1998). Hackman worked increasingly in big-budget movies: as the murderous president in Eastwood’s Absolute Power (1997), and the reclusive surveillance expert in Scott’s Enemy of the State (1998).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RE44CJODOZHJ5KDL5C2UE2KSSI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In his own production, the disturbing thriller Under Suspicion (2000), he played a wealthy lawyer being tracked by a dogged detective for a child murder. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IUYO6QLEGNBENEVB3I2Z6G3ZQI","additional_properties":{},"content":"There were lighter moments, such as his rightwing senator in The Birdcage (1996), a feeble revamp of La Cage aux Folles, and a return to coaching – this time football – in The Replacements (2000). ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNBTSVFZUNEV5IVXMDJTZ3ZMOE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2001 he again embarked on a series of big-budget films, beginning with a cameo role in The Mexican, an uneasy blend of romance and black comedy starring <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/brad-pitt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/brad-pitt/\">Brad Pitt</a>, quickly followed by Heartbreakers, in which Hackman played a cigarette tycoon bamboozled by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sigourney-weaver/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sigourney-weaver/\">Sigourney Weaver</a>. In welcome contrast, he was very much the star as a gang leader, Joe, in David Mamet’s smart and complicated Heist – a thriller in which, characteristically for the writer-director, nothing was exactly what it seemed. Hackman was elevated to the rank of admiral in Behind Enemy Lines, a jingoistic and gung-ho war film that was more rewarding financially than artistically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NOJIX6ISKFGNZBNXHPO7PZAOOE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In one of the best films of his career, Wes Anderson’s witty and poignant The Royal Tenenbaums, Hackman took the lead as Royal, a long-absent father who returns to salvage his erratic family from a complicated domestic dilemma. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DQHXVSF2Z5CSXELZIJKEXLYENU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Runaway Jury (2003), adapted from a John Grisham novel, proved efficient entertainment, largely thanks to an original premise and fine performances from Hackman and his friend Hoffman. After a minor comedy, Welcome to Mooseport (2004), Hackman gave a television interview stating that he had no plan to act in future and was going to enjoy a more simple life. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6WGQCFKNYBDTNNV3NZGBTBNE3Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"WRVHJ3FULVCCXCMFPLTVYCOKLU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His first marriage ended in divorce in 1986. He married Betsy Arakawa, a pianist, in 1991; she was found dead with Hackman at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His three children survive him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UVXUG3YR5RES3LYZWOOINOENTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Few of Hollywood’s leading actors made such an unlikely journey to stardom as Hackman"},"display_date":"2025-03-01T06:00:01Z","headlines":{"basic":"Gene Hackman obituary: One of the most prolific and respected character stars of late 1980s and 90s","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3XWOXQ54PRDILMAQDV3S5GJP6Y","auth":{"1":"f1665caeffdc5ef72c970a4e0e0bede0de3ba006d49a4a7e2a83f7da20f27db3"},"focal_point":{"x":537,"y":256},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3XWOXQ54PRDILMAQDV3S5GJP6Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/gene-hackman-obituary-one-of-the-most-prolific-and-respected-character-stars-of-late-1980s-and-90s/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"E4SU54EHXVER3F56IT4HP4FFNM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":371,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/3c11074d-8e52-4a13-8890-cddca5b8c99e/versions/1740581261/media/d70a98dccc4d70fdc8593e7a77ac562f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/brendan-bik-mcfarlane-obituary-ira-figure-linked-to-kidnapping-killings-and-prisoner-escape/","content_elements":[{"_id":"6T3MP4Q6OVAGZI6ILERHAPSK7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 9th, 1951","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>February 21st, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"6BAOX2KNTRGXRIQVTSO5EX4E4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002818},"content":"Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, who has died aged 73, was a former seminarian who as an <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_self\">IRA</a> member participated in a sectarian massacre on the Shankill, allegedly was involved in the kidnapping of Don Tidey and the killing of a Garda and Irish soldier, played a central role in the H-Block hunger strikes and was one of the leaders of the mass escape of IRA prisoners from the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/maze-prison/\" target=\"_self\">Maze prison</a> in 1983.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G2P4CU3WW5C3JMQVBPJ3APEO4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002819},"content":"In paying tribute, senior <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sinn-fein/\" target=\"_self\">Sinn Féin</a> and former IRA members majored on the hunger strikes and the Maze escape, while <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2025/02/21/who-was-bik-mcfarlane-the-ira-figure-linked-to-notorious-kidnapping/\" target=\"_blank\">several others</a> concentrated on the Shankill killings and the Tidey kidnapping.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HKU3ZZ2HERGZNFKA566GHGEWVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002820},"content":"The clash of opinion was well illustrated in an exchange on X following his death where Sinn Féin leader <a href=\"https://x.com/MaryLouMcDonald/status/1893007767142629485\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Lou McDonald described McFarlane</a> as “a great patriot who lived his life for the freedom and unity of Ireland”, with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2023/11/02/university-of-limerick-names-brigid-laffan-as-new-chancellor/\" target=\"_blank\">chancellor of the University of Limerick Prof Brigid Laffan</a> responding that such praise was <a href=\"https://x.com/BrigidLaffan/status/1893362116389642533\" target=\"_blank\">“stomach churning”.</a>","type":"text"},{"_id":"XWEDBH6DYVGFRGY2KVSQWXMMHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002821},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"7W6XPE7YCFA3NEGDZBRCB2JREY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002822},"content":"There was a large attendance of republican figures at his funeral in west Belfast on Tuesday, February 25th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4D2DHURFPHEJCPMGQMPGH7WHM","additional_properties":{"_id":"KMJAEDRD7BCB5MRYJGJIU6GZ44"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"IY666QV2KFDAJFLQ4O76EHDSCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002823},"content":"McFarlane was born in 1951 and raised in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast. He took his nickname “Bik” from a Scottish brand of biscuits, McFarlane, Lang and Co. In 1968, he decided to study for the priesthood, attending St David’s Catholic seminary in Wales, but abandoned his vocation two years later to return to Belfast, where he joined the IRA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F5YXCEWUCBCJ7LU4OYIHAG2GRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002824},"content":"Several years ago he told the republican newspaper, An Phoblacht, that he saw no contradiction in engaging in armed violence. “We were studying liberation theology. I’d have turned up somewhere like South America with a bible in one hand and an AK47 in the other,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDSIAO6IARFXVOCMYZPJBXUWTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002825},"content":"He was convicted of the IRA gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar on the Shankill in August 1975 in which five Protestants, three men and two women, were killed and some 60 injured. As it made its getaway, the IRA unit also <a href=\"https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/bayardo-murders-lost-in-rubble-of-mcgurks/28595832.html?\" target=\"_blank\">opened fire</a> on a group of women and children standing at a taxi rank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DD24FZNB6FCETMQSZCQLCMC4DQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002826},"content":"McFarlane was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders. As David Beresford wrote in Ten Men Dead, McFarlane was not chosen as one of the 1981 hunger strikers because of the Bayardo attack, which potentially would have labelled him a “one-man public relations disaster”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZC5Q6ZOT5ZHTHD6CUTBP7IZHEA","additional_properties":{"_id":"DHWJ5W6CJFCW5OWYNU6X6ERUPY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"Z5G6SKUTFNGDNNGVODBDYMJ6IA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002827},"content":"But against his wishes, he ended up as the IRA commanding officer in the prison during the strikes. The obvious candidate for the role was another leading republican, Seanna Walsh. But Bobby Sands, the first to begin the hunger strike and the first of the 10 to die, insisted that McFarlane must take on the role. “Seanna Walsh is my best mate,” said Sands. “When a crisis develops, Seanna Walsh will not let me die. You will. You have to.” McFarlane took it as a dubious compliment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WC6WFEPBPBBEJH3Y6JWNT3L5GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002829},"content":"Over fairly recent years McFarlane was involved in a dispute with another former H-Block prisoner Richard O’Rawe, who was the IRA press officer in the prison during the hunger strikes. O’Rawe said he and McFarlane had agreed to accept a deal on offer that would have ended the strike after four deaths, but that it was overruled by the outside republican leadership. Others such as the late Monsignor Denis Faul made a similar assertion, but McFarlane insisted “there was no such deal”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NL4OBEOPDBEJLK3BI34E26DLLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002831},"content":"He tried to escape from the Maze Prison in 1978 dressed as a priest but was caught. He was more successful in 1983, when he led the Maze prison breakout in which 38 republican prisoners escaped.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YKAA67MBENF77KTUPKF4ZMCYM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002832},"content":"He quickly resumed his IRA activities. There was strong evidence that he was involved in the 1983 kidnap of supermarket executive Don Tidey. The IRA gang was traced to Derrada Wood near Ballinamore in Co Leitrim, where Patrick Kelly and trainee Garda Gary Sheehan were shot dead. Tidey was freed while the kidnappers escaped.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZIRZ3PX4YNCR3ADDCXF5A72Q3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002833},"content":"McFarlane was arrested, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/timeline-mcfarlane-appeal-1.649361\" target=\"_blank\">along with fellow escapee and current Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly, in Amsterdam in 1986</a>. He was extradited to Northern Ireland and returned to prison. He was released on parole 11 years later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EOWFSMXOKJAEJNQGGQMBPG3EGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002834},"content":"He was arrested in the Republic in 1998 and charged in connection with the Don Tidey kidnapping. That trial collapsed, however, after gardaí lost items recovered from <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2023/12/16/death-in-derrada-wood-how-a-provisional-ira-gang-shot-dead-a-recruit-garda-and-a-soldier-during-a-bloody-rescue/\" target=\"_blank\">Derrada Wood</a> that were said to have his fingerprints on them. He faced a retrial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin 10 years later but that case also collapsed after Garda evidence and an alleged admission he had made that he was in Derrada Wood were ruled inadmissible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N2ADZJPZH5AHVHPT7VX4B2NYJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002835},"content":"In 2010, the Irish government had to pay McFarlane €5,400 in damages and €10,000 in legal costs after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that proceedings against him were “unreasonably long”. The court cited how over 10 years, McFarlane made 40 round-trips each of 320km to the court from his home in Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UT2ZZ5NRCNA3HLSK3V2WSBNC5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002836},"content":"McFarlane was a firm supporter of the peace process and of the former Sinn Féin president <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gerry-adams/\" target=\"_self\">Gerry Adams</a>. He also was a singer and played at republican events. He wrote a number of songs including one about Sands called A Song for Marcella. This was a pseudonym, the name of one of his sisters, that Sands used in articles he wrote for An Phoblacht.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GUMASLA4P5CMNA6TXTD56XWCOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740570002838},"content":"McFarlane married young but, according to Beresford, that relationship broke up early under the strain of his IRA activities. He met his Danish wife Lene in a jazz club in Paris while he was on the run in 1984. He is survived by Lene and their children, Thomas, Emma and Tina.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He became a firm supporter of the peace process"},"display_date":"2025-03-01T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane obituary: IRA figure linked to kidnapping, killings and prisoner escape ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"O3YDXGKIN5EJ5O4XEUSYQLGOUE","auth":{"1":"4fbaa31585e947719bedd15c05d6a85a715bacddaa022e1c692bbcafc6cfa83f"},"focal_point":{"x":323,"y":174},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/O3YDXGKIN5EJ5O4XEUSYQLGOUE.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/03/01/brendan-bik-mcfarlane-obituary-ira-figure-linked-to-kidnapping-killings-and-prisoner-escape/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"IEUXR4H46RHHBGF65COMINLJZA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":568,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/71c9314c-a4ba-4c69-8cc7-354b5be1c336/versions/1740563520/media/8385907d8f530b48914a47b0ce894bcf_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/26/jennifer-johnston-obituary-writer-who-combined-brevity-with-razor-sharp-wisdom/","content_elements":[{"_id":"X5ZCZCX3SBALZD6V2NK3G4KCTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>January 12th, 1930","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>February 25th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEW6NZILD5EYLDGFFDCTBKU7UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468963},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/jennifer-johnston/\" target=\"_blank\">Jennifer Johnston</a>, who has <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2025/02/26/writer-jennifer-johnston-dies-aged-95/\" target=\"_blank\">died aged 95</a>, was a prolific novelist, playwright and short story writer who won numerous accolades for her distilled and acutely perceptive writing. They included the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards, the Irish PEN Award, the Whitbread (now the Nero Award), and a shortlisting for the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/booker-prize/\" target=\"_blank\">Booker Prize</a>. She was one of the writers nominated in 2014 for the position of first Irish Laureate for Fiction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LF7H4POUTFFFTPP3ROPIZGCSZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468964},"content":"Booker Prize winner <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/roddy-doyle/\" target=\"_blank\">Roddy Doyle</a> called her the greatest Irish writer ever, while writer <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/dermot-bolger/\" target=\"_blank\">Dermot Bolger</a> said her books had not always received the attention they deserved, because reliable novelists were not newsworthy. “Johnston simply appears in the shops every three years with another small, intensely crafted volume to be treasured by lovers of good writing,” <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jennifer-johnston-chronicler-of-ireland-s-hidden-civil-wars-1.3110916\" target=\"_blank\">he wrote in this newspaper</a> when her last novel, Naming the Stars, was published in 2016.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UKQNYOHP5EKZE6MKRKUHHADW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468965},"content":"“As with Samuel Beckett, the novels of Jennifer Johnston grow shorter and wiser as she grows older, so that they have come to embody brevity and resigned, earned, razor-sharp wisdom.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KE6D5Q7GNBGYDNILVTMJVO3NMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120343},"content":"Jennifer Johnston: chronicler of Ireland’s hidden civil wars","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"R6BGNVNE2ZCEZPUF2JI7D4Y4RI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468966},"content":"Publishing her first novel, The Captains and the Kings, at the age of 42, Jennifer Johnston went on to have an exceptionally rich and prolific writing career, spanning five decades. In a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jennifer-johnston-is-june-s-irish-times-book-club-author-1.3104373\" target=\"_blank\">Book Club series in this newspaper in 2017</a>, fellow writers and critics <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/in-praise-of-jennifer-johnston-1.2168695\" target=\"_blank\">celebrated her achievement and her unique contribution</a> to Irish literature.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X47B27KBQJB4PFTCSTPEU7O2QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468967},"content":"Acting had been Johnston’s first calling as a teenager, which was hardly surprising in light of her family background in Dublin. The daughter of acclaimed <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/abbey-theatre/\" target=\"_blank\">Abbey</a> actress <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelah_Richards\" target=\"_blank\">Shelah Richards</a> and playwright and war correspondent <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Johnston\" target=\"_blank\">Denis Johnston</a>, she was accustomed to the company of actors and writers at their family home in Donnybrook. She often watched her mother on stage from the wings and helped her practise her lines. It left her with a keen ear for the music and rhythm of spoken language. “Words are our greatest joy,” she said. “Whether you are speaking or writing, every single person in the world is a guardian of words.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"K6RN4EY7S5O25LON5RI3IM6N54","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120346},"type":"image"},{"_id":"C63SKKU4H5DE5EPVHAE7RBYJNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468968},"content":"Shakespeare and Chekhov remained Johnston’s influences and her most admired writers throughout her life. Studying English and French at Trinity College in the late 1940s, she left without finishing her degree to marry a fellow student, Ian Smyth, a solicitor. The couple moved first to Paris in 1951, and then to London, where she went on to have four children. It was during these years, as her children began to grow up, that the urge to write took hold, she later recalled. “The pain I felt at the age of 35 troubled me. I wanted to see if I could write the pain out of myself.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNWSI2ER45EAXHCWGTKDJCBPHI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468969},"content":"This creative compulsion can be observed in many of the characters in Johnston’s novels, especially the young women, who are attempting to express themselves and forge an identity amid confusion and conflicting loyalties – whether of class, religious background or sectarian allegiance.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTVOX2IMHZJ3BKXXGTUJKPE2YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120349},"type":"image"},{"_id":"RO26P4L2ARFBLPSUTUZEXAO3DE","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468970},"content":"Drawing on her Protestant family background, her first novels – The Captains and the Kings, The Gates, and How Many Miles To Babylon – were set in the Anglo-Irish milieu of crumbling country houses and genteel poverty, shadowed by the devastating impact of the first World War, followed by the War of Independence. The Captains and the Kings won The Evening Standard Best First Novel Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CBWYZXD45FES5GWVCKHFAEEW2M","additional_properties":{"_id":"WQL6D624MRAJFPEH57Y4OEN2CI"},"content":"Jennifer Johnston: the letter I kept in my wallet for 30 years","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HPFJZ5BJGFGT3OFGY2SUFFK46M","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468971},"content":"Although her writing career was taking off in the early 1970s it was a period of upheaval in Johnston’s personal life. Her first marriage ended in divorce and she married the lawyer and dendrologist David Gilliland, moving to his family home, Brook Hall, overlooking the Foyle outside Derry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XHLBAPPIDFHE3GITG57TX5VSDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468972},"content":"Her 1979 novel The Old Jest won the Whitbread Prize and was turned into a movie called The Dawning, starring Anthony Hopkins. “I was never so happy as in the first 15 years of my writing,” she said in an interview in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SORY25OLKNAJJNAN3XECFHM4HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468973},"content":"Her first play of many, The Nightingale and Not the Lark, appeared on stage in 1981 while in 1989 her play O Ananias, Azarias and Misael won the Giles Cooper Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ABDMORZOTNDNZAERSCC7NAWBGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468974},"content":"While Johnston was initially associated with the Big House literary tradition, she was above all a minutely observant chronicler of family dysfunction in Ireland, against the background of wider social, political and cultural change. Deeply sympathetic as she was, this did not hinder her from being clear sighted and tough in tackling the anguish of violent deaths during the Troubles, in novels such as Shadows On Our Skin (1977) and The Railway Station Man (1984). The latter novel was adapted into a film starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Nor did she shy from the equally difficult subjects of child sexual abuse, rape and incest – most notably in The Invisible Worm (1991) and Grace and Truth (2005).","type":"text"},{"_id":"4EPQFFSLU5K3RN6TQX5AX36LR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120355},"type":"image"},{"_id":"XMHRSK72FFAZRC75EI6BIHI76I","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468975},"content":"“I am not sure in which tense I live, the present or the past,” says Laura, the damaged central character in The Invisible Worm, and this became Johnston’s overarching theme. As traumas from the past return, her characters attempt to clamber out of their echo chambers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XLH4CJ3DRFDXNUM7TQ26FXQWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468976},"content":"Grief for lost brothers, absent fathers, and emotionally absent mothers recurs as a leitmotif in her novels and plays, and in interviews she often returned to her father Denis Johnston’s abrupt disappearance from her life as a seven-year-old child, when her parents’ marriage broke down and he left Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LO3A724J5ZG2LOIIGAW6E7QVD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468977},"content":"Her 2009 novel, Truth or Fiction, is widely regarded as a portrayal of her father, in the character of an ageing Dalkey-based playwright who feels that his work has been overlooked in later life. Far from a petty settling of scores, this is a generally genial depiction of a self-involved man struggling to accept his displacement to the sidelines of life. In this, it is typical of Johnston’s treatment of her many elderly characters and their ageing bodies: wryly humorous and sympathetic, wise without being sentimental.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KRE6TLE5NVFPPLPI76EOTBZHVM","additional_properties":{"_id":"OFXUEKRDHVEZBI2IELM3RVCEVA"},"content":"Lost in transition: the fiction of Jennifer Johnston","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OH5SZNQC3RFDRFQFZ67G6YOSKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468978},"content":"Family secrets, omissions, silences and lies permeate her novels, and as she developed as a writer, she increasingly began to take more risks with form: playing with time frames, incorporating different narrative points of view in the form of letters and diary entries, fragments of poems and songs, creating a loose collage effect. Shifting back and forth between past and present, allowing small details to accumulate, her style was elegantly described by critic Deborah Singmaster as “pointillist”. Other commentators deemed it to be excessively sketchy, especially in her most recent novels, which have not been very well received critically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GTMU2X5VKVFSPHC6IAOVIHUU64","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468979},"content":"In her later years, Johnston became a stern critic of her own work, especially her early novel The Gates (1973) – “I can’t bear it” – and expressed puzzlement that it was Shadows On Our Skin (1977) that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her own preference among her books was for The Illusionist (1995), in which a middle-aged woman, Stella, gradually emerged from the shadow of her husband to find her own voice as a writer. It seems one of the most personal of Johnston’s books, expressing her own experience of writing as an utter necessity. “What could I do if I didn’t write,” she asked a few years ago, in relief at returning to her regular, steady pattern of publication following a brief fallow period.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2CLHFMHTQJEMDGIVYBNJOJ7FOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1740565120361},"type":"image"},{"_id":"4AFLSWTC55DQVHLGNB4JSJQ5PM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468980},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/a-writer-making-sense-of-life-s-awful-muddle-1.554386\" target=\"_blank\">An interview she gave to Irish Times journalist Arminta Wallace</a> on the occasion of her Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 captures her ready laugh and vigorously candid conversation, as she reflected back on life. “It’s one bloody awful muddle from the moment you’re born until the moment you die. You might as well just try and muddle through.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"O57LXZR2DRH2XD4TD2Q3Q5R5RM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468981},"content":"She returned from Derry to Dublin in her later years so that she could be close to her family and settled in Dún Laoghaire. In 2019 she donated her writing desk, which was made to her precise specifications several decades earlier, and nearly 2,000 of her books to Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Libraries. The collection is housed in dlr Lexicon. She previously donated her archive to Trinity College Dublin. Dlr Lexicon hosted a celebrated exhibition of her work in 2020 to mark her 90th birthday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NQAW7B36OVGBVK3TQRE5F3KHCE","additional_properties":{"_id":"FCZS6QISHZCRFFQHFPJUG2ZROE"},"content":"‘How has life led me to this moment?’: Creativity in Jennifer Johnston","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5VDSMABDTRDQVFUHBU573T7TGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468982},"content":"When her last novel, Naming the Stars was published in 2016, RTÉ‘s Arena presenter Seán Rocks asked how vital the act of writing was to her at that point in her life. “It’s very, very important to me because it’s my life,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZIBAF7NDJHAVHOEABZBPXWBWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1740499468983},"content":"Jennifer Johnston is survived by her children Patrick, Sarah, Lucy and Malachi, her grandchildren Sam Daniels and Attikos Lemos Smyth, her brother Micheal and half-brother Rory. She was predeceased by her husband, David Gilliland, former husband Ian Smyth and half-brother Jeremy.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"While Johnston was initially associated with the Big House literary tradition, she was above all a minutely observant chronicler of family dysfunction in Ireland"},"display_date":"2025-02-26T10:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jennifer Johnston obituary: Writer who combined brevity with razor-sharp wisdom","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KNOLKXEACVM3XCNMW467RRXXD4","auth":{"1":"43d316eac33b08e59c4cf62323acc92d219909bb2583ee4e9366cd3315c47177"},"focal_point":{"x":2609,"y":2388},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KNOLKXEACVM3XCNMW467RRXXD4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/26/jennifer-johnston-obituary-writer-who-combined-brevity-with-razor-sharp-wisdom/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"KPALIC4TEZHCFJPXAURLV2OZIY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":248,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6c804924-2eac-4c1a-aab5-b57574af127e/versions/1740077767/media/c0cb163b5f83be1f178b4d44c81b7503_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/23/john-howard-storyteller-and-old-school-journalist/","content_elements":[{"_id":"PXDYPMW2GJHUJJZWXYVLTDCQBI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The death has occurred on January 8th of John Howard, a great storyteller, an old-school journalist and avid reader of, and letter writer to, this paper. He was born on January 27th, 1934, in Knocknamana, Clarecastle, Co Clare, the eldest of five children: John, Mary, Philip, Ethel and Paddy. Sadly, he lost both his father and brother Philip during his childhood and was the last of his siblings when he died. He grew up in Ennis attending school at St Flannan’s College, where he received an excellent education, in particular in Latin and Greek, forming the bedrock of the many languages he went on to learn. As a teenager he contracted rheumatic fever and, while this left him bed-bound for many months, it also gave him his love of radio, which fed into many things he held dear throughout his life: music, travel, politics and journalism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EG777V53RRHQHDYKGLZMELJVRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1952, John joined the Clare Champion as a cub reporter, where he spent four years, in what he considered to be a “fabulous” training ground under the editor at the time, Larry de Lacey. He later moved to Dublin, joining first the Irish Independent and then, in 1960, The Irish Times, first as a general reporter, on the London desk, and then, in what he described as his “dream job”, as aviation correspondent. John moved to the RTÉ newsroom – radio and television – where he spent time reporting on the Troubles, and then into public relations at the ESB.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TGEX2EWWARA2VCVVPKMXBEXFIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"John married Mary Segrave on February 4th, 1967, in a double wedding with George Devlin, a fellow journalist and great friend, who married Mary’s beloved sister, Patricia. John and Mary had three children: Cathy, Philip and Trish, who married Andy, Niamh and Adrian, respectively. John’s six grandchildren – Cara, Emily, Oscar, Senan, Cian and Luca – brought him great happiness as the years went by; they always felt like a million dollars through the attention and respect he gave them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GNB6JWAV7ZHMBDY3IKPVP3TONU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Through his work, and over the years with Mary and his family, John travelled to many places, taking a great interest in the people, the language, the culture, the food and wine. His travels included India, Beirut, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Florida, and multiple trips to Spain, Italy and France. John also loved to travel within Ireland: Doolin, the Burren, Kilmichael Point, Kilmore Quay, Achill Island, Roundstone, Lough Corrib and Valentia Island being among his favourite spots","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQPBN4FVCJAHXBAPTPMAE6NLOA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Although he spent the rest of his days living and raising his family in Dublin, Co Clare was always in John’s heart and his thoughts, with great memories of Ballyvaughan, Fanore, Lahinch and Kilkee and stories of the West Clare Railway and the Kilfenora Céilí Band, not to mention nights out in Lisdoonvarna and dances on “maple-sprung floors”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6KQN3ENLMFCULNC3ZIMSWPCPWU","additional_properties":{},"content":"John took huge joy out of family and friends coming together and in sharing conversation, thoughts and especially stories. He could tell a great story and loved nothing better than regaling a captive audience with tales of various deeds and misdeeds by himself, his friends, colleagues or politicians or judges or whoever. Everyone loved to listen to him and to laugh together: wonderful memories forever. But there was also, in these stories, something to think about; there was often a nugget of learning, or of wisdom in the story – something you could take away and reflect or contemplate on. John will be remembered for his attitude: open-minded, friendly and accepting; for being interested and interesting; for his kindness, gentleness and love; and for his learning and wisdom, conversation, and stories.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Philip Howard"},{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Cathy McDonnell"},{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Trish Howard"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2025-02-23T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"John Howard – storyteller and old-school journalist","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XPNLENJZXZFHJPEGL4AGEJYWOI","auth":{"1":"b80c26acc986d0c46eec5412642852932ba56f337e8229eeac6cdb22ae13de13"},"focal_point":{"x":124,"y":130},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XPNLENJZXZFHJPEGL4AGEJYWOI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/23/john-howard-storyteller-and-old-school-journalist/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"5P4OL4UOL5B33DNKCDGX3XOU6E","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":336,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9f7d57fd-c21a-4551-8d46-bf20fb91b9ea/versions/1739967296/media/b8691a2e918f5653ea18804ce0f8694f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/michael-cooper-obituary-sculptor-inspired-by-the-beauty-of-connemara-and-donegal/","content_elements":[{"_id":"C6ZVM6GBWVH6TIH77PXBCY7NPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>July 4th, 1944","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 25th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"TYO75VARNNHU5JEYOH3QQBVCYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035604},"content":"Sculptor Michael Cooper FRBS (Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors) lived in the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-kingdom/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/united-kingdom/\">UK</a> throughout his adult life, but his childhood years in the wilds of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/connemara/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/connemara/\">Connemara</a> and later in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/donegal/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/donegal/\">Donegal</a> always inspired his art and craft. The beaches near Dunlewy in Donegal – where his father Major Derek Cooper, OBE MC, had purchased a house after he returned from the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/second-world-war/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/second-world-war/\">second World War</a> – were where he first experimented with whittling wood, sometimes under the eye of landscape artist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/fine-art-antiques/remembering-the-artist-derek-hill-1.2322895\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/fine-art-antiques/remembering-the-artist-derek-hill-1.2322895\">Derek Hill</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F2J4SAVDM5CUDDCH35HJHBOTF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035605},"content":"Over the ensuing decades his body of work would include a four-ton gorilla carved in Belgian fossil marble for Lord Carrington’s Sculpture Garden in Buckinghamshire and a 7ft statue of 16th century pirate queen Grace O’Malley for Westport House, Co Mayo.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ARQRYQ2PUJDJLHB76KH5TXLZ6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035606},"content":"Cooper was born in 1944 in a little maternity hospital on Hatch Street in Dublin where his mother, Pamela Cooper (née Tulloch) was living while her husband was away in the war.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMBRU6NMO5H3TDCEID3N5O3HLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035607},"content":"Soon after his birth, Michael was brought to live at his maternal grandparents’ home at Shanbolard House, near Cleggan, in Connemara. His older sister, Jennifer, had spent all of the war there with her grandparents, Doris and Kinmont Tulloch, and was very excited when Mick, as he was called by the family, arrived.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I3OQOZH4FNDYRHTMFASMQL5DXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035608},"content":"The richness of this natural world with all its freedoms would prove to be the genesis for much of his later work, which through further travels captured the mystique and unfettered beauty of the animal world. Regular stays at nearby Delphi Lodge engendered a love of fishing too. One of his first big commissions was a Sailfish while a piece entitled Salmon Leap was commissioned by Berkeley Square County Council, London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLK4MEBM2FHXHJ5YU7AX4ATOX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035609},"content":"First, though, Cooper spent a very unhappy time at Eton College before attending Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, between 1969 and 1971 and then studying under Anthony Gray. Cooper spent much of his working life in his studio in Buckinghamshire, near where his mother then lived.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5PGPPOWN5H77DJOFHNO3JV7FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035611},"content":"Working in materials including marble, stone and bronze, he exhibited at a wide variety of venues from 1974. They included Regent’s Park Zoo, London, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Royal Academy, as well as many private galleries. Among his large-scale commissions were three life-size bears in Belgian fossil marble for Bicester retail village.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SGTNNPNAZBFXRL4SDYJUUGHH5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035612},"content":"His lifelong friendship and camaraderie with his late brother-in-law the 11th Marquis of Sligo, Jeremy Browne of Westport House, led to much discussion, before he agreed to making the 7ft Portland stone sculpture of Grace O’Malley, with a second piece also cast in bronze (2003).","type":"text"},{"_id":"VTVUODFSEFBKDNV7R7ZA4LXQ5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035613},"content":"His Irish connections also led to a number of exhibitions and the commissioning of Irish Wolfhounds in bronze for the Kildare retail village.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O2LLAXXGEFC37DBIBWKHK5EK2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035614},"content":"Cooper’s work has been described as “figurative but stylised, giving his pieces a marvellous tactile quality”. They range from the monumental, to pieces that fit in the hand such as his small Orangutan and Camel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IIQ4RFN7JNDTDE3KMNZWPSUD2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035615},"content":"A citation in the catalogue for his last major exhibition, Out of the Block at Gallery Pangolin in 2023 states: “Starting with a rough block using nothing but a chisel and sandpaper, Cooper brings incredible tactility and subtle sensuality to the sculptures he creates. Forms flow from one into another, magically suggesting a feline flank, a canine quizzicality, primate personality or pachyderm power.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"F335AUHPYFEO5B2SL3CVUEWDWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035617},"content":"The sculptures included a bronze entitled Lemur, his Reclining Polar bear in marble, Seated Leopard in Kilkenny limestone, Small Orangutan in sterling silver. Significantly, the exhibition also included examples of another lifelong artistic endeavour, the human body, with Torso and Mother and Child, both in marble.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LIH3FDIR7ZBOHIPXNTGO3VXMJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035618},"content":"His Irish-born stepbrother Lord Grey Gowrie, a Conservative politician and minister for arts under Margaret Thatcher, wrote poetically about the sensuality and stillness of Cooper’s human torsos “caught by their own shape, unsullied by anything but regard”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3GCACKXD55G5RPP4UMR6DG5SLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035619},"content":"A permanent exhibition of Cooper’s work is on show at his wife’s restaurant, The Sir Charles Napier in Oxfordshire. Since early exhibitions in the Lad Lane Gallery in Dublin and the Municipal Gallery in Cork in 1977, his work has appeared in dozens of galleries across the UK, the US and Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RZ3OAGKIPZCZHNBR4OHKGSC574","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035620},"content":"His closeness to his sister Jennifer always ensured regular visits to the west of Ireland. Staying at Renvyle House Hotel with his family while heading off to Coynes of Tullycross for “a good pint of Guinness” was an important part of the ritual.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIOCMBFPA5HZFMUUXAHHV2HOPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035621},"content":"In September 2018, Cooper was delighted to walk his niece Alannah up the aisle in Holy Trinity Church, Westport. After Jeremy’s death in 2014, he was very supportive to his grief-stricken sister and her five daughters. With a philosophical outlook influenced by Sufism, he encouraged his sister to always remember: “We are in this world but we don’t have to be of this world.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HMM5WLPHYVE4FMN7W2FS2CCSRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035623},"content":"Michael Cooper is survived by his wife Julie, his children Lórien, Kate and Sam, his sister Jennifer, and wider family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VOQZDHSR3JDSFFA5TSX3SFOO7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739895035624},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He always believed that ‘we are in this world but we don’t have to be of this world'"},"display_date":"2025-02-22T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Michael Cooper obituary: Sculptor inspired by the beauty of Connemara and Donegal","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"AJQICAABTBGTBFH7U5FYQFZJMI","auth":{"1":"c496f226079a57e2ac34e5d8897da67d4f11c140b95b6d754fefab749e284abc"},"focal_point":{"x":3457,"y":1853},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/AJQICAABTBGTBFH7U5FYQFZJMI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/michael-cooper-obituary-sculptor-inspired-by-the-beauty-of-connemara-and-donegal/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"RQVOQ5GQ5BGWREEPZT7YFWGAJI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":584,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/21bf61fc-4817-43f5-9d4f-69572ccaf8b5/versions/1739958479/media/da69f044f1591b3ad446c43133d7d42d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/eleanor-maguire-obituary-irish-neuroscientist-who-changed-our-understanding-of-memory/","content_elements":[{"_id":"AMDROTMZEVABRKCAIJZVVV5J3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>March 27th, 1970","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 4th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3LW3XSCPNAQDEQXPAFEDK6U3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559081},"content":"Eleanor Maguire, a cognitive neuroscientist whose research on the human hippocampus – especially those belonging to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\">London</a> taxi drivers – transformed the understanding of memory, revealing that a key structure in the brain can be strengthened like a muscle, has died at the age of 54 in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EEFSKBTRXJAKPF7RKEJIJ5WKTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559082},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"37EZ2ORTSJCCHMVOI54VSXMLYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559083},"content":"Working for 30 years in a small, tight-knit lab, Maguire obsessed over the hippocampus – a seahorse-shaped engine of memory deep in the brain – like a meticulous, relentless detective trying to solve a cold case. An early pioneer of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on living subjects, Maguire was able to look inside human brains as they processed information. Her studies revealed that the hippocampus can grow, and that memory is not a replay of the past but rather an active reconstructive process that shapes how people imagine the future.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KU65DYO625AA5NMZBXAROUAA2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559085},"content":"“She was absolutely one of the leading researchers of her generation in the world on memory,” said Chris Frith, an emeritus professor of neuropsychology at University College London. “She changed our understanding of memory, and I think she also gave us important new ways of studying it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BZMUNLBCKNAL7LPRCZDLMUSQYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559086},"content":"In 1995, while she was a postdoctoral fellow in Frith’s lab, Maguire was watching television one evening when she stumbled on The Knowledge, a quirky film about prospective London taxi drivers memorising the city’s 25,000 streets to prepare for a three-year-long series of licensing tests. Maguire, who said she rarely drove because she feared never arriving at her destination, was mesmerised. “I am absolutely appalling at finding my way around,” she once told The Daily Telegraph. “I wondered, ‘How are some people so bloody good and I am so terrible?’”","type":"text"},{"_id":"W3XYWALV3FFLZGQTEHYORVIHSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559088},"content":"In the first of a series of studies, Maguire and her colleagues scanned the brains of taxi drivers while quizzing them about the shortest routes between various destinations in London.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XP2VB45GSFGOPPWUXZHC4WLGZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559089},"content":"The results, published in 1997, showed that blood flow in the right hippocampus increased sharply as the drivers described their routes – meaning that specific area of the brain played a key role in spatial navigation. But that didn’t solve the mystery of why the taxi drivers were so good at their jobs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NF6QD6A57ZHCJJPYHWYNNWVOG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559091},"content":"Maguire kept digging. Using MRI machines, she measured different regions in the brains of 16 drivers, comparing their dimensions with those in the brains of people who weren’t taxi drivers. “The posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects,” she wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And the size, she found, correlated with the length of a cabby’s career: The longer the cabby had driven, the bigger the hippocampus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LB4I63THOJFSHDT5LVQNH5R2FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559094},"content":"Maguire’s study, published in March 2000, generated headlines around the world and turned London taxi drivers into unlikely scientific stars. “I never noticed part of my brain growing,” David Cohen, a member of the London Cab Drivers Club, told the BBC. “It makes you wonder what happened to the rest of it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRF4ON2WRBGNBC7O6UI7HFXNQY","additional_properties":{"_id":"XXAI66LGLZC3XJENTLYRIBYRXM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"RWHJTKSPRNAM7PSJEUEH6D3SEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559096},"content":"Maguire wondered, too: Why (and how) did their hippocampi grow?","type":"text"},{"_id":"BXSK3OLKVJFNDARY3B57BXXWCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559098},"content":"She followed up with other studies. One showed that the hippocampi of bus drivers – whose routes were set rather than navigated from memory – didn’t grow. Another showed that prospective taxi drivers who failed their tests did not gain any hippocampus volume in the process.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Q6TAZUXTBEZHHIHRCUSCOSBXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559099},"content":"The implications were striking: the key structure in the brain governing memory and spatial navigation was malleable.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RE7UCOBGQNBK3BBMULHMTAZJYI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559100},"content":"In a roundabout way, Maguire’s findings revealed the scientific underpinnings of the ancient Roman “method of loci,” a memorisation trick also known as the “memory palace.” This technique involves visualising a large house and assigning an individual memory to a particular room. Mentally walking through the house fires up the hippocampus, eliciting the memorised information. Maguire studied memory athletes – people who train their brains to recall vast amounts of information quickly – who used this method, and observed that its effectiveness was “reflected in its continued use over two and a half millenniums in virtually unchanged form”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DNXYO3FL5NA53MH45PTXLHPD4Y","subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"44SN4WB7MNBCROYLOWJIKVIZQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559102},"content":"But recalling information was only half the story. In studying patients with damage to the hippocampus, including those with amnesia, Maguire found that they couldn’t visualise or navigate future scenarios. One taxi driver, for instance, struggled to make his way through busy London streets in a virtual-reality simulation. Other amnesiacs couldn’t imagine an upcoming Christmas party or a trip to the beach. “Instead of visualising a single scene in their mind, such as a crowded beach filled with sunbathers, the patients reported seeing just a collection of disjointed images, such as sand, water, people and beach towels,” the journal Science News reported in 2009.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TFAW2RJMSFGXJNBNNA7XKPDE4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559105},"content":"The hippocampus, it turns out, binds snippets of information to construct scenes from the past – and the future.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLUL2LB2F5F3XKPTXMFOVBGEJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559106},"content":"“The whole point of the brain is future planning,” Maguire was quoted as saying in Margaret Heffernan’s book Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future (2020). “You need to survive and think about what happened when I was last here, is there a scary monster that will come out and eat me? We create models of the future by recruiting our memories of the past.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XKJLQROO4BG4HCPGYQFUZ5ASZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559107},"content":"Eleanor Anne Maguire was born on March 27th, 1970, in Dublin. Her father, Paddy Maguire, was a factory worker. Her mother, Anne Maguire, was a receptionist, who was an advocate of hard work and fond of the quoting Mark Twain: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FIYWSXGGNNGQHHEFRNLATH3SLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The young Eleanor was a hard worker even in primary school. Her first loves were archaeology, astronomy and biology. As she told <a href=\"https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01190-6\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01190-6\">Current Biology</a> in 2012: “When it came to making choices for university, my parents ruled out archaeology as they felt I couldn’t make a decent living from it. In Dublin in the late 1980s, studying astronomy seemed like pie in the sky. So I quite happily plumped for a career in biology. Visits to the local university arranged by my biology teacher quickly confirmed that a wet lab was not for me, and consequently I fell into psychology.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QT5EML34FFFBTPU7HYRQLF5AJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559109},"content":"As a child, she was obsessed with Star Trek. “My first scientific hero was fictional – Spock, science officer on the Starship Enterprise,” she told the journal Current Biology. “He embodied so much of what attracted me to science. He was inquisitive, logical, honest, meticulous, calm, fearless in facing the unknown, innovative and unafraid of taking risks.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NKBQH56FPRB5ZLMB7BNQJSTZUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559112},"content":"She graduated from University College Dublin in 1990 with a degree in psychology, and returned to earn her doctorate there after receiving a master’s degree from the University College of Swansea (now Swansea University). Maguire joined the faculty at University College London in 1995.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MLE4FS32UBC67GFPT4SBZDOPNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693910},"content":"She remained a keen supporter of Irish rugby and Crystal Palace Football Club.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2TBR7V6QSVAUJM2353FXH5PZCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559116},"content":"At Maguire’s memorial service, Prof Cathy Price, her colleague at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, spoke about the energy and excitement her friend and long-time colleague generated at the lab, recalling that Maguire’s mother had called nightly to remind her daughter to go home. “It wasn’t just a job,” Price said. “It consumed us, day and night.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IEAEOO2IXBH5XBE6J6CHT4INCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693912},"content":"Price also said: “Her taxi driver study, widely regarded as a stroke of creative genius, exemplifies her trailblazing discoveries and inspirational research. Famously, though a world authority on navigation she was notoriously poor at negotiating even familiar environments. Eleanor was a force of nature and had a towering work ethic. Her immense clarity of thought allowed her to distil complex ideas with unparalleled clarity ... Eleanor’s team motto was: ‘We want to plant seeds, not prune hedges.’ And that’s exactly what she did.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"F6KYW4W5QNEETBIVUMW4TCZPY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693913},"content":"Over the course of her career, she received numerous awards, including the Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award. She was a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), and the Royal Society (FRS), and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA).","type":"text"},{"_id":"BA6AHH5BVBHQHBC7X3WFNTJHXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739878693914},"content":"Maguire was diagnosed with spinal cancer in 2022 and had recently developed pneumonia. She is survived by her parents, nephews Senan and Ultan and a wide circle of family and friends. Her brother, Declan, died in 2019.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXC2RH6WSNHE5AWZUIM7QQH7HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739865559118},"content":"– <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/science/eleanor-maguire-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Her work studying London cabbies transformed our conception of how brains adapt and grow"},"display_date":"2025-02-22T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Eleanor Maguire obituary: Irish neuroscientist who changed our understanding of memory","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NE5WJIGGGJD5NKHANGK3LP7MB4","auth":{"1":"3d341a6586b42b2e71607d88f4fe477ddca3890c7b9d505cfdf479a37db792c1"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NE5WJIGGGJD5NKHANGK3LP7MB4.jpeg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/22/eleanor-maguire-obituary-irish-neuroscientist-who-changed-our-understanding-of-memory/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"AM7HDTXOOVCZJNU2CUUORNEKMI","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/the-aga-khan-obituary-spiritual-leader-with-a-taste-for-fast-cars-and-racehorses/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7BUVNDTOGVDQXDFFVNEB2TIBVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781634},"content":"<b>Born </b>December 13th, 1936","type":"text"},{"_id":"BJXTLTETPNBK7AUH6Y5WYL6ALY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781635},"content":"<b>Died </b>February 4th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"2T5HKDZAOVA63GDQBTHOS7YWI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781636},"content":"Fast cars, yachts and racehorses are not the usual accoutrements of religious leaders, but they fitted the lifestyle of the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the world’s 12 million Ismaili Muslims, who has died aged 88.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OLW7KEAGD5ELVC4ZAKLV2DHP5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781637},"content":"Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the 49th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, claimed direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Hazrat Bibi Fatima and his son-in-law Hazrat Ali, the fourth rightly guided caliph of Islam. The Ismaili sect sees no contradiction between spiritual and material wellbeing. As the Aga Khan said: “It is not an Islamic belief that spiritual life should be totally excluded from our more material everyday activities.” Or, as he told Vanity Fair magazine: “We have no notion of the accumulation of wealth being evil, it’s how you use it ... if God has given you the capacity or good fortune to be a privileged individual, you have a moral responsibility to society.” His personal wealth may have topped €15.5 billion, and he was probably richer than the British royal family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NILJUNFR5HODDVW5IBILNQE7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781638},"content":"An international businessman and philanthropist, “smiling, welcoming, with a receding hairline and slightly overweight figure”, according to the former Guardian journalist Hella Pick, who came to know him well. The Aga Khan was a familiar and revered figure to members of the sect scattered in minority communities not only in the Indian subcontinent and Africa, but also in Europe and Canada. They donated tithes of their earnings to him, his foundation and development network and in return his organisation has provided hospitals, clinics, schools and scholarships to their communities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4PKKN2J5RZGPDLKNVWOBHPOJMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781639},"content":"On a trip to Africa with him to visit the Ismaili community in Kenya in the early 1980s, Pick witnessed the reverence with which he was held: “I felt that between the Aga Khan and his followers, there was an extra element. I noticed during the Kenya trip that any cup from which he drank and even the jeep he drove during a safari instantly became treasured museum pieces, probably never to be used again.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOD5EIGOFREOPOW6HKUDRM5WNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781640},"content":"Despite the distinguished lineage, the dynasty traces back in its modern form to the expulsion of the then imam from Persia (now Iran) in 1837. Settling in India, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Raj as a spokesman for the Muslim community and was granted tax-free status by the British, and the title Aga Khan, which means ruler.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CVKFHLW5T2OIDHN5JTRR6KB5IM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781641},"type":"image"},{"_id":"WWLHBUMX3NEHHE5WJD6RGBQTKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781642},"content":"On the fourth Aga Khan’s accession in 1957, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II formally granted him the style of His Highness, “in view of his succession to the imamate and his position as spiritual head of the Ismaili community, many members of which reside in Her Majesty’s territories”. He remained close to the British royal family and was appointed KBE in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BOGQ2O3GVEPXGCUEMEZ6I5UL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781643},"content":"Here, he was best known for his association with the equine industry. His family’s engagement with Ireland’s horse racing and related economic development spanned three generations. The Nations’ Cup at the Dublin Horse Show was established with help of the late Sultan Muhammed Shah <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/aga-khan/\">Aga Khan</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRWA6N5RUJDUHNRWMQAA64IXDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781644},"content":"Non-Muslims generally knew him better for what appeared to be a jet-set lifestyle: a former Olympic skier, owner of fast racing yachts, a familiar figure at Ascot and other racecourses, where his horses, not least the ill-fated Shergar – which was kidnapped by an armed gang thought to be the Provisional IRA from Ballymany stud farm in Co Kildare in 1983 and never seen again – won big races.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RIZYBKNP3JH55MVK3IMG5SGS7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"DNMPVGCJSVB4HPFKNP6AOSMURY"},"content":"Johnny Watterson: Shergar mystery lives on after the Aga Khan's death","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"57ASSQKGWBBOVJOLBXKC7VINTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781646},"content":"Probably the most famous horse in the world at the time, he had run in six races in 1981, winning five, including the Irish Derby, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth Stakes, and at Epsom, where he won by a record 10 lengths. But the Aga Khan refused to pay the £2 million ransom demanded, which was a fraction of the horse’s worth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBB2GIKBJBDRTM6JVZBCZIGHKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781647},"content":"Another of his horses, Harzand, subsequently also won both English and Irish Derbies, and a third, Zarkava, won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. He was fascinated by the science of horse breeding but never betted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z3X34GKYZVC3TOEHZVQJC3MH7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781648},"content":"Prince Karim was born in Genthod, Switzerland, the son of Joan Yarde-Buller, daughter of the British peer Lord Churston; and Prince Aly Khan, an international playboy and son of the third Aga Khan. According to Pick, who was commissioned to write a biography that never went ahead, it was a lonely childhood for the boy and his younger brother, Amyn, shuffled between homes in Paris, Deauville and Gstaad in the charge of an English nanny by parents whom they rarely saw. They spent the war in a dilapidated family house in Nairobi.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7EV62ZQIGBE35IAC23DTUPZUIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781649},"content":"Both of the boys were sent to an exclusive boarding school, Le Rosey in Switzerland, which at least provided some stability as their parents divorced in 1949: their father went on to marry the Hollywood film star Rita Hayworth, and their mother the newspaper proprietor Viscount Camrose. Aly Khan was killed in a Paris car crash in 1960.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VBYW7OXEX5BVBH3FN4JGVSBMKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781650},"content":"Karim was studying engineering at Harvard when his grandfather, the third Aga Khan, died in 1957 and unprecedentedly settled the succession on him rather than his father, laying down in his will that, in the fundamentally altered conditions of the world in the atomic age, he was convinced that the community “should be led by a young man who could bring a new outlook on life to the office of Islam”. Karim toured the Ismaili communities around the world before returning to Harvard to finish his studies in oriental history, receiving a BA degree two days after setting up a development fund for Muslim students at the university.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOW2NORELBNMREYE3GTTXX2X6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781651},"type":"image"},{"_id":"FRRWVCR6SVE55BOK5XZSIMXU34","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781652},"content":"The range of the Aga Khan’s business interests, run from his headquarters in Switzerland, encompassed diamonds and marble, tyres and saucepans, real estate and mines and top-of-the-range hotels including the Costa Smeralda beach resort in Sardinia and the Serena hotel in Kabul.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAKQQIOK4ZFAFCEZLL7LJBKNXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781653},"content":"Philanthropic initiatives funded through the Aga Khan Development Network included medical facilities in rural areas, higher-education scholarships, a rural support programme to improve living conditions in the African bush and a hydroelectric power network in Uganda.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YNGHOYNR7ZG6VHBEBDGQOCUL3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781654},"content":"The Ismaili Centre in Kensington, London, was set up in 1983, and the 700-year-old Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu was restored, all part of his attempt to reconcile Islam and the Judeo-Christian world. “I see it as a clash of ignorance rather than a clash of civilisations,” he told the Sunday Telegraph in 2005. “There is a remarkable degree of ignorance ... I am talking about human society and civilisation. It’s not a religious issue.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OZX2GLH5VBBTHLID7PGRXO5BTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781655},"content":"The Aga Khan was married twice, first in 1969 to the English model Sarah (Sally) Croker Poole, who took the title Princess Salimah. The couple had three children, Zahra, Rahim – who now succeeds as the 50th imam – and Husain, but the marriage was dissolved in 1995. He married Gabriele Leiningen, a German lawyer and former pop singer in 1998, and they had a son, Aly. That marriage ended acrimoniously in 2004 with protracted divorce proceedings in British and French courts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4FADRXIEXJHXTBHGASQEDYQBJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739267781656},"content":"The Aga Khan lived his last year in Lisbon, which has an Ismaili community, and was granted Portuguese citizenship. His children survive him.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The Ismaili Muslim ruler was perhaps best known in Ireland for refusing to pay a ransom for the kidnapped Shergar"},"display_date":"2025-02-15T00:48:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"The Aga Khan obituary: Spiritual leader with a taste for fast cars and racehorses","native":""},"label":{},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"W5QV4YMEPCEDYYKZSYSGZ2TKWI","auth":{"1":"9f61038af594b0a36d1c526332be1f988833c26b06e15ba562c40d089357c092"},"focal_point":{"x":912,"y":129},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/W5QV4YMEPCEDYYKZSYSGZ2TKWI.jpg"},"lead_art":{"_id":"K4S5RCPFYUGMCLUBMCSUQA3WGQ","type":"image"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/the-aga-khan-obituary-spiritual-leader-with-a-taste-for-fast-cars-and-racehorses/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"OSU3U3J75VAFBHFHDX22Z7KHVU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":299,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/ddc6fb07-c35f-45a3-b2f9-3fee5e94f092/versions/1739291452/media/e1a297fa9d5c30ce0114768872a69461_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/mary-odonnell-obituary-pioneering-irish-fashion-designer/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5OWSPG23KNDOBKL6WRU6C3AOEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213590},"content":"<b>Born: </b>April 8th, 1933","type":"text"},{"_id":"XH442XPIU5EL7C7CGU4PI74D3A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> January 27th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"KVNA2WENH5H7JEKJKDCWNECDGU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Mary O’Donnell, who has died aged 92, was <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/irish-fashion-since-1950-1.97741\" target=\"_blank\">a leading Irish fashion designer from Donegal</a> who established a highly successful career both in Ireland and in the US, during the 1960s and 1970s. Part of a group of pioneering Irish couturiers of the period who included Sybil Connolly, Neilli Mulcahy and Irene Gilbert, she used Irish textiles in new and imaginative ways and won fame and international recognition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MIBJ6Y2JE5HSXP3ISJIWZNYRD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213591},"content":"O’Donnell was known particularly for her needlework, hand crochet, lace, embroidery and the sophisticated romanticism of her clothes. One outfit, for instance, shown at an exhibition in Dublin, featured an electric green crochet top threaded with green silk ribbon over a pink and green braided diamond patchwork skirt: an example of both her flamboyance and restraint.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2BEXSA32NNGXZJMCYDGZULKOFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213592},"content":"Clients for her couture included Princess Grace of Monaco, the Kennedys, Miranda Countess of Iveagh, Maureen O’Hara and other high-profile women both at home and abroad. Themes for her fashion collections often drew from Irish literature and the poetry of WB Yeats. She also designed the costumes (many with details from the Book of Kells) for the film Lovespell, , based on the story of Tristan and Isolde: it starred Richard Burton and was filmed in Ireland in 1979.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6354UDKQ5FB7NIKEFT3RUIDRXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213593},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"G3WX6L6HWBDM3JGV4OUAMMFPOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213594},"content":"O’Donnell was born in Kilcar in 1933, in the heartland of the Donegal Gaeltacht tweed industry. One of six children to parents James and Cassie O’Donnell, from an early age she had mastered the basic hand skills of knitting, embroidery and crochet, as well as spinning and carding wool. She would claim that she could both knit and read a book at the same time. Those skills were widespread locally and, in her last interview for the TG4 fashion series Snáithe in 2017, O’Donnell recalled that “there were 15 houses in the town, and each of the women were skilled at crochet and needlework”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RM2DJOB7YRCDNB2AODQJYXCN6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213595},"content":"Determined to develop her craft, having spent a year in Mountcharles with a dressmaker cousin, she left Ireland at the age of 17 for New York and enrolled in the Traphagen School of Fashion on Broadway, working in restaurants to support her studies. Her ambition was to secure a position with the house of Mainbocher, then the most famous couture house in the US. It had been founded by the American couturier Main Bocher, who had already established a successful business in Paris with clients that included Wallis Simpson, before he returned to New York and rooms on 5th Avenue. O’Donnell achieved her ambition and remained there for more than two years, before returning to Dublin and working briefly with Sybil Connolly. She opened her own premises on Dawson Street in 1963.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QYOY7TWAEZCANLM7G4F54N2LGM","additional_properties":{"_id":"COLTC2HJQZGB7KAUXQFOVFO5M4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"25EAP3QE35FNFNRVDSPWRGQXXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213597},"content":"Her style became known for its use of Irish textiles and craft skills in fresh new ways, particularly crochet – typical ensembles might be a voluminous skirt of poplin or gossamer tweed with a tight hand crochet top or white crochet trouser suits. Embroidery using traditional Irish motifs were other signature examples of her expert handwork, and an Irish Rose pattern was fashioned in many colours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AK757FCL7JBZPKSNQ7U2DO75GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213598},"content":"O’Donnell continued to spend a great deal of time in the US, where her work resonated with the Irish American establishment. She was friends with the Kennedy families and the family of Tip O’Neill (47th Speaker of the US House of Representatives), among many others. In 1970, one charity fashion show was held in the garden of then Senator Edward Kennedy’s house in Washington.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XUB5SLZQNBE6FKSUBNBEA6SSQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213599},"content":"O’Donnell’s clothes, handmade and labour-intensive to produce, were necessarily expensive and the product of a team of more than 30 women working from their own homes in Donegal or Dublin, with ten in her Dawson Street workrooms. She once described her business as “basically a cottage industry”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3HJVBCCSO5FOBL6H22H2SEYYK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213600},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"Z6IPMVDHIVGN5MTQYMKAJ5FIO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213601},"content":"In 1965, she married a Scottish medical student John Duckworth, with whom she had a son, Richard. After their separation, she had another son, Donnacha, from a long and loving partnership with the late Michael Tierney. Following the closure of her Dawson Street premises in 1983, she ran a factory in Donegal for three years before returning to the US, where she maintained a strong following of loyal private clients.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63RUZJ7JHZBONKZH5QBVWMG43M","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213602},"content":"O’Donnell retired in 1995 and returned initially to Dublin, then to Kilcar, where she remained until her death. Her archive, including many sketchbooks, was offered to the National Museum in Collins Barracks in 2019, but will be donated to the Ulster Museum in Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZZBG25RJ6NCPPM4I3RLTG4E4BY","additional_properties":{"_id":1739295213603},"content":"She is survived by her sons Richard and Donnacha; a brother, Sean; daughters-in-law, grandchild, extended family and a wide circle of friends.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Her clients included Princess Grace of Monaco, the Kennedys, Miranda Countess of Iveagh and Maureen O’Hara"},"display_date":"2025-02-15T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Mary O’Donnell obituary: Pioneering Irish fashion designer","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"HWG4IZPQQJHEDIAE3F3PYEDGJY","auth":{"1":"c232bb8cd7a310a339c6b032c67a93a5c20d2c51813e0f0442acec058aa6c411"},"focal_point":{"x":3491,"y":2227},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/HWG4IZPQQJHEDIAE3F3PYEDGJY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/15/mary-odonnell-obituary-pioneering-irish-fashion-designer/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"DJ5DQGTCVBCMHIQUUFHWABLM6Q","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":426,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9359a558-9c5a-42a9-909a-e2a4a78c56a0/versions/1738763222/media/f5fb4a8491fb3c53044bd463cf394826_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/marianne-faithfull-obituary-it-girl-reputation-belied-singers-talent-and-pathos/","content_elements":[{"_id":"4AO3IPY23VFYNMRKOWXO6XPHJU","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born: </b>December 29th, 1946","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 30th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3CDZS5ABVFXLPTU22VU7K2K6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/marianne-faithfull/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/marianne-faithfull/\">Marianne Faithfull</a>, who <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2025/01/30/singer-and-actress-marianne-faithfull-dies-aged-78/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2025/01/30/singer-and-actress-marianne-faithfull-dies-aged-78/\">has died aged 78</a>, was one of the most photographed and talked-about female singers of the 1960s. But to her enduring frustration, her musical talents were eclipsed by her reputation as the pre-eminent It girl of swinging London and her four-year relationship with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/the-rolling-stones/\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/the-rolling-stones/\">Rolling Stones</a> frontman <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/mick-jagger/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/mick-jagger/\">Mick Jagger</a>. “I got out very quickly,” she would say of her Jagger years. “Much as I love The Rolling Stones, they’re not my life.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7XJXI3TEF5DLNBAQNUSSOWU73U","additional_properties":{},"content":"With her trendy haircut and movie star looks, her image was of a Carnaby Street femme fatale. But her music could not have been further removed from that glitzy persona. Faithfull’s breathy singing voice brimmed with melancholy, and if early songs such As Tears Go By were disposable pop, in the 1970s, she matured into a thoughtful songwriter who looked back on her gilded past and saw only pain and loss.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ARF52QSL5FDLFJGMMV2LMKHKN4","additional_properties":{},"content":"This was more than just poetic licence. In 1967, her fame turned to notoriety when the police raided the home of Rolling Stones guitarist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/keith-richards/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/keith-richards/\">Keith Richards</a> and found the Stones and hangers-on in a state of drugged debauchery. Faithfull was discovered naked, wrapped in a rug, and the infamy would haunt her for years. “It destroyed me,” she would say. “To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIZ54P4DQGZSRXVGYNLJZAXUZY","additional_properties":{"_id":"2WQ6SYAS7VCUTD4BSOUXGPG4SE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CDNCC2JHGJCITDGE5PFLASN53E","additional_properties":{},"content":"She split from Jagger in 1970 upon discovering he was having an affair with Richards’s lover, Anita Pallenberg. After a suicide attempt, and having become addicted to heroin, she also lost custody of her son Nicholas to her ex-husband, art dealer John Dunbar. “Suddenly, when I was living on the streets ... I realised that human beings were really good. The Chinese restaurant let me wash my clothes there. The man who had the tea stall gave me cups of tea.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PALRWVJSQJF3XNOWXRLMNFX7TY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Music would prove her salvation. In 1976, while still a drug user, she released the mournful ballad Dreamin’ My Dreams. Ignored in the UK, in Ireland it became a huge hit after being championed by a young Pat Kenny, whom she would acknowledge in her 1994 autobiography. Encouraged by that song’s success, in 1979 she recorded Broken English – the LP widely regarded as her masterpiece.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HJRA2OLZRBDRNFUUSNCSD3TJ74","additional_properties":{},"content":"For Marianne Faithfull, Ireland was where one of the most misunderstood women in music could make sense of her life","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CJ652SKHX5CTTFH4AW4HFPV56M","additional_properties":{},"content":"“Dreamin’ My Dreams was released in Britain to a resounding silence. And then out of the blue a deejay in Ireland by the name of Patrick Kenny started to play it on his show and it went to number one in the Irish charts for seven weeks – the Irish love a waltz,” she wrote. “It was a fluke ... I don’t know whether it’s the church in Ireland or the drinking, but these people do know how to forgive.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"R2SW6LFK4FEH3OWOZE5ZL6IJ24","additional_properties":{},"content":"She felt she needed forgiveness after years of addiction. She also believed that Ireland was the one place that would look past her faded glamour and her notoriety and see her for who she was: a broken, confused mother who wanted to do right by the world – and the world to do right by her.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KO3AS72YFFFJHMM6VB2VIIFP4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"Faithfull had visited Ireland on and off since the 1960s, initially with Jagger. In 1969, months before she and Jagger split, the couple were visiting Glin Castle in Limerick when they were introduced to Anglo-Irish peer Paddy Rossmore – who would later become her fiance (Faithfull would end the relationship in 1979). “He was so Anglo-Irish: long legs that curl up in that English aristocratic way, a bit like an old lady. In short, the sort of man my mother always wanted me to marry,” she recalled of Rossmore. “Flirtation becomes infatuation.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KYXGRI5C3JAGPOGFFLTC27LAY4","additional_properties":{},"content":" The singer was born Marian Evelyn Faithfull in December 1946. Her father, Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British army officer and MI6 agent with a bohemian background to rival any 1960s rocker. His father was a pioneering sexologist, while Robert had helped establish an upmarket commune in Oxfordshire, which Marianne would describe as a “mixture of high utopian thoughts and randy sex”. Her mother, Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch, was born in Budapest to Austria-Hungarian nobility: her great-uncle, Baron von Sacher-Masoch, was the author of the pornographic novel Venus In Furs and the creator of the term “masochism”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMAID5R6EJD2BGXE43PGUYLGLM","additional_properties":{},"content":"The marriage was stormy, and Faithfull’s parents separated when she was six. She and her mother moved to a terraced house in Reading, where Faithfull was educated at the local Catholic school. Her life changed when she met Jagger at a party in 1964. She was only vaguely aware of The Rolling Stones – then just another up-and-coming blues band in London. But their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, thought she looked like an “angel” he could market as a pop star. A few months later, she had her first smash with As Tears Go By – a Rolling Stones original that Jagger and Richards had dismissed as a “terrible piece of tripe”. The public disagreed, and Faithfull’s’ recording became a top-ten hit. A pop icon was born.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNASQIH44FBLDLRXFS7VDNZHHQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"If Faithfull’s relationship with the charts was a brief flirtation, her love affair with Ireland was more enduring. She lived for many years at the famous 18th-century Shell Cottage on Carton House near Maynooth – the interior of which is lined with seashells. She later moved to Dublin and Co Waterford before relocating to Paris, where she endured a difficult lockdown, coming close to death after contracting Covid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3YY5T6CEF5DZJMNXQEE2O54JMM","additional_properties":{},"content":"She never stopped writing and recording. In 2021, released her final album, She Walks In Beauty – inspired by her love of the British romantic poets. In <a href=\"https://www.hotpress.com/opinion/marianne-faithfull-it-took-a-new-generation-to-appreciate-what-i-could-really-do-it-took-a-hell-of-a-long-time-22851168\" target=\"_blank\">an interview with Hot Press</a> that year, she was philosophical about her life and continuing association with the Stones. “I haven’t seen Mick for years. I did see him once or twice in Ireland and we just talked non-stop, as if there was no one else in the room. It was at a dinner party, so in a funny way, we’re still kind of close. But no, I don’t go out and I’m not in his world any more.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFJM42AI4NGHPF3DR2ZQASTVBY","additional_properties":{},"content":"She was married and divorced three times, to John Dunbar (1965-66), musician Ben Brierly, a musician (1979-1986), and writer and actor Giorgio Della Terza (1988-1991). She is survived by her son, Nicholas.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Star of 1960s saw Ireland as the one place that would look past her faded glamour and notoriety and see her for who she really was"},"display_date":"2025-02-08T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Marianne Faithfull obituary: It girl reputation belied singer’s talent and pathos","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"2PW6UQ64BRBCBOYMY6P4MLCMWI","auth":{"1":"dafa18827ea8281af7c204b0c6f12fc58a5949ddbdc4f899c9cb7ccfc4f9daf6"},"focal_point":{"x":1462,"y":1143},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/2PW6UQ64BRBCBOYMY6P4MLCMWI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/marianne-faithfull-obituary-it-girl-reputation-belied-singers-talent-and-pathos/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"2UPSOQTWGRHG3NJ52XLHM6ERPU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":442,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/c159d510-d278-4a14-bd9d-48b2e56cdf5a/versions/1738755937/media/d5c45a3b65494f44df23f047ce2b2141_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/paddy-cole-obituary-musical-icon-of-the-showband-era/","content_elements":[{"_id":"N7D3WX4MRZH3PO7LZ7ZWO4HRYA","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born </b>December 17th, 1939","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died </b>January 22nd, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"NO52W5L7D5A7THB6ZL7WF6SW6Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Retaining the passion that steers anyone on their career path is a challenge, but Paddy Cole’s love for the music that defined his life was undimmed to the very end.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UY62TYJPIZHYFENDWL5IDIKKKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Born the second of seven children, Paddy was an only son among six sisters. His father, Pat, played saxophone in a local band and instilled in his son an early love for jazz and for that instrument. Both his father and his mother, Mary (née Hughes) were from Castleblayney, Co <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/monaghan/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" title=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/monaghan/\">Monaghan</a>, and such was Paddy’s natural musical talent that he debuted with his father’s band at the age of 12. On many afternoons the bandwagon would pull up outside St Mary’s National School in Castleblayney, whisking a young Cole away from his studies to perform on stages across the region. Some might say his natural performance talents were to be seen even before that, as it was Cole who read the address when the bishop formally opened his primary school.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGFE6PYNSRGDNG4M5AM5J4VGUQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole went on to attend the local vocational school, but at the age of 15 he became fully professional, joining the Maurice Lynch Showband. Having grown up in a home where his father would order records by the jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie from the US, he was well-versed in the intricacies of swing, embraced his new musical milieu with delight.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4XTXX37GFJFT5D2DFIL2MDYCDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Paddy Cole, showband singer and saxophone player, dies aged 85","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"2OSA6GMHUNENBC7XLOJMS7MZ64","additional_properties":{},"content":"Family was always central to his life. He married Helen (nee Hehir) from Drumcolliher in 1965, and they lived in Castleblayney, where later they bought and ran a very successful pub and restaurant, Paddy Cole’s Place, where he frequently performed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZUBO3OFBVHC7I6X4NSLBMCD7M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole graduated to the Capitol Showband in the 1960s and from there to Brendan Bowyer and the Big Eight Showband. From 1971 to 1974 Cole and the band would spend six months of the year in Las Vegas, playing three shows a day, six days a week. It was not unusual for their dressingroom to be visited by stars including Elvis Presley, Rock Hudson, Muhammad Ali and members of the Rat Pack who were winding down after their own performances. During this time Cole befriended the actor and singer Roy Rogers and the pair enjoyed socialising together. Once when former Sunday World editor, Kevin Marron, was visiting Paddy in Vegas, the phone rang and Paddy was heard to say “if that’s Roy Rogers, tell him I’m not home.” This was a source of great amusement to Marron, as Rogers was a huge name in Hollywood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AN65G42VCRPCHGLVSVZVPCCRLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"T7YU3EAGYFG2LCOPLM7G2OW6GA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"ALZBVOQJNJCI3H2V4VER65JJXQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole, Brendan Bowyer and the Big Eight toured Ireland for the second six months of each year. In Las Vegas, he formed his own band, The Paddy Cole Superstars. He played both saxophone and clarinet, with the latter instrument being closest to his heart.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VDRM6ZYPA5A3BG7KJPWWNSF5EU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the early 1990s, Paddy and his wife sold their pub and restaurant and moved to Ballsbridge in Dublin, which was a more convenient base for his musical travels.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZFX6AX7EENFSRBF6RZ5NH5XUTY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole had the honour of playing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans, with his performance rated by one of the band members as “not bad for a white guy”. Cole greatly appreciated this opportunity to play in what is considered to be the birthplace of jazz and headlining his own shows on Bourbon Street marked the pinnacle of his career in many ways.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HGJOAU32MFDKZCFD6T6XRYOMZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"He also headlined many international tours to that American city and to the Caribbean, and found a new chapter in corporate gigs such as the Budweiser Derby. He quietly supported a raft of charities from the Make A Wish Foundation to Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind and St Luke’s Hospital. He was chair of RAAP (Recording Artists Actors Performers) for 25 years and worked hard to ensure that artists got paid their royalties at a time when such advocacy was uncommon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JF6SKNK55VH5ZGRJHK6AUHS2CY","additional_properties":{},"content":"A sideways move into radio broadcasting on Sunshine 106.8FM began in 2004 and afforded him another opportunity to immerse himself in the music he loved. American trumpeter, singer and bandleader Louis Prima was one of Cole’s favourite artists, beloved not only for his musicianship, but for his wit. On radio he found a niche as an empathetic interviewer who drew the best out of his guests. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SC4HQJMHNBCHKCLUCAUJSQSGI","additional_properties":{},"content":"While the world grappled with the pandemic in 2020, Cole published his autobiography, Paddy Cole: King of the Swingers. It chronicled a life lived to the full, defined by an irrepressible wit and passion for music and people, followed closely by an innately competitive love for golf. He was a member of Castle Golf Club in Dublin and Lahinch in Co Clare. On both courses, every €5 note would be played for as if it was his last.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FXDQE7CTPSR55Q2QD3624NJXFE","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"F55KL4WIZVBTXGYHJ7ELCC4OUM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Charismatic, warm, witty and openly affectionate, Cole would invariably encounter people when out walking who would want to reminisce with him about the showband days, with tales of draughty dance halls and dance hall promoters peppering their conversation, his son Pat recalled. These encounters were a source of energy for him, propelling him ever onwards. Cole and Dickie Rock said their final goodbyes to public performance in the same concert in 2019. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VMBVYW4JXFFIZDYJXCGO3CUA4I","additional_properties":{},"content":"President Michael D Higgins stated that “the loss of Paddy Cole is the loss of one of the founding icons of the great period of the Irish showbands.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BIWXWO66JZFHDGLZN5CQ5NQHFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2022. He dealt with the news with the same pragmatism that defined his life, discarding the things he could no longer do, but moving forward to live life to the fullest possible extent. Just a week before his passing he was still walking to Herbert Park and buying his daily newspaper. He was a firm believer in the Clint Eastwood philosophy of “don’t let the old man in”, and so until very recently, he continued to relish his weekly gatherings with his son Pat and grandson Paddy, as well as with his showband and golfing buddies. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OAXGIYHHORDRJGGEYEMXEIKQOU","additional_properties":{},"content":"At his funeral, Cole’s lifelong friend, Fr Brian D’Arcy spoke of him as a real pro who always played well, dressed well and showed up on time. That professional attitude propelled him at a time when the showbands were in their heyday, with huge dance halls operating all week, throughout the country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SD22KCICRBZ7KDKPH3KANPHQU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Cole was a force of nature who had a lot of tenacity and grit. There was no difference between the public and private person. He could easily have been creative in many other ways. He was proficient in the Irish language, and could have been successful in industry, but there was only one path that he wanted to pursue, and he did that with an enviable enthusiasm.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTQRHZ35Z5DILE6ZWDHA4XDRWY","additional_properties":{},"content":"His roots were important to him and in 2019 a mural was unveiled in his honour in Castleblayney. His funeral cortege paused at that site as he made his journey home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GX7DHSNEDVD5HAHLCP6APELPJM","additional_properties":{},"content":"He is survived by his wife Helen, children Pearse, Pat and Karen, his nine grandchildren, and his four sisters Mae, Carmel, Lucia and Betty. He was predeceased by his sisters, Sadie and Jacinta.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"It was not unusual for his Las Vegas dressing room to be visited by stars including the likes of Elvis Presley, Rock Hudson, Muhammad Ali and members of the Rat Pack"},"display_date":"2025-02-08T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Paddy Cole obituary: Musical icon of the showband era","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VPTSRRRJW5NFRKXKMVNGHUHRHU","auth":{"1":"2f1b62d4d9bc8815d0fa802c3fb7aa96ca03adb142118cd5b880391b46b4ad49"},"focal_point":{"x":2362,"y":860},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VPTSRRRJW5NFRKXKMVNGHUHRHU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/08/paddy-cole-obituary-musical-icon-of-the-showband-era/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"KVTK3PWPBNA4FCJZAEV5PZN7II","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":501,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/00726792-8e0a-4e5e-b971-0bbd496ff484/versions/1738084708/media/e0a5ca36caf47b9d039897e4b397748f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/michael-longley-obituary-award-winning-poet-of-emotional-and-intellectual-depth/","content_elements":[{"_id":"WQURAPM2Y5HGHHRX4LJSCYA7V4","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born: </b>July 27, 1939","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> January 22, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFUZBQ3Q4FFZDAYOAQPOYGQSDQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ireland has lost one of its leading literary figures following the death of the multiple award-winning poet, Michael Longley.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XMZVUE66INCJDGLL7AUZILDBJA","additional_properties":{},"content":"The last survivor of the Belfast triumvirate of poets which also included Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney, Longley infused his works with an emotional and intellectual depth garnered from a long life filled with strong loving relationships, enduring friendships and a rigorous academic curiosity. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"W55ON7MVOBG4ROZYL4XHD3HPSI","additional_properties":{},"content":"The three men, Mahon, Heaney and Longley – whose presence heralded a rich mix of younger Belfast writers (Stewart Parker, Bernard MacLaverty, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian) – all published their debut collections in the 1960s and went on to become major internationally renowned poets. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"EJQKILKNTBCLJP7RH2MDESIP2U","additional_properties":{},"content":"A love poet, a nature poet and a war poet inspired by Greek and Roman mythology, Longley’s work courageously bore witness to the Troubles in his native Belfast, first and second World Wars and the Holocaust. He also celebrated the richness and fragility of the natural world and the love he shared with his wife, the academic and critic Edna Longley, their three children and seven grandchildren.","type":"text"},{"_id":"672BTBFUFVHHLLSPQCS4J6FC4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"His 13 collections – including Gorse Fires, The Weather in Japan and The Stairwell – received many awards including the Whitbread Poetry Award, the TS Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, The Irish Timess Literature Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize. In 1994, he published an autobiographical work, entitled Tuppenny Stung, and wrote about jazz, painting and natural history. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LQ6QSD2TKFHD7NK35CFNCEHVJE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2010, he was honoured with a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) award and from 2007 to 2010, he served as Ireland Professor of Poetry, a cross-Border academic post administered by Queen’s University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and both Arts Councils North and South. He was a member ofAosdána, the Irish association of distinguished artists. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXP7K5AR2ZAI7PEOOPE457LXPA","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2021, a special room at Queen’s University Belfast was named the Longley room in honour of the poet and his wife. And the Michael Longley Scholarship fund was established with two scholarships to be awarded annually to outstanding poetry students. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRB7TS7ZUVDU7PAO2UXGB7XFGQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Longley’s collections Ash Keys: New Selected Poems was published in July 2024 to mark his 85th birthday. It brought together work spanning over 50 years from No Continuing City (1969) to The Slain Birds (2022).","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMYHLSLRC5HCJOVA7F72NYXKA4","additional_properties":{},"content":"His best-known poem, Ceasefire, was published in The Irish Times shortly after the Provisional IRA ceasefire in 1994. In it, he compares the episode in the Iliad when Trojan king Priam must plead with the Greek warrior, Achilles, for the return of the body of his son with the reconciliation between enemies during the Northern Ireland peace talks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UTWEMR2G2VDMLJFZYLZJHE5UCU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Another poem, The Ice-Cream Man, was about how the owner of the shop he brought his child to had been murdered during the Northern Ireland conflict. Following a reading of this poem on the radio, Longley received a letter signed, The Ice cream Man’s Mother in which she thanked him for remembering her son. “Getting that stunning letter was one of the most important events in my life,” he subsequently said. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WYWUDOYAQNB4XJVWY3AM2NPAZY","additional_properties":{},"content":"In an interview with The Irish Times in 2024, Longley reflected on progress in Northern Ireland since the 1998 Belfast Agreement. “I think we are getting there but it is going to take a generation and it’s going to take patience and it’s going to require everyone to lower their voices and to listen to each other and to get to know each other and to never forget the victims and their families.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RQB37CPDHJHCVPOBWND3EGUMAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael George Longley grew up in Belfast with his twin brother, Peter, and their elder sister, Wendy, of London-born parents, Richard and Connie Longley (née Longworth). The family had moved to Belfast because of his father’s job as a commercial traveller for a furniture manufacturing firm. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, a boys' grammar school, before moving to Dublin in 1958 to study classics at Trinity College. His first poems were published in student magazines at that university.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6NILOY4KTFATLKAEREOTUXWKFI","additional_properties":{},"content":"An early poem, The Flying Fish, was published in The Irish Times in 1962, which began a decades-long relationship with this newspaper, as both an outlet for his poetry and a place he wrote reviews.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WDMO3QF57RD5FC5ZKERHQVVAKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Trinity College was also where he met his wife-to-be, Edna Broder. Recalling his first encounters with Edna in the aforementioned Irish Times interview, he said: “I registered two things – the black raven hair and that she was brainy. One of the guiding things in my life has been intelligent women. Most men don’t like intelligent women. But I hang on their every word.” The couple married in 1964. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"NSEVWFAJO5GAXMUEOT6YZWTNOU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Friends with Derek Mahon since his Trinity days, the Longleys later got to know Seamus Heaney and his then fiancée, Marie Devlin, when Enda Longley got a lecturing post at Queen’s University prompting their move to Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OHRDIRUSHJEUFG7LDLOMTDHAOU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Growing up in Belfast as a Protestant, Longley didn’t have any friends who were Catholic so the friendship with the Heaneys broke through these artificial boundaries. “And it was awkward for me in the late 1960s and early 1970s as I spent a lot of my time as a liberal Protestant apologising as though it was all my fault.” ","type":"text"},{"_id":"IWSRKVYTERC4DFA6UNXFTH6PNA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Throughout his life, Longley was adamant that he was known as an Irish poet. “I’ve no doubt that I’m an Irish poet or I’m nothing,” he attested. Yet alongside this Irish identity sat the British identity inherited from his parents who moved to Belfast in 1927. His father fought at the Battle of the Somme for which he was award the Military Cross for gallantry. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUS2NSWRWNFEZD3RYFHPD4PZVU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Longley also drew inspiration from what he described as “the soul landscape” near the family’s second home in Carrigskeewaun, Co Mayo. During long stays there from 1970 onwards, the Longleys forged deep friendships with neighbouring writers and environmentalists Michael and Ethna Viney and ornithologist David Cabot.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VUNQOUCSXBHAND3NPVNJG65ECM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Scholarly and wise, yet witty and mischievous, Longley was also generous, compassionate, self-deprecating and approachable. After some years of teaching in Dublin, London and Belfast, he joined the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. As director of combined arts from 1970 until his retirement in 1991, he developed supports for music, storytelling and community arts as well as fostering relationships with publishing houses, particularly the Blackstaff Press in Belfast. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"YSKGXLQ3XBEG3ES4SSTOZ5DFZU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Throughout that period and later, he became a father figure to several generations of new writers and artists. In a tribute to him, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland said he was “an advocate, a listening ear, an artist whose own high-altitude practice served as a standard against which artists came to measure their work”. That organisation also noted how, during the period of the Troubles, he fulfilled an artistic and civic role “where his quiet voice for tolerance, fairness and remembrance registered powerfully among much noisier and less helpful attitudes”. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"B76W5E5H6JEQTIOUCGMOQIDOUU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 2024, Double Band Films and Lone Star Productions released a remarkable BBC documentary on Longley entitled Where Poems Come From. The title refers to a typical Longley quip – when asked where poetry came from, he replied: “If I knew where poems came from, I would go there.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ML3HOKNLOVCORIOSMWKUL52IXU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Michael Longley is survived by his wife, Edna, their children, Rebecca, Daniel and Sarah, and seven grandchildren, Ben, Jacob, Eddie, Conor, Katie, Maisie and Amelia.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He was the last survivor of the Belfast triumvirate of poets which also included Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney"},"display_date":"2025-02-01T00:41:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Michael Longley obituary: Award-winning poet of emotional and intellectual depth","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"SIY3FGUHMJE6TAZOUHIGZYQXZU","auth":{"1":"162770f583b736a15d31c5f79ba50dcd5a56956dee99d4b06beab824bad02ad6"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SIY3FGUHMJE6TAZOUHIGZYQXZU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/michael-longley-obituary-award-winning-poet-of-emotional-and-intellectual-depth/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TVTAYDPCWJBSPFFY73YTXU6KXY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":372,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/84ab5136-5751-49b4-9a45-aff6a2628966/versions/1738076509/media/44073b1ace1f6724fb85a0988ba8d1f0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/denis-law-obituary-a-bone-fide-manchester-united-legend/","content_elements":[{"_id":"7BEKPAXJKNAPDBF5M4LJPALAMY","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Born: </b>February 24th, 1940","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"<b>Died:</b> January 17th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"IO5E4KEDIRFRHLSOILMRNWKN44","additional_properties":{},"content":"The impact made on the world of football by Denis Law, who has died aged 84, can be measured by the fact that at the height of his fame a future footballing superstar was named after him. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVIZNS47JNB4RJYJGSKWBX4D6A","additional_properties":{},"content":"The child, born to Wim and Tonnie Bergkamp in Amsterdam in May 1969, subsequently had to have his birth name altered because the registrar insisted that “Denis” was overly feminine. The newly-named “Dennis” would go on to make plenty of football history of his own for Arsenal and the Netherlands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W6CFQZHZLVF55JJ65HVKE5BUTU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In an era when the word “iconic” was not as commonly abused as it is now, Law – nicknamed The King – was a bona fide sporting legend, along with his Manchester United team-mates Bobby Charlton and George Best. Together, they would be known as the United Trinity. Law was the last surviving member.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AH45L6QBPRHFFDBGX4MCVGZJPM","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ebullient, extroverted and a natural showman, Law served as the gleaming spear-tip of Matt Busby’s United team, scoring almost at will as they claimed the English League title in 1965 and 1967 and the European Cup in 1968: only Wayne Rooney and Charlton have scored more goals for the club than him. In 1964, he was anointed as European football’s top player by being awarded the Ballon d’Or, the only Scotsman ever to receive the honour. Decades on from his heyday, he was still revered as a living legend not only of United, but of football itself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T7B77TCGFBC6LOGOUGNWVIMPK4","additional_properties":{},"type":"image"},{"_id":"JQEUCN2RZNDYDDFWXYWE4AQ5XE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Denis Law was born in February 1940: his father George worked on a fishing trawler, while his mother Robina was a housewife. He was the youngest of seven children. The family home was a tenement in a deprived area. As a boy, Law was obsessed with football and went to watch his native Aberdeen at Pittodrie whenever he could. Aged 14, he was spotted by a scout while playing for Huddersfield Town, where he then honed his skills under the eye of his manager, the future Liverpool legend Bill Shankly. Grimacing at Law’s frail physique, Shankly said he looked “like a skinned rabbit”, but acknowledged the teenager’s ability.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZMV5EDVMLREDXER6FNUQC44GVY","additional_properties":{},"content":"A childhood squint which forced Law to play with one closed eye was soon medically corrected, removing a major obstacle to his progress. By 1960, he was performing well enough for Huddersfield to catch the attention of Manchester City, who signed him for £55,000, a British transfer record at the time. In one memorable FA Cup tie, he scored six times against Luton before the game was abandoned due to a waterlogged pitch; in the replay, he drew a blank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43QDY5S5NVBJ3PPQU4APAZKQPE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In 1961, Law would join Italian side Torino for £110,000, another record. He embraced the Italian lifestyle (“The wine was lovely, the food was lovely, the women were lovely”), but became disenchanted with the ultra-defensive tactics that charactised Serie A, and scored only 10 goals in his solitary season there. Far more gravely, he and his team-mate and compatriot Joe Baker were involved in a car crash: Baker almost died, but Law was virtually unscathed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5FKQZYOFCNGB5BFEKUARACUBXY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Following one dispute too many with coach Beniamino Santos, Law walked out on Torino and signed for Manchester United in July 1962. United were still getting back on their feet after the 1958 Munich air disaster, but Law was made for them: a quality finisher who perfectly complemented the creative skills of Bobby Charlton and, later, George Best. It was now that his trademark goal celebration – one arm upraised skywards while clutching his shirt cuff in his hand – entered the wider consciousness of British football.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UHDJMHX3PBCD7OW3FWLP2C5Q4A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Law’s clinical shot on the turn set United on their way to winning the 1963 FA Cup final against Leicester, and he grabbed 46 more the following season (still a United record) to claim the Ballon d’Or. In 1964-65, his finishing made all the difference as United pipped Leeds on goal average to win the Division One title. Just seven years on from Munich, United were back at the summit of English football. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UK6SUTRLJBCGJKD7ZBK64GFVV4","additional_properties":{},"content":"They claimed the championship again in 1967, but Law was not involved: a knee injury saw him miss the semi-final second leg against Real Madrid and the final against Benfica at Wembley. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2I3Q3SZWFFCNGONIBFTZYPRBA","additional_properties":{},"content":"United’s post-1968 decline was mirrored by Law himself, as nagging injuries saw new manager Tommy Docherty sell him to neighbours Manchester City in 1973. But the decision would ultimately haunt Docherty, who looked on in horror as Law’s late back-heel condemned United to defeat at Maine Road in May 1974. Law pointedly declined to celebrate the goal. It was popularly thought that he had relegated his old club, but results elsewhere ensured that United would have gone down regardless. “I have seldom felt so depressed as I did that weekend,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YTNLSIU3GFFK3MMYETJSZHENIA","additional_properties":{},"content":"That summer, aged 34, he made his only appearance in the World Cup, looking weary as Scotland defeated Zaire in Dortmund; it was his final game for his country. He still holds the Scottish record for international goals (30) jointly with Kenny Dalglish. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"SA5EZ6Y6LZC25BFBFFSIFEIYXE","additional_properties":{},"content":"As a player, Law was spiky and aggressive but off the field, he was known for his cheerfulness and approachability, and he remained a beloved figure with United’s fans through the next five decades. After retiring, he was a regular pundit on the BBC and ITV. In 2002, a statue of him was unveiled outside Old Trafford; six years later, another one of him alongside Charlton and Best was situated at the other end of the stadium.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BDASKSQ6P5HFVA73UXTCRXND6M","additional_properties":{},"content":"Law died on January 17th. He is survived by his wife Diana and their five children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AI3WLT2ZPBCQZFI4SGFHUVSY6E","additional_properties":{},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The only Scotsman to win the Ballon d’Or was a spiky and aggressive player on the pitch and a beloved figure off it"},"display_date":"2025-02-01T00:39:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Denis Law obituary: A bone fide Manchester United legend","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CM45X2UALZY3SY4J2AG4CEBIII","auth":{"1":"d1a4b70fb94de432b2c74e9f6c824d1a1e363eeff79fa52ee949085a5d258367"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CM45X2UALZY3SY4J2AG4CEBIII.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/02/01/denis-law-obituary-a-bone-fide-manchester-united-legend/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"ZUHNQQTDUBFUVPGWZAV3IZTTRY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":483,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d5933d1a-c20d-4bc7-ac2d-62a53844c185/versions/1737543548/media/123a2bf0f545458262bfb6620966d7fd_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/25/patrick-macentee-obituary-leading-criminal-advocate-of-his-generation/","content_elements":[{"_id":"HOJCD3NYZRCRNH7Q5RBBB3BZDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>November 4th, 1936","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 13th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNQWNGDXDBG6PD2EODPCFMZZ3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040162},"content":"Patrick MacEntee SC QC was born in 1936 into a middle-class family in Monaghan town. His father was a dentist. His mother, born in England, was of Irish stock. He was educated at his local Christian Brothers school, St Macartan’s college in Monaghan and at <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/ucd/\" target=\"_blank\">University College Dublin</a>, where he graduated and had been an active member in the Dramsoc society.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GW4JV7NTNBFYLPH5G7UMQQK2QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040163},"content":"Called to the Bar in 1960, he devilled with Herbert McWilliam, a distinguished Presbyterian Northern circuit barrister who later became a judge of the High Court. MacEntee practised across the Northern circuit as a junior counsel, a role at which he excelled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ATRVF4LITZGY7MYZ3WEP4A4XCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733184},"content":"He deployed his innate curiosity, intellect and willingness to pursue the often-elusive separation of truth from lies, and justice from injustice, in the representation of his clients.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ZYUIT2TANEJRA7RUXAV4SCADE","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040164},"content":"The outbreak of the Troubles provoked a quest for arms and money by subversives in the State and led to the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_blank\">IRA</a> and splinter groups engaging in murders, robberies, extortions and kidnappings. Their example was followed by criminal gangs in Dublin, too.","type":"text"},{"_id":"42SR3VZ3S5EFJNTLIPQ7CHXSU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040165},"content":"While still a junior, his practice gravitated away from the Northern circuit towards the Dublin criminal courts and to the non-jury <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/special-criminal-court/\" target=\"_blank\">Special Criminal Court</a> after it was re-established in 1972. That brought with it powers of arrest and lengthy detention under the Offences against the State Act 1939 for scheduled offences, which did not include many serious offences such as murder or robbery.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3ZBZ5XFXBZEVHBPZIOK5WWKOPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733187},"content":"Gardaí had no general powers applicable to all serious offences to arrest and detain people for the purposes of criminal investigation until the Criminal Justice Act 1984 was finally commenced in 1987, after the Garda Complaints Board had been established and the Treatment of Persons in Custody Regulations were signed. Previously, people were euphemistically said to be “helping police with their inquiries”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A6N7NGNMURHCHDTSR67BBUJ4YM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040166},"content":"Investigative and evidentiary tools available to the gardaí had been rudimentary. That changed dramatically with the evolution and deployment of forensic science in Irish criminal courtrooms which started in 1975, the year MacEntee took silk.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PL4BP7D25VG6PFOJRV6YMVDB2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"RWTLNWXVJVBRVPJ23ZBZ4BO6KQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"GL45XTH7I5CBBFZ4IAHTSNYAWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733190},"content":"With the opening of the State’s forensic science laboratory, judges, juries and practitioners were faced with expert evidence that could include complex analysis of firearms residue, glass, paint, fibres, explosives, hair, blood, saliva, ballistics and ordnance evidence. Later came linguistic analysis, ESDA analysis, and forensic examination of confessions, police notes and statements, and DNA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G5CJJRGE5FFCTNNWDTB6BWLVXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040167},"content":"These were often the fields of battle facing MacEntee for the greater part of his career. He mastered and dealt with all these areas, whether in the Special Criminal Court or the ordinary courts. His skills were based on a clear understanding of the science underlying such evidence, what it was based on and what it could establish or not. This allowed him to demonstrate his greatest skill: that of cross examination. He could be relentless and devastating.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KFCJROXXMVFHRMXQSKMLKNVMZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040168},"content":"Other great qualities were his independence and fearlessness. This confluence of talents and circumstances ensured he came to be regarded by many of his peers as the greatest Irish criminal barrister of the last 100 years. No one else has represented so many clients in so many high-profile, difficult and often unpopular cases in the brightest glare of publicity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2UGL2TAIVRHABHRHBIZWPUP7BY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040169},"content":"In the non-jury Special Criminal Court, he fearlessly defended many cases which depended largely on alleged admissions and the disputed credibility of witnesses dubbed the “the Heavy Gang”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVV4OWN7GFDZBPMRFDM7DU3OLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733194},"content":"From high-profile cases such as the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/malcolm-macarthur/\" target=\"_blank\">Malcolm Macarthur</a> trial, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/louis-mountbatten/\" target=\"_blank\">Mountbatten</a> murder trial and the Fr Molloy case to the Catherine Nevin trial, his criminal trials were rarely out of the headlines. His became a household name as the country’s leading criminal advocate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"64S36GCV5BHNZFQCXG2JEHWJK4","additional_properties":{"_id":"GQR76VUDHRFMTFU7FIZR4LWXU4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"PVV4OWN7GFDZBPMRFDM7DU3OLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733196},"content":"He also had a major extradition practice, including the Trimbole case and the Evelyn Glenholmes case. After Robert Trimbole’s Australian extradition warrant request was rejected, Australian media surrounded MacEntee outside court demanding to know whether and how much he had been paid. He replied that he would be very disappointed if they thought he was just an enthusiastic amateur.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTJFV2IYEJHJTEG3GRU7HXZDZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733197},"content":"Similarly besieged by English press demanding to know what had happen after the UK warrant was found to be flawed in the Glenholmes case, he said: “We call it the rule of law; you claim to have invented it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SNTHFRO3XJEWXMOEFQD4C3OMG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040172},"content":"His reputation took him to other jurisdictions. In Northern Ireland, he appeared in the Harry Kirkpatrick supergrass trial, having taken silk as a QC there. In England he appeared for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/paddy-armstrong/\" target=\"_blank\">Paddy Armstrong</a>, who had been wrongly convicted of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2024/09/09/guildford-pub-bombings-among-first-cases-to-be-examined-by-commission-into-troubles-era-crimes/\" target=\"_blank\">Guildford and Woolwich bombings</a>, in the ultimate successful appeal. In Tanzania, he appeared for an unfortunate Irish businessman who had been wrongly jailed in the course of commercial litigation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"64MGKZJJTBAY5B4ZYKAV5E264Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040173},"content":"MacEntee later became chairman of the Bar Council and a bencher of the King’s Inns – marks of the popularity, respect and friendship he enjoyed among his colleagues. He was witty, well read, a formidable intellect and a shrewd observer of character.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4B32YIDYMZAR3HUG3AAWHFZHKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040174},"content":"He was not favoured with instructions from state bodies or authorities until well into his career of approximately 54 years, perhaps due to prejudice and typecasting.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G5KHCQRGOJHPZFC7OX3AY22HK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733201},"content":"Eventually he appeared regularly for health boards/HSE particularly in relation to the accommodation of young persons in the care of the State and as counsel in state civil litigation. He was appointed sole commissioner to report on the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2024/05/17/grief-and-anger-mark-50th-anniversary-of-dublin-monaghan-bombings/\" target=\"_blank\">Dublin/Monaghan bombings</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"76UDFEAUW5DJPJZVP2V6UEWRK4","additional_properties":{"_id":"O52ROPD3CFHURCW5EAZDIT7SAE"},"content":"The great defender is on the case","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HGMBSES4GBHXRJGGAYVF56HOU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040175},"content":"In July 2010, a dinner was held in King’s Inns to celebrate him reaching the milestone of 50 years in practice. He decided to ease back in practice.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SVLBL2NGKBCDDNAOBYHL6KAKDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040176},"content":"Unsurprisingly for someone so much in the public eye, MacEntee lived a private life. He was known to be a gay man in the long, dark decades preceding decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IUU5H3XSP5EH5AFR5WJ2GI3H2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733205},"content":"He and his partner Richard Reilly lived quietly in Rathmines, Dublin, in an elegant but secluded mews, lined with books, furnished with Kilim rugs and adorned with an extensive art and portrait collection. They had two Afghan hounds and had two parrots which had flying rights around the house when not perched in their finely planted conservatory.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DQD3GRF3R5BYDCV4AV54DO3HY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040177},"content":"Saturday was a day of respite from work, involving trips to town, a drink or two with friends in McDaids, Davy Byrnes or The Bailey followed by lunch and browsing in bookshops or art galleries. Sundays often involved a trip to The Hill pub in company of friends including John and Harden Jay and MacEntee’s goddaughter, Ferris.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YNQERWCAV5BGFA6Q7VQFIP6KHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737537900365},"content":"His professional success allowed him to buy an apartment in Paris which became a joyous retreat from the pressure of his professional life and in part led to his engagement with the Irish cultural centre in that city.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U4PKQMGDOJGV7IF5FTIZMTK4YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737557733208},"content":"But he never indulged in conspicuous consumption or other outward trappings of success. His modest and battered car was affectionately known by colleagues as a “mobile ashtray”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTCSCANIR5CA7LJUPW6NPP26YY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040178},"content":"MacEntee had many loyal friends including legal colleagues and well-known poets, writers, actors, artists, and architects. He and Richard married after 40 years together. Sadly, Richard died before him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WN74TORL5BGDXB5BNDWSPH7U6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1737488040179},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2025/01/18/patrick-macentee-was-the-outstanding-criminal-lawyer-of-his-generation-funeral-service-told/\" target=\"_blank\">MacEntee died in his 89th year</a>, survived by his brother, Michael, and his sister, Betty, both of whom live in North America.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"No one else represented as many clients in high-profile, difficult and often-unpopular cases in the bright glare of publicity"},"display_date":"2025-01-25T12:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Patrick MacEntee obituary: Leading criminal advocate of his generation","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"A3POVHZB2RHJTDOROS5FHN34Q4","auth":{"1":"155bc662c8a44b638542d0c3af6880dbd082e3d82f82983b63716e3c679d06d1"},"focal_point":{"x":517,"y":244},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/A3POVHZB2RHJTDOROS5FHN34Q4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/25/patrick-macentee-obituary-leading-criminal-advocate-of-his-generation/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"BXDV24QNIFEPTPKHJT22D4CF6M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":297,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5d918315-3f1e-4e9c-8971-e95f28f1fe60/versions/1737025621/media/e0f22a996cb5a8e3700793704a125184_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/tom-hyland-obituary-east-timor-peace-campaigner/","content_elements":[{"_id":"HPEWOGIIPNDAZHT25RJCO2XVXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>October 12th, 1952","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>December 24th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPUVIB27FRDFDIEJFCSGPXPLUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017242},"content":"Tom Hyland had, in his own words, “72 years of happy life”. The former bus driver from Ballyfermot, Dublin, and East Timor solidarity leader died early on Christmas Eve in a Timorese hospital after a long illness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7HNNF762E5E7DE6HI7PICXGUGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017245},"content":"Hyland, known in Timor as “Papa Tom”, was a founding member of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He also campaigned for West Papua and LGBTQ+ equality.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TEYUEWYPNFGURNMBEHA7GIDR7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017246},"content":"The day after watching a documentary on the 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre of about 100 young mourners by Indonesian troops*, Hyland set up the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign. The campaign was officially launched at a 1992 Afri (Action From Ireland) event. Together with similar international organisations, he campaigned tirelessly until a 1999 United Nations referendum ended 24 years of brutal Indonesian military occupation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VU3JF2MNEZCCZKCWG3JBB6NLEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017247},"content":"The Santa Cruz footage had been shot by the late Max Stahl, who buried his film, and after his arrest and nine-hour interrogation by Indonesian officers, returned to the cemetery and dug up the visual record and smuggled it out to the world. It showed soldiers shooting and bayonetting to death young men, women and children, mourners of an independence activist killed two weeks earlier.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ZYJ5IAHZBGUTPRZYIKZB35ALM","additional_properties":{"_id":"SX2DBQVUXZFLLOTDT2XBUTUBH4"},"content":"An Irishman’s Diary on Timor-Leste’s joyous liberation","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"APSQYSOMLJG6PA2TS74T6LM2WI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017250},"content":"Ireland’s foreign minister, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/david-andrews/\" target=\"_blank\">David Andrews</a>, became an EU special envoy to East Timor and brought a planeload of observers to the UN independence referendum in 1999.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OVDHRWCWBRCF7PXGT2FZO6GDKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736945072455},"content":"An Irish Interests section was set up in Dili. Irish gardaí and soldiers went as UN observers and peacekeepers, while the Carter Center also observed. The Irish aid agencies Concern, Trócaire, and Goal all established branches in East Timor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AO2H5HWLH5AL7P7JPRVDIUTT5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017251},"content":"Andrews also visited Xanana Gusmao, then a guerrilla leader, in his house arrest in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O65IDMHWX5CQDHIXGKEO4BF2FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017254},"content":"Hyland travelled to the former Portuguese colony for the first time in 1997. He decided to change his passport into Irish and travel incognito. But entering by bus from neighbouring Indonesian West Timor, an Indonesian officer at a border immigration hut glanced at the “Tomás Ó Haoláin” passport and said: “Welcome, Mr Hyland”. He was watched, often through binoculars, for the rest of that visit. He heard stories of atrocities, including one involving a Fretilin (pro-independence) person who was staked crucifix-like to the ground and cut with blades, his wounds rubbed with chilli.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2FCN7KJKHZFLJDNILXEPTPCFNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017256},"content":"Hyland told a story from when he was living in Timor of covert Indonesian attempts to get him to accept an invitation from mountain guerrillas so that he would lead intelligence agents to their location. Another concerns the arrival of a taxi at his hotel, and the driver’s surprising announcement: “Your flight is at 12.30 tomorrow.” Hyland said this was letting him know “they knew everything about us”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHCET6Z7SZCV3OOXYU7ZX6XGNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"RHYAPB7IBBCZBHNL4GJCPR4QK4"},"content":"Death announced of East Timor peace campaigner Tom Hyland (72)","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VU3JF2MNEZCCZKCWG3JBB6NLEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017247},"content":"East Timor became the independent Republic of Democratic Timor-Leste in 1999, with a vote for independence of 78.5 per cent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WTH6TRU5YNG6ZDHQ7XAGZ5H2AY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017258},"content":"Adding to the 186,000 already dead victims of the occupation, 1,000-plus died as the departing army trashed the infrastructure, including power lines.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PB7GJ2NNFRGUDJG4ZNFQN3N7EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017260},"content":"In recent years Hyland worked as a government teacher of English. It was joked that he created Timorese diplomats speaking with a Ballyfermot accent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W64GSEZ5SFFRBHIOPLK6CMZMBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017261},"content":"In 2003 his work was honoured by the conferring of a Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Limerick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQDRLA546RBHRJAPML2SXI3N6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017243},"content":"President Michael D Higgins has described Hyland as “one of those exceptional people who, having familiarised himself with what was happening far away from Ireland, decided to take action on an issue of humanity that could not be ignored”. The Timorese prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, considered “Timor-Leste has lost one of its own”. Gusmao said that Hyland was particularly concerned about the plight of people in Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GMOOGBGEEFCO3AVLQ7YBD6QDX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017244},"content":"And president José Ramos-Horta said: “Let us honour Tom Hyland by continuing the work he so passionately championed.” He recalled that Hyland received his country’s Order of Timor-Leste, the highest such award. Not just a supporter of Timor, “he was a passionate voice that resonated across continents”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4CJ3KGWZWBECFHSXOPY5K4XFQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736879017263},"content":"Tom William Hyland is survived by his elder brother, Jimmy, and sisters Marcella and Ellen. The eldest, Mary, predeceased him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZWN45VD2SRC4BKPNXEEM4RGLEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1739297095925},"content":"*This obituary was amended on February 11th, 2025","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Hyland set up the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign the day after he watched a documentary on Channel 4 of the 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre"},"display_date":"2025-01-18T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Tom Hyland obituary: East Timor peace campaigner","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WV4SK7LHJRNT3H74E2A6M23ZD4","auth":{"1":"d02f6e49e55021ffdf77f7011ea7d4af2c73d3ff55d01833a08c6f28cbd0c152"},"focal_point":{"x":1460,"y":671},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WV4SK7LHJRNT3H74E2A6M23ZD4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/tom-hyland-obituary-east-timor-peace-campaigner/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"J7WA4PAS7JC63C5F4SLPR75BWQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":292,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/e3bcc6c3-a38a-4290-a90d-191618468abf/versions/1737030866/media/4d94d2aec7d42972aee8f96b462b1328_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/rosita-missoni-obituary-designer-who-helped-make-milan-a-capital-of-italian-high-fashion/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FQPF6547TJGSHK5VLD2QXMNZD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>November 20th, 1931","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 2nd, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"CU37SYPTLRGBNP6TQ43OWOLCUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466058},"content":"Rosita Missoni who, with her husband, Ottavio, built a luxury clothing brand on a foundation of boldly colourful striped and zigzagged knitwear that helped make Milan a capital of Italian high fashion, has died at the age of 93.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NVU5Z6O5RBDBDIT63B7ME55MHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466059},"content":"What began in 1953 as a homespun venture for the Missonis was transformed in just a couple of decades into a leading fashion house with one of the world’s most recognisable brands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXKES57MA5EI5FTTWT7YQ5CJOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466060},"content":"If Emilio Pucci’s bold swirls helped define Italian fashion in the 1950s and 1960s, Missoni’s squiggly, striped and multicoloured space-dyed designs marked the 1970s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYNIVEUPSND5TARMBRKV2UQF5Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466061},"content":"At first, the Missonis sold their sweaters anonymously or under co-labels with known designers. Rosita eventually took over the design of the silhouettes, and Ottavio handled the patterns: space dyes, stripes, squiggles, chevrons, all in vivid colours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IOLI5KTCBE53KN5JIZW5KFBEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466062},"content":"Five years after the company’s founding, Missoni dresses could be purchased at La Rinascente, an upscale department store in Milan. Anna Piaggi, editor of Vogue Italia, had Missoni designs photographed for an editorial shoot in 1965. The family business had become a high-fashion brand.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LE4TPAXSWZCLVDLJWYHAE53NH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466063},"content":"Missoni’s first runway shows that – part-collection, part-performance art – were a precursor to the Instagrammable runway spectacles of the 2010s began the following year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I4HUD3MET5BS7KAJSOMWKOR4PI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466064},"content":"Over time, they made Milan a destination for fashion critics from around the world. The couple showed their next collection in Florence, at the Palazzo Pitti. When Rosita Missoni saw her models in the thin knit dresses that she and her husband had conceived, she asked them to remove their bras, which were showing through the fabric. What she hadn’t considered was how the stage lights would affect the transparency of the garments; the scandalous see-through dresses became the talk of the town, and the Missonis were not asked to show in Florence again. So they returned to Milan. Missoni’s presence on the calendar drew other northern Italian knitwear brands, whose factories had been renovated in the 1950s with money from the Marshall Plan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TV6KPHSVENGFNJYSCHASO4PZEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466065},"content":"By then, the Missonis had captivated the global fashion press. Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue, featured Missoni in a 1969 spread – a big endorsement for the company and proof that colourful sweaters could be as viable an art form as couture gowns.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WJ3RMTSRH5FA5LLPPO343U5GMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466066},"content":"Entering the 1990s, the Missonis took steps to hand the company over to their children, putting sons Vittorio and Luca in charge of the business side and installing daughter Angela as head of design. Angela Missoni set the company up for growth in multiple business categories, establishing more than 20 sub-brands, including a lower-price label; a home decor line led by Rosita Missoni; and a now-shuttered hotel chain. Under Angela Missoni’s creative leadership, the brand has dressed stars such as Kerry Washington, Regina King, Cate Blanchett and Beyoncé.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M34XNOXZPFDDBKNNWMEV6GEMRU","additional_properties":{"_id":"DWGDTCYAJBEUDP37N77ZBD3PFE"},"content":"Fashion in 2024: Simone Rocha’s Gaultier show kicked off an exceptional year for Irish designers","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F2ZDVDF55VDFJINGX3CCLVEOME","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466067},"content":"Rosita Jelmini was born into a textile-manufacturing family November 20th, 1931, in Golasecca, in northern Lombardy, near Lake Maggiore. Like her grandparents before them, her parents, Diamante and Angelo Jelmini worked in the family factory, where Rosita spent much of her youth absorbing techniques and aesthetics, including the colourful zigzags that would become a Missoni signature.","type":"text"},{"_id":"33PTC4Q2XJEB5H5JH33KARD7XU","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466068},"content":"Rosita, who grew up with two brothers, Alberto and Giampiero, was a sickly child. Her parents sent her away to school on the Ligurian coast, and living on a Mediterranean diet near the sea seemed to help.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GVYEFI6D2JFLTKV36NIIKUWDHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466069},"content":"Rosita met Ottavio, known to his friends as Tai, in 1948. She was a student in London studying English, and he was a hurdler with the Italian track-and-field team competing in the Summer Olympics there. The couple wed on April 18th, 1953, and began renting their first factory, in Gallarate, outside Milan, the same year. Ottavio had graduated from athlete to designer, fashioning uniforms for the Italian team before the 1952 Olympics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QHLDI5V3HBFTLJXXAPNPN53JCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1737029466070},"content":"Ottavio Missoni died at 92 in May 2013, just a few months after their son Vittorio was killed in a plane crash. Rosita Missoni is survived by her two other children, as well as her brother Alberto, nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. – <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/fashion/rosita-missoni-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The brand famous for its zigzag stripes has dressed stars such as Cate Blanchett and Beyoncé"},"display_date":"2025-01-18T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Rosita Missoni obituary: Designer who helped make Milan a capital of Italian high fashion","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"XZZ46DLZUAB7PWG4IP2RY5AEAI","auth":{"1":"82d698bcb5e6c350edff3f6c4305a100bada19425c71df735571471563604ad6"},"focal_point":{"x":1751,"y":1518},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XZZ46DLZUAB7PWG4IP2RY5AEAI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/rosita-missoni-obituary-designer-who-helped-make-milan-a-capital-of-italian-high-fashion/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TKR3XBOA65BKVBSMKWX4ZTNVXM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":451,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/94904a03-e922-4f8a-aa5a-c7a373d422fc/versions/1736935566/media/634a14b964f19ccc01686f0198f9ac7b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/ted-howell-obituary-republican-figure-whose-influence-was-far-greater-than-his-profile/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ND3DQRFA4ZHBFBQTW52DN3HRX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>May 20th, 1947","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 3rd, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"27RSOFM4UFGEHG65ISONYRBTMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424261},"content":"Ted Howell, who has died aged 77, was the most self-effacing, yet one of the most influential <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_blank\">IRA</a> and <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/sinn-fein/\" target=\"_blank\">Sinn Féin</a> figures, who incongruously also appeared regularly on social media, along with rubber ducks and cupcakes, as <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gerry-adams/\" target=\"_blank\">Gerry Adams</a>’s “teddy bear”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P7DLIPQQSFDADEO3DCTIZVBBSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424262},"content":"Howell’s association with the former Sinn Féin president went back more than 50 years to when they were both interned in the early 1970s and continued through three decades of the Troubles and into the period of the peace process and beyond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZJKMVEA63ZA2LMKEP7BZDGZRRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424263},"content":"He also served as Sinn Féin director of foreign affairs and was a go-between on behalf of the IRA leadership with senior Irish-Americans in the early days of the peace process in the 1990s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CV2PAWI2Y5EYFHECUURSONIYBA","additional_properties":{"_id":"T7HDCR6HUVCYLBJQC5IHZS6OHQ"},"content":"Sinn Féin’s evolving funding stream from Irish-America","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZVQ27C33A5CSDPNVPGZ6DXPO5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424264},"content":"In 1982 he was arrested for entering the United States from Canada during a plot to smuggle arms for the IRA to Ireland. He also had a run-in with gardaí over a plastic bag containing $80,000.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2A5OO63DLFFADAUI7ZRZYBV6IY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424265},"content":"Historian and Irish News political commentator <a href=\"https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/brian-feeney-ted-howell-was-the-most-important-republican-figure-in-the-peace-process-youve-never-heard-of-NZYSCPQOEJDZ5HH3UDVK2KC4IE/\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Feeney</a> described him as the “most important republican figure in the peace process you’ve never heard of” while former senior Irish diplomat Ray Bassett said Irish politicians and officials “were never in doubt about his importance and influence within the republican movement”. Ed Moloney, who wrote A Secret History of the IRA, said he was “arguably one of the most influential figures in the Provisionals”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTF36STRDVAUFM54SEVQCTTEQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424266},"content":"From west Belfast, Howell was born in 1947. He joined the Provisional IRA early in the Troubles and was interned twice in the 1970s, on the Maidstone prison ship and in Long Kesh. Gerry Adams recalled that on the night of Howell’s marriage to Eileen Duffy in October 1972, the groom was arrested, but that the false identification Howell was carrying “held up” and he was released the following morning. Over the years he assumed a number of such false identities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XLGRQLLCZ5DBTIH44OKBL3JDSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424267},"content":"Duffy, who died in June 2004, also was a prominent republican, who for many years was director of the Falls Community Council in west Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DTTVEBD3QNF7LCRZBG5VBHKK3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424268},"content":"Howell’s 31-year-old brother, James, a car dealer, and business partner Gerald McCrea, were abducted and murdered by loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association in July 1972.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RIDJATSB7VGYNNTFDWJTBEHP7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424269},"content":"If he mostly escaped the attention of the public, it was a different story with the authorities. Howell and four other men were arrested near Niagara Falls in 1982 as they attempted to enter the US from Canada carrying thousands of dollars, sterling and Irish punts – with the intention, it was alleged, on procuring arms and ammunition for the IRA.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EMYNMCS4JZDQ3PJ4KRBXNMTEEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424270},"content":"He was deported from Canada but escaped from Canadian immigration officials at Orly Airport in Paris. He was subsequently apprehended by gardaí after Joe Cahill, the late IRA chief of staff, handed him a bag containing $80,000 dollars in a restaurant on O’Connell Street in Dublin. He was stopped on O’Connell Bridge but ran off with a white plastic bag which, after he was chased and arrested, was found to contain the money. He claimed the cash was for election expenses.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQUUITKBQNDMVEATVYQI5CW4TM","additional_properties":{"_id":1737102848452},"content":"Howell was charged with membership of the IRA but was acquitted. The Special Criminal Court in Dublin refused to release the money back to Cahill but eventually, after further legal proceedings, it was returned with interest.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YHDCQ3PFRJHIZLIED5A3HQT2AE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424272},"content":"Despite Howell’s IRA involvement and his arrests, he remained a secretive but important republican player. He was rarely photographed but was an authoritative presence whose word carried serious weight in the highest echelons of the Provisional republican movement. The most senior Irish and British diplomats also knew of his standing and paid close attention when he made his contributions during the critical and fraught period leading up to the Belfast Agreement of 1998.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTMZ66ATQBDPTHUSIKAGUTZGCY","additional_properties":{"_id":"GEU3FXCNDRFMVNBLKGOVA6HLR4"},"content":"Inside Sinn Féin: Who really makes the big decisions?","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"D7LBWYXIT5CDVIEXN7BPRRYPX4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424273},"content":"Just once the mask slipped a little and he emerged briefly from the wings of Sinn Féin in an incident that reinforced how pivotal a Sinn Féin back-room heavyweight he was. That was during the “cash for ash” scandal which in 2017 crashed the Northern Executive for three years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SSTF6VOZNFFPJCVLB3U5JWGE64","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424274},"content":"The late deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, pulled Sinn Féin out of the executive over former DUP first minister Arlene Foster’s refusal to stand aside pending an investigation into the flawed renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme. Under the scheme, for every £1 that users spent on their green heating systems they got back £1.60 in subsidies – hence “cash for ash” or “the more you burn the more you earn”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4PNJZOLBMFEJZHN2NXPRWQJ7BU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424275},"content":"It was discovered that former Sinn Féin MLA Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, who was finance minister for a period during the RHI crisis, had sought the approval of Howell before he would agree to sign off on a plan aimed at cutting some of the cost of the scheme. This was despite the fact that three senior civil servants had told him the cost-saving plan was legitimate. Howell gave his approval and the scheme then went ahead.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2J3AMMWERREVJBTYR3WJJQSEQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":"VBYYQORFEJFHXMBO4XSGVQCXSI"},"content":"Sinn Féin minister sought ‘consent’ for action from unelected official, inquiry finds","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"N3JFI2J6HNEYFP2PP3I4FJ6M6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424276},"content":"This triggered renewed claims that Sinn Féin in the North and the South was run by “shadowy”, “unelected”, “IRA army council-type” personnel.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TF2SCTQWBVDVLOV2S43TD2J53U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424277},"content":"Ray Bassett, a former Irish ambassador to Canada and a senior Department of Foreign Affairs official during the peace process, noted how in the negotiations leading to the 1998 Belfast Agreement, “Gerry Adams would almost invariably have a word with the quiet man in the delegation, Ted Howell, whenever we reached a critical juncture”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDTMWCJTRFELZJ4YGGJUBYTANE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424278},"content":"“He was soft-spoken but we noticed early on that whenever Ted Howell intervened, the rest of the Sinn Féin delegation listened intently, as we did ourselves,” Bassett wrote in an article on writer and broadcaster Jude Collins’s blog. “He had a great ability to absorb detail and left his imprint on all Sinn Féin’s key policy documents.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M25OU542XVDFFHZQXUZPN6GWXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424279},"content":"Adams, in a number of tributes, also acknowledged how Howell was a key, yet reserved strategist. “Think of any of the major republican political, organisational shifts or initiatives taken over recent decades. Ted was at the heart of all of them,” he wrote in the Andersonstown News.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OQQYNMUEWZDZ7FKEMXYWTVTTJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424280},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2I3GGVLFVAXPN5BUMQLVNT4QA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424281},"content":"“And then there was the public process of negotiations with the two governments and the USA. In all of this Ted was indispensable.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IGUBY45HMBADXHNGMUYH7PYAA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424282},"content":"Adams and Howell were very close. Some of Howell’s recipes for dishes that he put together during the peace process negotiations appeared in Adams’s The Negotiator’s Cookbook. On his tweets and his blogs, Adams regularly referred to his “teddy bear” with ducks and cupcakes also featuring in these whimsical posts. Queried by one interviewer about them, Adams gnomically replied, “you have to think of the sensitivities of teddy bears. Teddy bears aren’t given their place in the scheme of things in this world.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7IG6PE4DBA2BID2C7C5HSNYCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424283},"content":"There was little doubt, however, that these dispatches referred to his right-hand man who had a significant if inconspicuous place in the republican world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FEFIGYWUERCHHOYS55ZM5Y6YUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424284},"content":"Ted Howell is survived by his sons, Eamonn and Proinnsias, their wives, Nora and Karen, and grandchildren, Micéal, Caoimhe and Amelia.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KWUC4ZIALRDTVMRC6XNOOBJUUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736874424285},"content":"","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Gerry Adams jokingly referred to him as ‘teddy bear’ but Howell was an authoritative presence whose word carried serious weight in the highest echelons of republicanism"},"display_date":"2025-01-18T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ted Howell obituary: Republican figure whose influence was far greater than his profile","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"3C74OKBUXRECXDXYYS3JKYO2JU","auth":{"1":"20b7b25ed2c12b0237495eef7a8ee7889241e711d49c086dc14c3032f1bea9ef"},"focal_point":{"x":244,"y":250},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/3C74OKBUXRECXDXYYS3JKYO2JU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/18/ted-howell-obituary-republican-figure-whose-influence-was-far-greater-than-his-profile/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"M4MHMGJXVVEFTOVKF2I4GPATHM","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":497,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/93b45397-01f9-43d2-9f75-1225c73d150d/versions/1736328470/media/a8f57c4cedfabe2f176962e8ce7c24c2_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/paddy-hill-obituary-one-of-the-birmingham-six-wrongly-convicted-of-ira-bombings/","content_elements":[{"_id":"UAEFCGX27NEGLGASHS47PDJ7UE","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>December 20th, 1944","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>December 23rd, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"W37XARUFARFEXEO2TC6ESUYN2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556428},"content":"For most of his life Paddy Hill, who has died aged 80, radiated a fierce energy, passion and anger that was first manifest to the general public when he and the five others of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/birmingham-six/\" target=\"_blank\">Birmingham Six</a> had their bombing convictions overturned at the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/old-bailey/\" target=\"_blank\">Old Bailey</a> criminal court in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/london/\" target=\"_blank\">London</a> in 1991.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T2N6TXNACZBUXIWXGTDXRQXP4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556429},"content":"The six were arrested shortly after the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/irish-republican-army/\" target=\"_blank\">Provisional IRA</a> bombed two Birmingham pubs on November 21st 1974, killing 21 people and maiming and injuring more than 180. Hill and the five other co-accused were wrongfully convicted and each received 21 life sentences for the carnage perpetrated that day.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HP4KOA46XBFCPI4Q4VFKORCFSM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556430},"content":"With the rest of the Birmingham Six – Hugh Callaghan, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker – gathered around him outside the Old Bailey in March 1991 Hill declared with unrestrained vehemence that for 16-and-a-half years they had suffered as “political scapegoats”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PL5VJCQJZRFCVKY7TCL4QPCXSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556431},"content":"“The police told us from the start that they knew we hadn’t done it,” Hill thundered. “They told us they didn’t care who done it. They told us that they were going to frame us. Justice? I don’t think them people in there have got the intelligence or the honesty to spell the word, never mind dispense it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZF3YN6CAJVG4JHM5Q3FXYZOAYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556432},"content":"Hill carried that intensity of spirit for the remainder of his life, himself campaigning for other people falsely convicted through his Glasgow-based organisation, <a href=\"https://mojoscotland.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Mojo</a> (Miscarriages of Justice Organisation) and also seeking to establish some semblance of justice for the victims and those bereaved by the IRA bombings at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town pubs in Birmingham in 1974.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5IEXAXBPJREN3NMERV7KJWKKMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556433},"content":"Hill was born in 1944 and raised in the nationalist Ardoyne area of north Belfast. His father and a brother served in the British army. With his father, and others of his family, he went to Birmingham for work in 1960, training as a painter, decorator and signwriter. During the 1960s he was regularly in trouble in the city, serving a number of short prison sentences for offences such as breaking and entering and brawling. He said that after he was released from a nine-month stretch in 1971 he “kept out of trouble”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXDU2BYIWZBVRA6MFECL3K3ILM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556434},"content":"He went to school at the Holy Cross primary school in Ardoyne with James McDade, who in 1974 blew himself up while planting a bomb at the Coventry telephone exchange. With four others of the innocent men who would become known as the Birmingham Six, Hill decided to attend McDade’s funeral in Belfast, at the same time planning to visit a sick aunt in the city. The fateful trip coincided with the Birmingham bombings.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KKBZLHQCEVG63CQPREYL4GY7K4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556435},"content":"The five were arrested at Heysham in Lancashire as they were preparing to take the ferry to Belfast – the sixth man, Hugh Callaghan, was arrested the next day in Birmingham.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ZQU6FL7ZJHHZLCCJKM7C6CUUY","additional_properties":{"_id":"QLCAB6KLMBCXJIODAB37UMJFWI"},"content":"British government feared ‘tabloid scandal’ if it released Birmingham Six","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"NSERTA5FBFCV7KIOJ5PJZRBGYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556436},"content":"The prosecution case rested on confessions made by four of the men – Hill and Gerard Hunter did not sign confessions; a subsequently discredited forensic test suggesting two of the men had handled explosives; the circumstantial evidence of their leaving Birmingham around the time of the bombings, and also of their drinking in pubs in the city frequented by suspected IRA members.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KMPXRTTKGJDPNH4CP4UJD6UGSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556437},"content":"While evidence was provided that the confessions had been beaten out of the men by West Midlands police, and that the confessions had details wrong and were riddled with inconsistencies, they were convicted. Hill refused to do his time without resistance, estimating that of the 16-and-a-half years – mostly spent at Gartree Prison in Leicestershire – half of that time was spent in solitary confinement. In 1983, while in prison, he was divorced from his wife Pat whom he married in 1966. Relations with his six children also were difficult.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RFAXHD3YKNH35LAZSY4HVTCAWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556438},"content":"The convictions of the six led to years of campaigning by people who were convinced of their innocence, including Sr Sarah Clarke; Fr Denis Faul; the solicitor Gareth Peirce, who represented the men; and journalist, and later Labour MP, Chris Mullin, who made a number of television programmes for Granada TV’s World in Action series seriously challenging the safety of the convictions. In March 1991, the convictions of the six were declared unsafe and quashed by the court of appeal, and the men released.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UOZ2JS2C6VGOVBP77BBBVRZNSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556439},"content":"Mullin, in his investigations, said four IRA men were involved. He later identified two of the bombers as James Francis Gavin and Michael Murray, who are both dead, but has refused to identify a third man who admitted to him he was one of two men who planted the bombs in the two pubs, as he is still alive. Mullin said he was bound by journalistic confidentiality not to disclose the name of this man. In 2017, <a href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-40553803\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Christopher Hayes</a> from south Dublin told the BBC he was one of the group responsible for the bombings. He apologised but refused to name others involved because, he said, he was not an informer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GZ44PVWL2NHNJCIFOK6TTCJOFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"CF5GSSQMOBCQHFQUKZOZXHNLBA"},"content":"Chris Mullin and the Birmingham Six 50 years on: ‘My goal was simply to rescue the innocent’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"YUHLXG6JEBCPZBXTJXDRBSGPQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556440},"content":"Hill said it was well known that Hayes was implicated and was dismissive of his apology, describing it as “an insult to the Birmingham families”, and “40 years too late”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DX3AAITSHBG4DOWZBQ4TVCL3CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556441},"content":"Three years earlier, in 2014, the year of the 40th anniversary of the bombings, Hill offered his support to the Justice4the21 campaign group for the bereaved families. This led to an unusual and initially fraught relationship with other leading campaigners, Brian and Julie Hambleton, whose 18-year-old sister Maxine was killed in the Birmingham bombings. Together with other victims, they have been long pressing for a public statutory inquiry into how and why no one has been brought to justice for the atrocity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXPICCLOHNHS3PWLDD2SYX3KLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556442},"content":"Earlier this month Julie Hambleton recalled first meeting Hill, remembering how she was so distressed she could hardly catch her breath and couldn’t talk, wondering was she “betraying” her sister and her mother by meeting the man who had been branded one of the bombers. “But it was the best thing we ever did because he kept every promise he ever made to us and more, and became one of our staunchest supporters,” she said. “We were like two souls aligned in search of the same thing, the truth.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C3XJB7LE25DM3PQHAF5J4JMJXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556443},"content":"Hill produced a stack of material to help establish his innocence in the eyes of the Hambletons and introduced them to solicitor Gareth Peirce so that she also could assist their campaign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CIDXT3O2N5EQTPOBRRN3VEP4DM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556444},"content":"Hill made the distinction that he was a republican but that what the IRA did was “diabolical”. “He wanted a united Ireland but did not agree with their methods,” Hambleton said. Of the IRA and the Birmingham Six, she said, “They allowed them to be locked away knowing full well that they didn’t do it. The old adage, with friends like that who needs enemies, couldn’t be more apt.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5KEOFSEEEFF5LM74HVSEPYPRWA","additional_properties":{"_id":"7IWBSXZ2M5FR7CIRLUZSEH2GS4"},"content":"Birmingham Six were furious with Haughey for not seeking their release","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"RWSWYDKAY5DM7LFAKLMQVFNYYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556445},"content":"Hill is the third of the Birmingham Six to die. Richard McIlkenny died of cancer in 2006, aged 73. Hugh Callaghan died in 2023, aged 93.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YEI36T4LQBFEPPLN7VUVALFDUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556446},"content":"As Julie Hambleton said, for the rest of his life Hill was “haunted” by the whole experience of his arrest, beatings, conviction and imprisonment. Psychiatrists who treated him said they had seldom dealt with anyone so traumatised.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z4D6K6QGLBDAPPSTKVVXMGDCYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556447},"content":"But there was some solace to his life as well. In 2001 the six received compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million. Hill used some of that money as well as libel damages from a number of newspapers that persisted in arguing the six were guilty to set up Mojo. It supports other victims of miscarriages of justice and provides psychiatric counselling for those getting out of prison. It was at a fundraising event for Mojo that he met the artist Tara Babel, whom he married and who survives him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SC5TCWMOREEPHRFVPTMFXSSOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736325556448},"content":"Some years ago <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/paddy-hill-of-birmingham-six-fame-still-fighting-the-good-fight-1.2517257\" target=\"_blank\">he told The Irish Times</a> how marriage to Tara and looking after their “five horses, three ponies, three donkeys and a Shetland pony, three dogs and two cats” on their 20-acre holding in Ayrshire in Scotland gave him comfort and pleasure.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Hill was haunted by the experience and dedicated the rest of his life to campaigning against miscarriages of justice"},"display_date":"2025-01-11T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Paddy Hill obituary: One of the Birmingham Six wrongly convicted of IRA bombings","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KHRQSXLRLIWZQCAT52E5CMVYT4","auth":{"1":"92728877011807da7101b9325c40680e760e7f36666ecfa159f02465fd017987"},"focal_point":{"x":1439,"y":934},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KHRQSXLRLIWZQCAT52E5CMVYT4.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/paddy-hill-obituary-one-of-the-birmingham-six-wrongly-convicted-of-ira-bombings/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"HMTSNEHMPZBQ5JDME7JNQRTUEY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":457,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/bd49a77e-e869-4e99-84b1-87ea93fbcd89/versions/1736286141/media/a52b5abd59fce0c8f1120ce07424a6b6_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/jean-marie-le-pen-obituary-french-far-right-politician-rode-waves-of-discontent-and-xenophobia/","content_elements":[{"_id":"JPY54JDTZVDG5KZOCOX6RIPKYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>June 20th, 1928","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>January 7th, 2025","type":"text"},{"_id":"B46Y5I27FBFG5MJPFTFV3M2UBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451755},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/jean-marie-le-pen/\" target=\"_blank\">Jean-Marie Le Pen</a>, the founding father of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/france/\" target=\"_blank\">France</a>’s modern political far right, who built a half-century career on rants of barely disguised racism, anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi propaganda, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2025/01/07/jean-marie-le-pen-french-far-right-leader-dies-aged-96/\" target=\"_blank\">has died. He was 96</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43GBQWMYJZBJHGUZYPCY4PVJQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451756},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"L2VE3HRMGJFHFFMSYR2MLCQY3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451757},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SGHH7OPNVAX3LVY5D3JTCIH3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451758},"content":"An arm-waving reactionary with the swagger of a circus pitchman making outrageous claims, Le Pen ran unsuccessfully for the French presidency five times, making it to a runoff in 2002, riding waves of discontent and xenophobia and raising spectres of a new fascism as he excoriated Jews, Arabs, Muslims and other immigrants – anyone he deemed to be not “pure” French.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BRDT5DVNBJDIHG42CWHWYQDA7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451759},"content":"Le Pen’s youngest daughter, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/marine-le-pen/\" target=\"_blank\">Marine Le Pen</a>, succeeded him as leader of the National Front in 2011 and rose to prominence on a tide of populist anger at the political mainstream. She was defeated in France’s presidential elections three times – in 2012, placing third with 17.9 per cent of the vote behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy; in 2017, with 33.9 per cent, losing to centrist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/emmanuel-macron/\" target=\"_blank\">Emmanuel Macron</a>; and in 2022, with 41.5 per cent, defeated again by Macron.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M6ZYTMQHQ5ETHKE7MVMKX72QBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451760},"content":"But that year’s elections also sent a record number of representatives from the party, renamed National Rally, to parliament – 89 in all – testimony to the success of Marine Le Pen’s efforts to normalise it and moderate its message in some regards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZULRFT5KIFDLDGV2SJCVPTGCHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451761},"content":"By then it had became the leading opposition party, no longer an outcast widely viewed as a threat to the republic, and in 2024 the National Rally backed Macron’s bill restricting immigration, an embarrassment for the French president.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52AC75X2ZVBQFPYUP244PQQAGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451762},"content":"Voters in successively increasing numbers embraced Marine Le Pen’s right-wing messages that sought to exploit economic insecurity among the middle classes and resentment toward immigrants, themes pushed for years by her father.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIF4EQZHMRESTGVJHLOOYMJARY","additional_properties":{"_id":"J533WQBADRHV5EZN4OUBNKWJWY"},"content":"France on a precipice as Le Pen aims for absolute majority in parliament","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CHZQHJYPEZAR7BONBL4JBCSDMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451763},"content":"Trying to soften some of the toxic rhetoric of her father, whom she expelled from the party in 2015, Le Pen offered to accede to civil unions for same-sex couples, to accept unconditional abortions and withdraw the death penalty from her platform. And she publicly rejected Jean-Marie Le Pen’s anti-Semitism.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LX7FLL2QJFB4PMNDLU7TDSM73Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451764},"content":"Marine Le Pen announced the party’s name change, to the National Rally, in 2018, although it decided to keep its logo of a red, white and blue flame. Jean-Marie Le Pen would have none of his daughter’s reforms. In 2016, he founded and became president of the Jeanne Committees, named after Joan of Arc, a new far-right political party.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XQEKZHT6GNAAHLVULC5P5WSXGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451765},"content":"He insisted that “the races are unequal”, that anyone with Aids was “a kind of leper” and that “Jews have conspired to rule the world”. He dismissed Adolf Hitler’s gas chambers as “a detail” of history and said that the wartime Nazi occupation of France was “not especially inhumane”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JJBR5X2DINDZFJD3KS7S6EEJRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451766},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"4RWV3NMWZ5BOHGJQBJMEOJUTRY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451767},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6BM4GVTKOBAFDJSVO45H4GEOWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451768},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"53EF223V4BEDLBAHJQV2TSM47A","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451769},"content":"Millions were repulsed by Le Pen’s statements. He was challenged by historians, denounced across the French political spectrum, including by mainstream conservatives, and convicted at least seven times of inciting racial hatred or distorting the historical record.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IHD7GD4OTBEDNGREAIJTD3X6J4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451770},"content":"But he always had a strong core of followers, particularly in the country’s south. His prominence reflected not only the shockwaves of his oratory but also a political drift to the right in France and other parts of Europe during economic downturns and periods of rising inflation, crime and unemployment, as fears rose with the influx of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.","type":"text"},{"_id":"75NYLR6VARAJJCKSSDB3GSI76E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451771},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQUABU2NJRGJLJ6HPAHHIJ32SE","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451772},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"7USJTOVGJNCPDM5RT656ANTR2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451773},"content":"His supporters were hardly a mass of anti-Semitic neo-fascists; many were just blue-collar workers, shopkeepers, unemployed young people and others facing bleak futures.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QH4PWVY2TBBBVLICHN3VOG6KR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451774},"content":"Le Pen had been a street fighter in his youth, and as the receding hair turned frosty he kept the pugnacious look of a brawler: the burly shoulders and jutting chin, the narrow eyes behind tortoise-rimmed spectacles, a grim mouth for the bad news and raised fists to deliver it forcefully. But the voice had range: needling, charming, whispering, condemning.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JRL4VPYSTFCU3AJ6GBCCGSKIMM","additional_properties":{"_id":"5HOAZBJP75BV7BHAFFTVFLCEFI"},"content":"Marine Le Pen: Putin’s best hope of sowing discord in EU and Nato","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"BDWR7ZV32BEI7EJP7CZB5P43AA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451775},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"LWVAFVGDD5FZNITETKPQ2RYW4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451776},"content":"He first appeared on the political scene in 1956, winning a National Assembly seat as a member of the anti-tax movement led by Pierre Poujade. From 1972, when he forged an alliance of extremist groups and founded his National Front party, to 2011, when he retired, he was the acknowledged leader of the far right in French politics, and his vociferous, sometimes violent followers were the principal opposition to the nation’s mainstream conservatives.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZODA3A4TFB7VNR54HKPICL5QQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451777},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"U6FHNY72LVB3PGKR5C2HIWZXJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451778},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCVIE35CJJDKLD2RL2I7HDRAWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451779},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PG22AKXF65GNXF5M5XGHWXONRY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451780},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"6OWUDFFYA5H3HNGV5JJBIUIORM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451781},"content":"He insisted that he was not a racist, fascist or anti-Semite, though he shared the rhetoric of neo-Nazis, drew followers from reactionary elements and spoke often and crudely of racial characteristics. Some of his earliest colleagues in the National Front had been collaborators with the Nazis during the war.","type":"text"},{"_id":"34J475IBWBABDFBCVJGKT6R6YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451782},"content":"A French court in 1987 convicted Le Pen of Holocaust denial for saying that Nazi gas chambers were “a detail” in history. He repeated the comment a decade later, and was convicted by a German court. In 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2011, he was convicted of inciting racial hatred against Muslims. In 2012, he was convicted of condoning war crimes for saying, in a 2005 newspaper interview, that “the German occupation was not especially inhumane”. His numerous convictions resulted in many heavy fines, but no jail time.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6MBTWQR6URHOBIQ4Z3D35CQVFM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451783},"content":"Jean-Marie Le Pen was born on June 20th, 1928, in La Trinité-sur-Mer, a seaside village in Brittany, to Jean Le Pen and Anne-Marie Hervé. His father, a fisherman, was killed when his boat was blown up by a mine in 1942. His mother was a seamstress of local ancestry. The boy was raised Roman Catholic and attended a Jesuit school in Vannes and a lycée at Lorient.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WOZLACEEHVA27P2SHYM5X5Z4BU","additional_properties":{"_id":"Y4TQBMWQ45B2XOO6PL3QWAVXEY"},"content":"Jean-Marie Le Pen: Self-portrait of a vulgar but at times erudite politician","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"F4G3BMUPMREJ5CLWUORHHO647E","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451784},"content":"Le Pen earned a law degree at the University of Paris, where he was active in right-wing politics, joined street brawls against Communist students and was repeatedly arrested. He claimed to have lost his left eye in an election brawl, but it was only damaged; he lost its vision later through illness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L6NVMLSCE5G3DCY2LR6EM5ML5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451785},"content":"As a Foreign Legion paratrooper in Indochina in 1954, Le Pen fought against the Communist-dominated Viet Minh. Later, as an intelligence officer in Algeria during its war of independence, he was accused of torturing members of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale. He was not prosecuted and denied the allegations of witnesses, but lost lawsuits against publications that cited them.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZZ55OYBZBRHI7DY2DSD2XPXD2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451786},"content":"Le Pen became one of the youngest members of the National Assembly in 1956, but after campaigning against France’s withdrawal from Algeria, he lost the seat in 1962, when the colony achieved independence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LS2TPQRW3FCV5FBK55N4BQHF54","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451787},"content":"In 1960, he married Pierrette Lalanne. Besides Marine, they had two other daughters, Marie-Caroline and Yann, and were divorced in 1987. In 1991, he married Jeanne-Marie Paschos.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OODT2R4IVVCE5EPIWFHFKFGDHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451788},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"AEOQ3P2SRBELLHIVRK7XZW4SMY","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451789},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"VNAPDOYMPVD3FOTWIYHZDEOOD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451790},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"PC6DUCASJ5AP7KMH3YQYAQI5Q4","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451791},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"NV52TISMLZDAZBUAKDFAMAOKMM","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451792},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"FZZKZ6OCMBEOTLORJJ77W2PQ4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1736270451793},"content":"– <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/world/europe/jean-marie-le-pen-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Founding father of France’s modern political far right was challenged by historians, denounced across the political spectrum, and convicted repeatedly of inciting racial hatred or distorting historical record"},"display_date":"2025-01-11T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jean-Marie Le Pen obituary: French far-right politician rode waves of discontent and xenophobia ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"EBR3OGWBEKUC5Q2DHYSBEFV4UE","auth":{"1":"13b6650d578e158f51faaa7df40cea78f8c61eae32c0803baa7a23fd6ac14f06"},"focal_point":{"x":3920,"y":2424},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/EBR3OGWBEKUC5Q2DHYSBEFV4UE.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/11/jean-marie-le-pen-obituary-french-far-right-politician-rode-waves-of-discontent-and-xenophobia/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"MXDD46M2KNEHBOSQ43K3W7IVHQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":343,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5c226dd8-3dfc-4d8e-9c97-781638007a0f/versions/1736022635/media/5930b8704424050a0772263ea745def5_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/05/rory-brennan-a-poet-of-irrepressible-energy-and-commitment/","content_elements":[{"_id":"LDVDEWWBENCIDPQY5LFHEZADIE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The death of poet Rory Brennan on November 17th, 2024, creates an unfillable gap in the lives of his family and friends. He leaves behind his beloved wife, the novelist and travel writer Fionnuala Brennan, his daughters Orla and Fiona, his sons-in-law Ciaran and Keith, and his grandson Luca. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y2WSEQ3IHNDSNGLSR2PERXO5HA","additional_properties":{},"content":"I first met Rory Brennan more than 40 years ago at a convening of the board of Poetry Ireland in Buswells Hotel, Dublin. I recall a large pink urn, not at all Grecian or Keatsian, holding the middle of a plain low table and being “talked around” by a group of poets which included Rory himself, Conleth Ellis, John Ennis, Gabriel Rosenstock, and John F Deane, who had founded Poetry Ireland in 1978. Rory, the director, raised his hand and in a loud, mellifluous voice welcomed me as the newest member of the board.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QOWT7ZFM2VDWXHXV5AVFSOFZAI","additional_properties":{},"content":"There would be many more meetings over the following years, at which I grew to appreciate Rory’s irrepressible energy and commitment, his passionate desire to improve through practical measures the largely unchampioned and often-threadbare lot of Irish poets. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"LN4J2OZEDNA7TJDCWRTIOUZGNU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Fund-raising for the organisation, formulation of policy, the editorship and timely publication of Poetry Ireland Review, indeed the very survival and placing of Poetry Ireland on a secure footing, were an ongoing challenge which Rory met without fear or favour. Among many other achievements the Austin Clarke Library of some 5,000 books owned by Clarke was secured; and the until then peripatetic Poetry Ireland found a more settled residence. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SNXY2MUOFE3LGJTF22CAQHR3Y","additional_properties":{},"content":"Not least, Rory played a crucial role in ensuring, along with John F Deane and the board, that appropriate venues and financial remuneration for poetry readings – other than the pub and the few pints of stout – were provided.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFNZIKV27FACLJD7TFPM6QDEDA","additional_properties":{},"content":"If, according to the poem by WB Yeats, there is an existential choice to be made between the life of personal contentment and the sacrifice involved in artistic endeavour, Rory seemed always to strike a happy balance between these two opposing viewpoints. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"UXZTJG7J7BEI7IWTZC5VPULB2I","additional_properties":{},"content":"People warmed to his expansive yet courteous manner, his mischievous grin, his sudden laughter at the good of everything. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"VVPF5QLJTBGQRPL2VET6LZSMZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"He had many friends and he always went the extra mile to keep in touch with them. He loved life and his life was richly lived. He was engaging and even-handed, an exuberant storyteller, a good listener, knowledgeable about many subjects but wearing that knowledge lightly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GRCN64WV7JBZBJVZKF6KN65JAM","additional_properties":{},"content":"An only child, Rory “confessed” to me once that he had an extremely happy childhood. He was born in Westport in 1945, but raised in Dublin, where he attended Trinity College. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"W4SIG5ETYJAODPVIOAABJE7RX4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He worked as a teacher in Dún Laoghaire Technical School, an educational broadcaster in RTÉ, an arts administrator and a lecturer in communications at Dublin City University. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"2OXG3Y5YMZCPRPXWUNBDRCTV4U","additional_properties":{},"content":"He wrote many articles and reviews on history, fiction, poetry and literary criticism for such outlets as Books Ireland and also edited a special edition of Poetry Ireland Review devoted to a reassessment of the poet Austin Clarke.","type":"text"},{"_id":"52LYG4HDZFENPJ42BOPPRD74LU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rory travelled widely throughout his life, and his poems reflect his questing, cosmopolitan spirit, his curiosity towards and lived experience of different cultures. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"DH7UMYSIFBE3PHSX6RPTOYQ2MQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"He taught for several years in places as diverse as Morocco and Sweden. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WG2CQZYPWBF4LAGRL2YG4DZFA4","additional_properties":{},"content":"He settled for a number of years on the Aegean island of Paros and from 1979 he and his family spent all their summers there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESZID7GDYRB7LEXH2URQ5PBVUQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"All the while Rory wrote poems of luminosity and lyric grace, ranging from the free-verse offerings of his earlier collections to exquisite later works of real technical accomplishment. Where personal feelings and experiences blend with formally gifted deliberations on the world at large, his poems achieve a resonance and power which is rare in contemporary poetry. Rory’s credo was and remains: “A poem must lift, take wing and fly – ideally, but not always – towards the sun.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DUCQIXVBKBHXBNU3TETIV6KNTE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nine collections of his work were published: The Sea on Fire (Dolmen,1978); The Walking Wounded (Dedalus,1985); The Wind Messages, a chapbook published in 1986 with illustrations by Alice Meyer-Wallace; The Old in Rapallo (Salmon Poetry, 1996); Sky Lights/Luces Del Cielo (Aegean Centre, 2012); Dancing with Luck (The American University Paris, 2016 with paintings by Rafael Mahdavi); Alone in Amphitheatres, with paintings by Rafael Mahdavi (The American University of Paris, 2017); Days and Islands, with photographs by Panagiotis Kalkavouris (Rodakio, Athens, 2020); and Irish Poets: Translations of Kavanagh, Heaney, Longley and Brennan by Takis Papageloupolos, Ekdoseis Armos, 2024). Two new collections are due to be published this year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J4I55DASTFA2NPITEJJ2DV3HYQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Rory Brennan’s poems received recognition by way of the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1978, the Listowel Writers Week and William Allingham Prizes, and the WB Yeats Award of the New York Yeats Society, based at the National Arts Club, New York, in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DJCAVTTQFNF5TFWTMCJCSHHYRI","additional_properties":{},"content":"Farewell, Rory. Our memory and consolation is in knowing that, as you yourself would say, the oracle was often good.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Patrick Deeley"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2025-01-05T20:26:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Rory Brennan – a poet of irrepressible energy and commitment","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"DF4PO6YE3FFZHDRPGNQAROVWIQ","auth":{"1":"aa9a1b0c94d094e35a389bedc2824795e806101a9ffc4e38213f503b95914156"},"focal_point":{"x":81,"y":106},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/DF4PO6YE3FFZHDRPGNQAROVWIQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/05/rory-brennan-a-poet-of-irrepressible-energy-and-commitment/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"WO3VRYUATRCWLNPSRNCTG6PZQY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":523,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/f19ff334-9eee-46a8-80cb-680a280ec4ed/versions/1734954753/media/4ca301c6baec56b898ebae04b3af4d6b_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/charles-handy-obituary-one-of-the-most-respected-management-thinkers-of-his-generation/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QUUQSEDV7JFCHJQRSBAJVXPVDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>July 25th, 1932","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>December 13th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZTFNPH5S65FCRKKJK3UBKOGHAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819689},"content":"The Irish-born, London-based management guru and social philosopher Charles Handy, who has died aged 92, was one of the most respected management thinkers of his generation. He often predicted organisational trends years before they materialised as corporate realities. For many years, he also presented Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Four.","type":"text"},{"_id":"34UQYQ5COZGK7CYWHDSUUMTDYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819690},"content":"In the early 1980s, Handy developed the concept of the “shamrock organisation” to describe companies with three integrated leaves: a core of full-time employees working alongside subcontractors on one side, and a band of temporary workers on the other.","type":"text"},{"_id":"62W2HORPQJA67GMKCMU3KWXBBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819691},"content":"He also coined the term “portfolio life”, the concept of self-employed workers using their multiple skills to make enough money to allow them to have a good work/life balance. And he encouraged people to change careers throughout their life to discover undervalued talents.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DHV7BNVRLFEC5FXVNEW6FXL2YM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819692},"content":"The author of more than 20 books – including The Age of Unreason (1989), The Elephant and the Flea: Reflections of a Reluctant Capitalist (2001) and The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society (2015) – Handy was a lucid critic of corporates who didn’t fully embrace the ethical and human dimensions of their businesses. He was also one of the first management gurus to accept that child-rearing was work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRL7J4OIW5HYLOVHDNIRNBRPA4","additional_properties":{"_id":"6VKOCR7K7JBW3JTZPIHSFAPCEY"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"RXEM3BUAUBD6ZIW7SNEPVAZIGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819693},"content":"Furthermore, Handy wasn’t afraid to reformulate his own ideas as organisational culture evolved. For instance, in his book The Empty Raincoat (1995), he acknowledged that he had underestimated “how greedy organisations were going to be in their demands of workers’ time”; and that modern communications had made it very difficult for people to be allowed to make mistakes without being sharply criticised, thus eroding the creativity and experimentation that he believed was essential to purposeful work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L3ICIKFF4BAX7HDARUOEINFTKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819694},"content":"He disapproved of money-obsessed executives who had a narrow focus on shareholder value, and once described the stock exchange as a form of slavery. More recently, he was critical of companies mandating their workers to return to the office when technology allowed them to work productively from home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q4WYKIZJRBENRPZCVVXL4IHJEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819695},"content":"Handy left his first permanent job as a marketing executive for the oil company Shell International in southeast Asia at the age of 31, to study for a year at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the US. He returned to England in 1967 to manage the Sloan Programme at the London School of Business, Britain’s first graduate school.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O6NWVIPH6FAURN6TZ6REKUXU2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819696},"content":"In 1972, he became Professor in Managerial Psychology at the London School of Business. But in 1977 he left this job to focus on freelance writing and speaking engagements, with his wife Elizabeth (née Hill) as his manager. The couple had met in 1960 at a party in Kuala Lumpur, and married in 1962. Their daughter Kate was born in 1966, and their son Scott in 1968.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QUGIDRPFKNGN7BYHKUDFMCX7II","additional_properties":{"_id":"OJQX5Z3IDFB57O26ZKHXSAVVXI"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"CQEFHITR6NHTFOCV5ZLENZIOKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819697},"content":"In a 2012 Irish Times interview, Handy said that “without [Elizabeth], I would have been a very good golfer, very large and very drunk – because I would have retired from my job about 25 years ago, having been a rather bad oil executive”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZDS7BA5Y7VCXLEF2FXRJ7SPRNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819698},"content":"In 1984, Handy was a core contributor to an RTÉ radio One series on The Future of Work, produced and presented by John Quinn. Over the next two decades, he was a regular guest on Quinn’s radio show The Open Mind. “He had a wonderful commanding voice, and a droll and wry sense of humour. He used storytelling and imagery effectively to portray difficult concepts. He was a visionary who was way ahead of his time,” said Quinn.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CIX7MNBZ5JH2LLRVJB6ZD3SNVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819699},"content":"Handy also developed a close friendship with Irish businessman Ronan King, who left a busy accountancy practice to work for the Special Olympics in 2003 and later managed the Ballymun Regeneration project “Charles had an aura of humility, an understated sense of humour and human kindness that is often lacking in people who are world famous,” said King. “He shaped the lives of many Irish businesspeople.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GGO3CB22ZRCYHEOZZMBNPRNMZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819700},"content":"Drawing on Aristotle’s eudaemonia theory, Handy often said: “If every organisation could find out what they were best at, and if they did their best with what they were best at, for the good of others, it would get very exciting.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"24PIG3OZOBFE7ECBADKA7THTHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819701},"content":"“My message was always that what business is about is creating things or services that are useful to people and will actually make the world a better place,” he told Kathy Sheridan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FT4EKJAHANAO7DRT7DQ2ZXF2JI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819702},"content":"More recently, in an interview with the Financial Times, he said he was encouraged by young people’s ability to handle risk: “They live far more dangerously than we did . . . They are more relaxed about money and the future.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"AREWWUS64FFRFLOD7NDFDL2FMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819703},"content":"But he said he was less optimistic about companies themselves, where “hundreds of thousands of talented people have no room to express themselves . . . They suck the lifeblood out of you, these big organisations, because people aren’t connected to the purpose”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHQILT52BZB7TH5JN7WTOFAXPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819704},"content":"The eldest of three children of Joan (née Scott) Handy and Brian Handy, he grew up in a rural Church of Ireland rectory in Clane, Co Kildare where his father was rector and archdeacon of Kildare. Following his education as a boarder in Bromsgrove School in Worcestershire, he studied classics, history and philosophy at Oriel College in Oxford, graduating with a first class honours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T2UC4KDT55F75L5K5QOOGKLOI4","additional_properties":{"_id":"B3TVC6EFHZFHLIH7ECIEICQUII"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"FDNHCLUUVREANLIOGKNRYBZPZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819705},"content":"Attending his father’s funeral in 1977, Handy was so deeply touched by the profound impact his father had on the local community that he briefly considered becoming an Anglican priest. But two bishops refused to nominate him for theology college and instead offered him a job as head of St George’s House at Windsor Castle, a training college for future bishops. He took the job and moved with his wife and their young children. Four years later, the family relocated to the south London suburb of Putney.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I2MC4NX7JBFW5HXGL5GCGUJFSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819706},"content":"In latter decades, Handy and his wife collaborated on work – having got a degree at the age of 50, Elizabeth became a professional photographer. Their joint projects included a book of essays by women in their 60s entitled Reinvented Lives (2002).","type":"text"},{"_id":"RSY2GLZQQFGJXCSKHA4J32QBNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819707},"content":"Although dividing their time between their homes in London and Norfolk, the couple maintained strong connections with family and friends in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PLTWWA7Y5VAUNEOH7C3K2F2JRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819708},"content":"In his autobiography, Myself and Other More Important Matters (2006), Handy wrote: “I can feel Irish at heart but still belong physically and emotionally to Britain and, indeed, to Europe.” His sister Ruth Handy, who had a similar career as an organisational psychologist at the Irish Management Institute in Dublin, said he was very proud of his Irish passport and corrected anyone who described him as a British management guru. Trinity College Dublin was one of many universities that bestowed him with an honorary doctorate. President Michael D Higgins gave him a President’s Award in 2015. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2000 New Year Honours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MXXGXVPL75BD3BQ2EZYRFHOCRI","additional_properties":{"_id":"STC7DR7J7VGYLN2BOMVNPRQX64"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"HGZQ6FRRWFDJZFHDC77AZ3BEFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819709},"content":"Handy remained reasonably active in his eighties, although a stroke in 2019 slowed him down somewhat. While recovering in hospital, he became impatient with the instructions doled out to him by medical staff, and insisted that a notice be pinned above his bed, reading: “Charles Handy is Allowed to Do Whatever He Wants To Do”. That same year, he wrote a book, 21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges – a compendium of life lessons (with chapter titles such as Curiosity Did Not Kill the Cat and What You Can’t Count Matters More than What You Can) for his grandchildren, interspersed with touching tributes to Elizabeth, who had died in a car crash in March 2018.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPYTDMSYWFD6BMS6QDPZAC7WGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819710},"content":"Between 2020 and 2023, Handy wrote 60 columns for The Idler magazine. At the time of his death, he had completed his last book, The View from Ninety: Reflections on Living a Long, Contented Life, which will be published in 2025.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D6OSM2MLGJC7HEBO3FRAEJZJ3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734953819711},"content":"Charles Handy is survived by his daughter Kate, an osteopath; his son Scott, an actor and theatre director; his four grandchildren Leo, Sam, Nephele and Scarlett; and his sisters Margaret and Ruth.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"The social philosopher was never afraid to reformulate his own ideas as organisational culture evolved over the years"},"display_date":"2025-01-04T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Charles Handy obituary: One of the most respected management thinkers of his generation","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KRRX36F2IRBIDMUMA4XYC7IMRI","auth":{"1":"0c1c8709fb4ed82af1919c729e0dde2dc679191682f4bf31976c00f0a7a675c4"},"focal_point":{"x":1076,"y":699},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KRRX36F2IRBIDMUMA4XYC7IMRI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/charles-handy-obituary-one-of-the-most-respected-management-thinkers-of-his-generation/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"3UW3RUCGOBBUBLLJK4D3N5FC4I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":318,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/40e9551f-56e7-47ad-a135-2d563976aff8/versions/1734618514/media/a0e7fed62029216867b33d1ed9fccabf_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/ken-reid-obituary-journalist-who-covered-northern-ireland-from-war-to-peace/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RE3KASZJIFFZLN5V6XDBIIZX3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>June 23rd, 1955","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 20th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"P5XVNN2FXFB23PUKYO57IS5Z54","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644301},"content":"Ken Reid, who has died aged 69, was a journalist who in a sense covered Northern Ireland from war to peace while taking a brief detour from the Troubles to impress his warm Ulster personality on the people of Cork city.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZARPFC434ZGETKX37FQBWNOD6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644302},"content":"He started his career in newspapers but eventually moved on to UTV, where as political editor he delivered informed and accessible reporting on all the labyrinthine developments during the most crucial years of the peace process in and around the 1998 Belfast Agreement and beyond.","type":"text"},{"_id":"37GMVEUQZVDQ7NLMF226QERNCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644303},"content":"From a Protestant background, he earned the trust of UTV viewers as an even-handed journalist as the various attempts to create a peaceful and political settlement unfolded. Equally, he was trusted by politicians of all shades, whether it be Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness or David Trimble and Ian Paisley. It was Paisley who facilitated his greatest television scoop.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XCS4GEZKWNERBMUOEVGFHBHHOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644304},"content":"Reid, who was born in Belfast, lived near Ballymena, the hub of the DUP leader’s North Antrim constituency. Paisley had a fondness for Reid, over the years providing him with lively interviews and also keeping him up to speed on political developments. When, in March 2008, Paisley decided he would stand down as first minister and DUP leader, he made sure Reid was first with the information on the UTV main six o’clock news, every other reporter scrambling thereafter to catch up with the story.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A3VQOELSM5GV3INIM5FRG7XRFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644306},"content":"Reid had an agreeable nature and could make friends with anybody. He had easy relationships with taoisigh such as Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern, with US presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and with British prime ministers such as John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCIH6MTZCVCPRNBQP46AYAITN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644307},"content":"And, as he wrote in the book Reporting the Troubles, he was one of only three journalists who had a genuinely cordial interaction with the late and former Ulster Unionist leader and first minister David Trimble, who generally was wary of reporters. The others were Victor Gordon of the Portadown Times and Frank Millar, former London editor of The Irish Times.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P6W54JKANVEKVGCKNQHML5PLI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644308},"content":"Reid was born in 1955 and raised in north Belfast. He attended Methodist College in Belfast and went on to Hull University in England. He began his journalistic career as the Troubles ground on relentlessly, joining the News Letter in Belfast in 1977 and moving to the post of sports editor of the now defunct Sunday News in the mid-1980s. He was later appointed editor of the paper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3K3QSVXRXJHIXAP5OETQFOMWOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644309},"content":"In 1987 he caused surprise among his Belfast colleagues when he moved south to join the Cork Examiner. As one journalist at the paper remembered, within months he had “charmed the city senseless” while also making solid contacts with senior Irish politicians, which served him well when he joined UTV in 1994.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SQ3A5HLF4VFUZMJQRLEDN22YVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644310},"content":"Not many months after his arrival in Cork, as the same reporter recalled, he had so embedded himself in the newspaper that if anyone wanted to know what was the important in-house gossip “they went to Ken”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LOHCM42NHFEUDAK5OZBFPVW7GA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644311},"content":"He was a devoted supporter of Everton, regularly attending games at Goodison Park in Liverpool. He was just as avid in his enthusiasm for Cliftonville FC in north Belfast, his grandfather presenting him with his first season ticket when he was just six. He also was a keen follower of Ballymena rugby club.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YH3VC5NWLZGIBI5VIOBTQITS3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644312},"content":"He was named news broadcaster of the year at the CIPR Press and Broadcast Awards in both 2005 and 2006. Earlier this year with his good friend and occasional rival Stephen Grimason, the former BBC political editor and later Stormont director of communications, he was awarded the Queen’s University Belfast chancellor’s medal. Both men were lauded for providing “a vital public service during the dark days of fear and uncertainty”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NPDSQZZGR5HBDCMSHOYGBYP2NI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644313},"content":"He was generous and supportive to his colleagues. He also campaigned on behalf of Leukaemia & Lymphoma NI, becoming its patron in 2023. Reid was fashioned from old-style journalistic stock, which explains the curious £50 bet he had with Grimason over which of them would die first.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3RXDIB7FJBDAJIC5NN4ALMZU2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644315},"content":"Both had been struggling with illnesses, particularly since their retirements – Grimason with cancer, Reid with leukaemia and diabetes. Grimason died in March this year, his wife Yvonne handing over the £50 to Reid after the funeral, insisting: “Ken, Stephen said you must take that.” Reid promptly proffered the money to the barman at Bob Stewart’s pub in Drumbeg near Belfast to defray just some of the costs of the libations indulged in by their friends after the service.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MRF5TSA3LBB2DETUVOP4N45RCM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734604644316},"content":"The wager certainly was on the black side, not untypical of journalists, but also was evidence of how Reid and Grimason faced up to both life and death, bravely and with grace and humour. Ken Reid is survived by his wife, Liz, children Gareth, Sarah and Sophie, and grandchildren Summer and Hugo.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Reid had an agreeable nature and could make friends with anybody"},"display_date":"2025-01-04T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Ken Reid obituary: Journalist who covered Northern Ireland from war to peace","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"7MCBOFKEFGTSDYR27O2UD3SRIE","auth":{"1":"0ad3515e288da9fe11675e39efaf0cd67c1c64f9e75d3cab00ca311c5bbb9bbe"},"focal_point":{"x":2960,"y":1141},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/7MCBOFKEFGTSDYR27O2UD3SRIE.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2025/01/04/ken-reid-obituary-journalist-who-covered-northern-ireland-from-war-to-peace/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"GDWGPBSHGRGHNB4HG2AOBZN4SU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":919,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/aa3d582f-164b-40f7-931a-7f1e6c35d8ce/versions/1735237463/media/841925a4541dcb49e6ce64bad1920092_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/30/obituaries-of-the-year-ten-notable-people-on-the-world-stage-who-died-in-2024/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5DSVNBVJMZDIJGTK55CNOBHTTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251916},"content":"This year saw the loss of many notable figures who found international fame in worlds as varied as pop culture, politics, sports and literature. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"27FGNG5TWZF4HPA6NWGR6HK6NI","additional_properties":{},"content":"They included the singer and songwriter Kris Kristofferson, fashion designer Roberto Cavalli and actor James Earl Jones of Star Wars and Lion King fame. Political figures who died included Alex Salmond, who led Scotland to the brink of independence in 2014, while the movie world lost Roger Corman, one of the most prolific producers in the history of film.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TOTVK2SLJZHCBB4MWVC5HE5V7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251917},"content":"Here we remember the lives of ten other well-known people whose deaths made headlines in The Irish Times, and around the world, this year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KVGVDX3XGLNY5WB6CW6UA2OFFE","additional_properties":{"_id":"FBMI6XGMEVBGXBX67OP7BCIWUI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"G6W3X7U4N5HMRES2DT7FMUGAW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251919},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/24/alexei-navalny-obituary-an-unflinching-critic-of-putin-to-his-last-breath/\" target=\"_blank\">Alexei Navalny</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"EDQ7CJXYJZB4JIZ2T3WTINPNIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251920},"content":"Russian politician, Putin critic","type":"header"},{"_id":"LZMQYUEWXVG6NFHUZDPLKXIAV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251921},"content":"Alexei Navalny, who died on February 16th aged 47, was one of the most prominent domestic critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin. He died in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle where he had been serving multiple sentences on charges his supporters say were trumped up to silence him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PNMQSISJWBDQXK3EISMRBDGVXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251922},"content":"He was jailed after returning in 2021 from Germany where he was recuperating from a nerve-agent poisoning in Siberia that he blamed on the Kremlin. He was given three prison terms after his return and was moved to a different prison with harsher conditions each time. Late last year, he was feared dead after he disappeared for three weeks during his transfer to the penal colony 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QDVTBPAR4NBNXNEGADG5SFZZ6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251923},"content":"Despite increasingly difficult conditions, which included solitary confinement, he maintained a presence on social media, while members of his team published investigations into Russia’s corrupt elite from exile. The Kremlin had tried to cut him off further by arresting several of his lawyers last year on charges of being part of an extremist group.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FG2XUQGYOJCU3L7MHCSC3DEAGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251924},"content":"In 2021 he was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament for his work on human rights. Three months after his death, his widow accepted the Dresden Peace Prize on his behalf.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FWTABOLICVBALKYNU27KA4MWSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251925},"content":"His memoir, published after his death, revealed he believed he would die in prison.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNU3T5MFJRAAVNACHMW7BNZSCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"VD4UJUSG7BAFJAEBGHWMSDGFEA"},"content":"Thousands defy Kremlin to show up at Alexei Navalny’s funeral – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GEBADTN5UFC4VAQ2Q2KCVWUDS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251927},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/20/oj-simpson-obituary-ex-football-star-famously-acquitted-of-double-murder/\" target=\"_blank\">OJ Simpson</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"JDPJ57HWRBBP3ODXIGVPZPS2DA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251928},"content":"American football player, criminal","type":"header"},{"_id":"2KDSGK7BM5F5XF2YGEWP6JCJCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251929},"content":"OJ Simpson, who died at the age of 88 on April 10th, was an American football player who was charged with murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. He was acquitted in 1995, but was later found guilty in a civil trial and was also jailed for other crimes.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWKVPCEGOJG6ZGH4H7ZKSOE3VQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251930},"content":"He was one of the most popular athletes of the late 1960s and 1970s and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame after a record-setting career with the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers. He went on to enjoy a career as a sportscaster and actor and appeared in commercials.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIZ73Z7ZYNCNFOCBLZKZGQKXAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251931},"content":"When Brown Simpson and Goldman were found stabbed to death, Simpson emerged as a suspect. Days after the killing, he fled in his white Ford Bronco and a slow-speed chase through Los Angeles ensued before he was charged with the murders. He was controversially acquitted in a televised trial that transfixed the US. Later found liable for the deaths in a civil trial, he was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages to the families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4CKI3NFY6VBTLFA2CCTHWTGBR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251932},"content":"He also served nine years in a Nevada prison after being convicted in 2008 on 12 counts of armed robbery and the kidnapping of two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint. He was released from parole in 2021, at the age of 74.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3S5GBGNJQZAELBOQRPCQD5COXI","additional_properties":{"_id":"L54NJ7ZZEJEURIQL2OC2ZNOLKI"},"content":"OJ Simpson might have got away with murder but he lost the one thing he craved the most – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"43XFAQK4F2DDQWOVNWF2LNS5YQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"7XWJT34KS5FDNMEKSQJLHBSFWE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"USJXAUELU5AD3NOL3OGR6GX2P4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251935},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/18/alice-munro-obituary-writer-of-short-stories-that-were-novels-in-miniature/\" target=\"_blank\">Alice Munro</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"PSISFJ5OHZCEJGDUWNZEGLWVAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251936},"content":"Writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"OXFE4NQYIBEBPLAD47SVN4TJJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251937},"content":"Alice Munro, who died on May 13th aged 92, was a Canadian short-story writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She wrote short stories for more than 60 years, often focusing on life in rural and small-town Canada.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FKLOJB3Q4FAHHASAWVVJK4XZCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251938},"content":"In awarding her the Nobel in 2013, the Swedish Academy referred to her as “a master of the contemporary short story”, and praised her ability to “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HINJMS4E6NDAHI6XQSUM7QHRTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251939},"content":"Her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968 and won the governor general’s award for fiction in Canada. Munro reached international critical attention when her work began to feature in the New Yorker, from 1977. She won the governor general’s award for fiction in Canada twice more, for Who Do You Think You Are? in 1978, and for The Progress of Love in 1986. Who Do You Think You Are? was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1980 under the title The Beggar Maid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EPDJH2BRNNG5VHXUG2A5SERC4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251940},"content":"In 2009, she won the Man Booker International prize for her overall contribution to fiction. The judges lauded her skill for bringing “as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNR6CKPRXJCXDMPSBKUE2VICXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251941},"content":"Her last work, Dear Life, was published in 2012, when she was 81.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CL2VDURA2RDJVJ6EUXO3FYJV6E","additional_properties":{"_id":"ULO4724IHREUDICEVM6KCIRHKY"},"content":"‘I loved Alice Munro’s stories more than any I have ever read’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"W65ADLL3EJAUTJRAT2CEC5H6UU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251943},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/2024/06/20/donald-sutherland-was-a-fearless-actor-who-brought-frightening-energy-to-many-roles/?\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Sutherland</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"NTTBBSGW45ASBNZ4KUW62KYPYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251944},"content":"Actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"FIA66M36K5EYDP43K5TLXHJEJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251945},"content":"Donald Sutherland, who died on June 20th aged 88, was a Canadian actor whose work spanned six decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKQJ2A27XZFUZPK5Q4WUAZAXQE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251946},"content":"Known for his versatility, he had almost 200 credits to his name, and they ranged from a pot-smoking college professor in National Lampoon’s Animal House to Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4EFBGUE25VFM5IVQP43W3K3GJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251947},"content":"After studying acting in London, he worked in theatre in Scotland and secured some small television roles in series such as The Saint and The Avengers. He landed his breakthrough role in the second World War action film The Dirty Dozen and that performance led him to winning one of the lead roles in M*A*S*H, the satirical wartime series.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5PQM6MYFWRHDROGOWB2HPYEXF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251948},"content":"Movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kelly’s Heroes, Klute, Ordinary People, Don’t Look Now and JFK followed and he worked steadily for decades. He starred alongside his son Kiefer in A Time to Kill in 1996, and in 2012 he found a new generation of film fans when he took on the role of President Snow in the Hunger Games franchise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FY7TVNXUCZHXZGSISXCY6KAVQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251949},"content":"He won two Golden Globes for best supporting actor for the TV movies Citizen X (1996) and Path to War (2003), a Primetime Emmy for Citizen X and an honorary Academy Award in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LZ2CF434HRATRBNGASX76IVBUM","additional_properties":{"_id":"4MZYBL5DIBBVRHGVZQKE3PAWHI"},"content":"Actor Donald Sutherland, star of Hunger Games and Don’t Look Now, dies aged 88","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"CHXXUKGHGFEUXJPT4OCUW6PPZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251951},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/31/sven-goran-eriksson-obituary-urbane-swede-whose-management-career-was-a-game-of-two-halves/\" target=\"_blank\">Sven-Göran Eriksson</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"ABOZJUZYKBDDVHGCKB7M3I34GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251952},"content":"Football manager","type":"header"},{"_id":"DXO3MKI43FHQTLYF6GXHKGNMZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251953},"content":"England’s first overseas manager Sven-Göran Eriksson died on August 26th at the age of 76 after a managerial career that spanned more than four decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CU3JFYGLBNGLTJCPC6CQVUFBLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251954},"content":"The Swede’s management career began with Swedish teams Degerfors and IFK Göteborg. His international breakthrough came when he guided IFK to win its first Uefa Cup final. This led him to manage teams such as Benfica, Sampdoria and Lazio and his success made him one of Europe’s most highly regarded managers. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"OX334CMUHBFVXOLNVAU2RRQ7P4","additional_properties":{},"content":"Nevertheless, his appointment as England manager in 2001 was lambasted by some tabloids because he was not English. He would go on to lead the country to the quarter-finals in two World Cups and in the Euro 2004 tournament. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"JFLOUUEWFFDYHGYCOVJ35KXLFU","additional_properties":{},"content":"His personal life provided much fodder for the tabloids and his phone was hacked by the News of the World between 2002 and 2006. Just before the 2002 World Cup tournament, it was revealed Eriksson had had an affair with fellow Swede and television presenter Ulrika Jonsson. After the now-defunct News of the World secretly recorded him in 2006 expressing interest in the Aston Villa job, the FA announced he would step down after the World Cup.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MULWCZ47HJBKLICYIUJUSO6AA4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251955},"content":"He went on to manage a host of clubs and countries, including Manchester City, Leicester, Mexico and the Philippines. His final job in football was as sporting director at IF Karlstad before pancreatic cancer forced him to quit in 2023.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6UVCML2LRVHSXBL67ZECVWP7AE","additional_properties":{"_id":"DFP5BT2FMFHMDICQ233EAPIRYA"},"content":"Former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson dies, aged 76 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"66F6GCHK7NHK5ONWAMTLDLRRIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251957},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/09/28/toto-schillaci-obituary-striker-who-shot-to-global-fame-in-the-summer-of-1990/\" target=\"_blank\">Totò Schillaci</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"D2XKFLBBUFHKXBIM7NBRTGKYIE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251958},"content":"Footballer","type":"header"},{"_id":"PIUWPE7O4BGLLAOXUZNIOWYGNU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251959},"content":"The former Italy striker Salvatore “Totò” Schillaci, who scored the goal that knocked Ireland out of the 1990 World Cup, died on September 18th aged 59. Italy lost on penalties to Argentina in the semi-finals but Schillaci’s goal in their third-place victory over England brought his tally for the tournament to six, making him the leading scorer and earning him the Golden Boot, and player of the tournament award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T3G2TTHKJZHJPGG4W7I7CSP3ZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251960},"content":"He was a wild-card pick for that squad and wasn’t expected to feature prominently in the tournament but all that changed when he was brought on in the late stages of Italy’s opening match against Austria. He broke the goalless deadlock with a header and kept on scoring in the days that followed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WBG52WWFR5DZVJ44ORUFO7BK4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251961},"content":"From Sicily, Schillaci started his career at Messina and went on to play for Juventus and Inter Milan. The 1990 World Cup marked the peak of his career and his football-playing days ended in Japan with Júbilo Iwata when he was 34.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6CSUH4TUNFKDD2PBZ7JMLBOZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251962},"content":"He later ran a soccer school in Palermo and appeared in a number of television shows, including Italy’s version of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. In 2002 he played himself in a TV advert for Smithwicks ale, smilingly popping up in an Irish pub as the surprised locals looked on.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5XED6G2LYFDT5M2STXRZJNU534","additional_properties":{"_id":"SV6G45N6S5H5RHNM2ICTDNVHE4"},"content":"Totò Schillaci’s joy was infectious and he was loved in Ireland, despite that goal – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VULCLV3H5AR3JFJSDC5XQMNMO4","additional_properties":{"_id":"33ICVC6D3BCU7L6SQHQ4OYD6FM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"EO7OA5YSURHEVFJHVR4H33PSOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251965},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/05/maggie-smith-obituary-iconic-actor-whose-comic-genius-was-often-refracted-through-tales-of-sadness/\" target=\"_blank\">Maggie Smith</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"G5SIGLYNC5DB5CY5C6C2POREVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251966},"content":"Actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"REND3V3COZAZBEKYCM5OVPAS5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251967},"content":"Maggie Smith, who died on September 27th aged 89, was a prolific award-winning actor whose work ranged from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Harry Potter to Downton Abbey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DN64ZHX6VRF4XM4EBCRMIVUHEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251968},"content":"She won an Academy Award in 1970 for playing the waspish teacher Jean Brodie and received another nomination for best actress in 1973 for Travels with My Aunt. In 1979, she won an Oscar for best supporting actress, and a Golden Globe for best actress, for California Suite.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2ECUPMYWTNDS5DWUKIZUQK37KY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251969},"content":"Her gift for acid-tongued comedy was often lauded but she also thrived in serious dramatic roles, performing opposite Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre, winning a best actress Bafta for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and playing the title role in Ingmar Bergman’s Hedda Gabler.","type":"text"},{"_id":"23M4CFDM5VCMHMGZFOB4LVNPSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251970},"content":"The Oxford-born actor excelled in period dramas such as A Room With a View and Gosford Park. Downton Abbey brought her a whole new level of fame and earned her three Primetime Emmy awards. Younger viewers came to love her when she took on the role of Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MOLEDZW5YVFARJN4ZJJRQFCZFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251971},"content":"Her collaborations on stage and screen with Alan Bennett were always well received and their 2015 film, The Lady in the Van, was a late-career triumph. Aged 84, she reached a new high in her six-decade career when she took on the one-woman play A German Life in London’s Bridge Theatre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TEPM3YW3FFG7FOGXPNEJQDYEIY","additional_properties":{"_id":"GTBCHYM6YVFMVJCCF6BPDNGWTM"},"content":"Maggie Smith, with a voice as unmistakable as Churchill’s, was a star for six decades – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"YKQUAIXQYRDFNAMP5SEGCUIFZM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251973},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/19/ethel-kennedy-obituary-vital-force-in-her-familys-political-dynasty-whose-life-was-marred-by-tragedy/\" target=\"_blank\">Ethel Kennedy</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"4BOJJJLMLVB7XORKIMAVJELPHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251974},"content":"Human rights advocate","type":"header"},{"_id":"OAVJOBSXU5AZHGLCLQX7PWQWGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251975},"content":"Ethel Kennedy was a lifelong human rights advocate who endured a series of tragedies that included the assassination of her husband, Robert F Kennedy snr, and the deaths of two of their children. She died on October 10th, aged 96. She was the mother of former independent presidential candidate, turned Donald Trump ally, Robert F Kennedy jnr.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JHTN4RUQXNE6VCVRSJY4PZHS5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251976},"content":"She was a college roommate of RFK snr’s younger sister Jean and was formally introduced to her future husband during a ski weekend in Quebec. Her passion for politics was so consuming that she was often said to be “more Kennedy than the Kennedys” and she campaigned tirelessly for her husband and other Kennedys. She was pregnant with the couple’s 11th child when RFK snr was shot when he was leaving the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just won the Democratic primary in his bid to become US president, five years after his brother, JFK, was assassinated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XHLFM65FE5BVFP7BHMSVUDOWFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251977},"content":"She was passionate about social causes, including the rights of migrant workers, the rights of Native Americans and a variety of environmental causes. She founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights which honours exemplary work by journalists and human rights advocates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UM3W4AZJAJBD3CFOM6O6OKHEH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251978},"content":"In 2014, the US president Barack Obama awarded Ethel Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom for dedicating her life to advancing the cause of social justice, human rights, environmental protection and poverty reduction.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LYLF7VMH4FFKNDZUCJXO6USYPY","additional_properties":{"_id":"U2VOX23QUVBCBI2YFITQYGLTGY"},"content":" Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F Kennedy snr, dies at 96 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UQQQZSOUNP5PFHEV7VYHC6BUUM","additional_properties":{"_id":"V62YRLSL7RHY7EJFOOF5Z2S7TA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"B3M7KFHOO5GILKALYQTARLKP4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251981},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/26/liam-payne-obituary-pop-icon-who-remained-an-enigma/\" target=\"_blank\">Liam Payne</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"7BWDXRL5IFFBNEOGRIMVF2GIMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251982},"content":"Singer","type":"header"},{"_id":"QDBXFFGF7NDI7HGYLUOHKJL2SM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251983},"content":"Liam Payne died on October 16th, aged 31, after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires. His death prompted questions about the support and protection offered to young people in the music industry after it emerged that the singer had alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he fell.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UBYTAPXKRBGQPHRVEVCV6PEHQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251984},"content":"His love of singing was apparent from an early age and he auditioned for X Factor twice, first when he was 14, and again two years later. On the second occasion, in 2010, he was put together with four fellow contestants to form a boy band, One Direction. They finished third and Simon Cowell signed them to his label for a reported £2 million.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XSOML5MTNJBFFNYM4T5ZCUZYQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251985},"content":"The band sold some 70 million records and became the first band in the history of the US Billboard chart to see their first four albums debut at No 1. Payne established himself as a songwriter and by the time of 2014′s Four, his name appeared in the credits of eight of the album’s 12 tracks, including its lead single, Steal My Girl.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BIIPLPUGSBF23EMI4QDSTCU5UU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251986},"content":"The band split in 2016 and his debut solo single Strip That Down reached number three on the UK singles chart the following year. His album, LP1, debuted at number 17 on the UK albums chart in 2019.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XR5ID3YT35BH3BCZELFOYDPP4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"QA2D6EHJRJBPZLKZLTCWP75VF4"},"content":"After One Direction, Liam Payne was just getting started. His death is a heartbreaking end – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"WXWKI5RQHRFGNAYPG45XF3NCBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251988},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2024/11/04/quincy-jones-producer-and-giant-of-us-entertainment-dies-aged-91/\" target=\"_blank\">Quincy Jones</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"VUJW7YAXVZHQNKVLWCUXZ63M3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251989},"content":"Music producer","type":"header"},{"_id":"WK5AUYM5VJHSTBN6P2PQIY23NY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251990},"content":"Quincy Jones was an American musical performer, producer, arranger and composer who worked with a “who’s who” of figures in the music industry. He was 91 when he died on November 3rd.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Q5544364ZDWRH4WDMFPI5K7RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251991},"content":"The roster of singers and musicians he worked with included Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and Count Basie.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SIBSWDERSNB4NIIIVPPDDLHMYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251992},"content":"At 14, he started playing in a band with a 16-year-old Ray Charles, and he once backed Billie Holiday. He played trumpet in Elvis Presley’s band and was Dizzy Gillespie’s musical director and arranger when he was 23.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VREAVCEPONDTZPQMGFUN3QKXII","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251993},"content":"A job at Mercury Records led to him working with artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee and Sammy Davis Jr. He also began scoring films, clocking up credits for The Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night and The Color Purple.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4SS3GAT37NFRZENWZFSLWCOFDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251994},"content":"He produced Off the Wall, Bad and Thriller – still the biggest-selling album of all time – for Michael Jackson while his film and TV production company launched the career of Will Smith with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air sitcom.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LATED2GVEBELHCIGWLYN2FFTSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800251995},"content":"Jones won 28 Grammy awards, received seven Academy Award nominations and won an Emmy award for the theme music he wrote for the television series Roots in 1977. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. He was posthumously awarded an honorary Oscar two weeks after his death.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"Among those who died were Putin critic Alexei Navalny, actor Maggie Smith and criminal OJ Simpson"},"display_date":"2024-12-30T06:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Obituaries of the year: Ten notable people on the world stage who died in 2024","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"I6XQFVBCEZGCLP6GRD5FAQEA2A","auth":{"1":"ffaa37e2085ca16a49048c7ae1d49f696f74bf6d63f138d9afc43c5f3a1ac200"},"focal_point":{"x":2345,"y":1613},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/I6XQFVBCEZGCLP6GRD5FAQEA2A.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"World"},{"name":"Opinion"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/30/obituaries-of-the-year-ten-notable-people-on-the-world-stage-who-died-in-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"2RCWQSRVCJH3DHO232KXQGKJ74","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":700,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/0f593fc5-3934-4973-87b2-13281d5813fe/versions/1735510615/media/2df1f04d4a07a51439cea6ee23a4c547_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/jimmy-carter-obituary-former-us-president-was-unwavering-champion-of-civil-rights-and-a-peace-broker-in-the-middle-east/","content_elements":[{"_id":"FEL52PWVQBFY3GY4GIZBZE77P4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 1st 1924","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died:</b> December 29th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZXRWZGZWVJACNB6WZ6YW6CSHHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375895},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2024/12/29/former-us-president-jimmy-carter-dies-at-100-say-reports/\" target=\"_blank\">The death at 100 of the US’s 39th and longest living president</a>, James Earl Carter, a peanut farmer and Baptist preacher, sees the passing of a remarkable Southerner who infused his politics with a rare down-to-earth moralism, sincerity and honesty. A refreshing outsider to Washington politics, he surprised all by sweeping aside the capital’s old post-Watergate elite to leave a legacy that pointed in new directions even if it never quite achieved his promise.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VJ6FDLNB2ZAF7HBQQOIEJH3AKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375896},"content":"“He decided to use power righteously,” biographer Kai Bird would write, “ignore politics, and do the right thing. He was, in fact, a fan of the establishment’s favourite Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote, ‘It is the sad duty of politics to establish justice in a sinful world’.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"CBIPFVSYSFHOHLXLE7BGKC6QIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375897},"content":"Although he had notable successes in office from 1977 to 1981, not least the Camp David Accord between Egypt and Israel, he would be the first incumbent president since Herbert Hoover in 1932 to lose a re-election bid. Ronald Reagan used the economic challenges and oil crisis faced by his administration, and the disastrously bungled attempted Iran hostage rescue, to successfully portray Carter as a weak and ineffectual leader.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NOMEVIZ4K5FKPFBJP4NW4M7GUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375898},"content":"In some ways Carter was a paradox. Although an opponent of segregation in a segregationist state, he played the race card to get elected to governorship in 1971, then announcing that “the time of racial discrimination is over”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PECZVDJSYNARVBZY7JBS7XPY7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375899},"content":"From then on, however, he was an unwavering champion of civil rights, and his presidential bid attracted some 85 per cent support from the black community.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2XAUMZQ44HJAIGBOX6DBBYM6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"5WP2SJUNBNGZVLYU5LOLPI6BQU"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"N5L5OKRS2FFMPCQEER4AQIVHXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375900},"content":"Born on October 1st, 1924, in tiny Plains, Georgia, to Bessie Lillian Gordy and James Earl Carter snr, a shopkeeper and investor in farmland, the young Carter would successfully develop a peanut farm as an offshoot of the family business. His father was a descendant of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in the Colony of Virginia in 1635.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BRV3ONLGKJBQHJQJ77YZ7WINJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375901},"content":"Carter enrolled in the US Naval Academy in 1946 and while there met and married Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister’s. He served in nuclear submarines, and was drafted in to assist in the dismantling of the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Canada following a partial meltdown. His experience, he would later say, shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to end development of the neutron bomb.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KLPIKEDXJ5EAVCCZR7DNFVVUHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375902},"content":"The early death of his father saw his return to the family business and a gradual immersion in the Democratic politics of Georgia. Although opposed to segregation – as a member of the Baptist Church he spoke openly against racism and attempts to segregate worship – he tempered his approach when he ran for office, even courting the arch-segregationist Wallace vote.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OWYEM6PDENARJFGQGRJ7TAFC3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375903},"content":"Still an outsider in national politics, he surprised observers by winning the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination and narrowly defeating incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NPDPNSXM4RGQTJLX7FDK55H744","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375904},"content":"As the campaign developed in the wake of the still-fresh reverberations of the Watergate scandal, Carter, now with running mate senator Walter Mondale, tirelessly travelled the country projecting himself as an outsider with an easy common touch, not averse to populist slogans. He won the popular vote by 50.1 per cent to 48.0 per cent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O4I4L6JFKFF3JEQASSEVHXUA3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375905},"content":"Within two days of assuming the presidency he took the controversial step of pardoning all Vietnam War draft evaders.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FNAATMYEFNEKLM5V2LV5FWRXMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375906},"content":"Carter was actively engaged on the world stage, from day one, hoping above all to broker peace in the Middle East. He invited Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to the presidential lodge Camp David in September 1978 with the negotiations resulting in an end to the state of war between the two countries, Egypt formally recognising Israel for the first time, and the creation of an elected government in the West Bank and Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6RAO2F6SOZDHDBV2JPE57WXL54","additional_properties":{"_id":"JRZ6PTVFABFOZEK74ZHIYMYM7A"},"content":"Leo Varadkar could learn something from Jimmy Carter about how to retire","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"VSAN6JUHMBAGNLQIWQQ2L5ODDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375907},"content":"He oversaw the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, and signed the landmark Salt II treaty on ballistic arms reductions with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. (Although the latter was signed in 1979 in Vienna, the US Senate refused to ratify it in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"MM633QT5HBG3BHVTGPIP2R3ZH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375908},"content":"Following that invasion, Carter allowed the sale of military supplies to China and started talks about sharing military intelligence. He began a programme of what would become hugely controversial covert assistance to the Afghan mujahideen, some of them precursors to today’s Taliban.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YELIUMV2JRGIBJVAXN7FJR2MKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375909},"content":"He sought closer relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), continuing the rapprochement engaged in by Richard Nixon.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AAOR5PBRU2LBWTUIJ5YC667DPY","additional_properties":{"_id":"DNDVCREMJZHTHCDKLBNKYVAOZU"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HZ2S3JXOAFFBBJ5SRUEV24NU3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375910},"content":"The end of his presidency was blighted by the Iran hostage crisis. Misbriefed by the CIA about the stability of the Shah’s regime, Carter pledged in 1977 that his administration would continue with positive relations between the US and Iran, calling the latter “strong, stable and progressive”. After the surprise revolution installed an Islamist regime in November 1979, a group of Iranian students took over the US embassy in Tehran. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for the next 444 days. An airborne mission to free them failed, leaving eight American servicemen dead and two aircraft destroyed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D34TJA6CUVGKVP45FWOMVMZ4BI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375911},"content":"The hostages were freed immediately after Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter as president – leading figures in the Reagan campaign are reported to have signalled to the Iranians not to release the hostages until Carter was defeated, as Reagan would give them a better deal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3YGJISYXJC6BKTG26YRGRTJW4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375912},"content":"Breaking with traditional US unwillingness to step out of line from its closest ally, the UK, Carter in 1977 agreed to issue a declaration on Ireland calling for the establishment in Northern Ireland of a government which would command widespread acceptance and for an overall solution which would involve the support of the Irish government. The US would facilitate any such agreement with assistance in creating jobs, he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JDM4TSBNXZDQ7OHHXXTCR7D7FI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375913},"content":"“The precedent created by Carter has facilitated the enormous involvement in Ireland of his successors,” Ireland’s then-ambassador to the US, Sean Donlon, has written.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LVTWF7JB4BE5VFY44DMI4DYJ5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375914},"content":"It was an engagement and pledge that would be honoured by Reagan in his talks with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and in the establishment of the International Fund for Ireland. The latter has seen close to $1 billion invested in Irish projects since then.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3MCWLAX5JC2PLTDEEPHSSQWBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375915},"content":"In 1979, Carter invited taoiseach Jack Lynch on an official visit to the US and paid a private visit to Ireland in 1995, fishing in Kilkenny and indulging his woodworking skills by helping to build a house in Ballyfermot for Habitat for Humanity, an NGO he worked closely with.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y66JZ6QO2NDZDEZMPR3OQFN6V4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375916},"content":"Domestically, Carter had an uneasy relationship with both his own party and Republicans in Congress. His tenure in office was marked by an economic malaise, a time of continuing inflation and recession, and the 1979 energy crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VKFAB43E5RBCPL4J46AHDC6KF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375917},"content":"His administration established the department of energy and the department of education. He also created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. He installed solar water heating panels on the White House and wore sweaters to offset turning down the heat.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PPQUQHG46NGHNL6ZFBQ7CG5QAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375918},"content":"He deregulated the airline industry, paving the way for middle-class Americans to fly for the first time in large numbers, and deregulated natural gas, laying the groundwork for the country’s current energy independence. He forced through the Alaska Land Act, tripling the size of the nation’s protected wilderness areas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CYCU5QGHZVDZFCEKGTIRM2SDOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375919},"content":"The battle for renomination loomed. Carter had to run against his own stagflation-ridden economy, while the hostage crisis in Iran dominated the news every week.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHW6LOILTRBUJLKRUFTMNB2TGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375920},"content":"He alienated liberal college students, who were expected to be his base, by reinstating registration for the military draft.","type":"text"},{"_id":"X76WDZNCLVHBLAKYZ36MDV7YVE","additional_properties":{"_id":"6U7KNVT35VGBLBHWK3V4SIQ4BM"},"content":"‘He’s an inspiration’: tributes pour in after Jimmy Carter enters hospice care","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5SI54HW66RH3NNDASZOK7KOOSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375921},"content":"Though initially trailing Carter by several points, Reagan saw a surge in polling after the TV debate, in which he practised the patronising put-down – “there you go again” – that became his election mantra. Carter’s defeat was a landslide.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3C2GVU25LVCG7E2VVK6PZEWWNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375922},"content":"After leaving the White House, he became an activist former president, ploughing a largely solitary but effective furrow. In the view of many it is his retirement that will be seen as his singular legacy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QVLS7OKZPZA2VAVHM5NO7HIRZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375923},"content":"In 1982, he established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights. Its work would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. In July 2007, he joined Nelson Mandela to announce his participation with former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, among others, in The Elders, a group of independent global leaders who work on peace and human rights issues.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q3USMDO56ZGXNFTFKKFDKPK22U","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375924},"content":"He travelled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections and further the eradication of infectious diseases. He played a key role in the NGO Habitat for Humanity, and wrote books and memoirs, often sharply critical of US policy, not least over the Iraq War. In a work on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict he controversially labelled the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians “apartheid”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SYUI2Z2OZAVZNNVUJMLZRRNVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375925},"content":"Though he praised Barack Obama in the early part of his tenure, Carter attacked the use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists and the decision to keep Guantánamo Bay detention camp open. His blunt critiques of his Democrat successors meant they would all keep him at arm’s length until Joe Biden latterly re-engaged with him enthusiastically.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4AFTTBIFFKI6DCNKTP6ECSPKKY","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RAFEKRWHJDCPDDWHUFQTBSXWI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"FECGMPENK5FZ5DYLXKMSQCKTTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375926},"content":"To the end he worked tirelessly. Biographer Bird, who insists that Carter “remains the most misunderstood president of the last century”, described one recent meeting: “He was in his early 90s yet was still rising with the dawn and getting to work early. I once saw him conduct a meeting at 7am at the Carter Center where he spent 40 minutes pacing back and forth onstage, explaining the details of his programme to wipe out Guinea worm disease. He was relentless. Later that day he gave me, his biographer, exactly 50 minutes to talk about his White House years. Those bright blue eyes bore into me with an alarming intensity. But he was clearly more interested in the Guinea worms.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WUEA3XNRU5BVPNNPYLI57A6RN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375927},"content":"“Carter devoted his life to solving problems,” Bird says, “like an engineer, by paying attention to the minutiae of a complicated world. He once told me that he hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm. Last year there were only 13 cases of Guinea worm disease in humans. He may have succeeded.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QLTKBL74VVCM7D2F2LM2RGAH6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1681144375928},"content":"Rosalynn Carter died in November 2023 and Jimmy Carter emerged from hospice care to mourn her. They had three sons, Jack, Chip and Jeff; one daughter, Amy; nine grandsons (one of whom is deceased), three granddaughters, five great-grandsons, and eight great-granddaughters.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"An outsider in national politics, Carter surprised observers by winning the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination and narrowly defeating incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford"},"display_date":"2024-12-29T22:11:49.457Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jimmy Carter obituary: Former US president was unwavering champion of civil rights and a peace broker in the Middle East","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KUQQDIWB2ERV7MYDS7EIXOKHJU","auth":{"1":"8e5bc2e502ec3f15c3553c1466758245ba29dcfa743db2ad0d99d22098a2c9d9"},"focal_point":{"x":2200,"y":2057},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KUQQDIWB2ERV7MYDS7EIXOKHJU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"World"},{"name":"US"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/jimmy-carter-obituary-former-us-president-was-unwavering-champion-of-civil-rights-and-a-peace-broker-in-the-middle-east/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"MCQ2AEH5H5HFPCPNJ3NRESPANY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":267,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/d03f9950-425c-47ee-b621-c5777147377e/versions/1735413681/media/7dbd17f30ef5aa64ecca3a129224107f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/marie-osullivan-the-voice-of-radio-television-and-cinema-commercials-in-the-1960s/","content_elements":[{"_id":"BRMNSVZFRRHZ7LYBFA2M633SLE","additional_properties":{},"content":"Marie O’Sullivan, born on November 19th, 1933, the voice of radio, television and cinema commercials in the 1960s, and one of the first continuity announcers on Telefís Éireann, died on December 2nd, 2024. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WH7EQ555TRFSJIGEZR7RD5SLBQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"She will be best remembered as a broadcaster and, throughout the 1970s, the face of afternoon TV, but she was also a pioneering speech therapist working in the field decades before it was recognised in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OZZD47W65COZAWED7M5DA3KNE","additional_properties":{},"content":"The date of her death, on December 2nd, coincidentally fell on the 63rd anniversary of the promotional tour of Ireland she undertook with fellow announcers – Nuala Donnelly and the late Kathleen Watkins – ahead of the opening night of Irish television on New Year’s Eve, 1961.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUUK5S44GNGWLKZPDXLOTS3VKY","additional_properties":{},"content":"“It was a PR exercise, really, even though it wasn’t called that in those days,” Marie O’Sullivan said when the trio reunited 40 years later. “It was supposed to make the people who were outside of the Pale feel included.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"PFJCKMRMQ5ARBIC7MTYFJGLCVQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"And, as a piece in the Ballina Herald illustrated, the “Meet the People” tour, as it was called, was well-judged because some people in the regions did indeed feel excluded. When details of the countrywide route were released, journalist Thomas Woulfe wrote: “Those who have been howling murder over the lack of information on the nature of Telefís Éireann’s opening programmes may have to swallow some of their ire after this announcement.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"O6FLVK2DKJHC3DYFPRPXDE52BE","additional_properties":{},"content":"By 1961, Marie O’Sullivan was already an accomplished broadcaster. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"WF4FFOVLONDYFKQZSFW63H26X4","additional_properties":{},"content":"She had started to work in Radio Éireann the decade before, voicing radio and cinema commercials. She also had TV experience, very unusual for the time, having completed a training course at the BBC in 1956. It was there she developed her “BBC accent”, or her “telephone voice”, as her family called it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GHHWZRDJS5CYBJVDVFTWZSGNKE","additional_properties":{},"content":"She also worked as a speech and drama teacher at several Dublin schools and as a speech therapist, a field still in its infancy in the 1950s. One of her first clients was a training priest who feared his stammer would stop him being ordained but, in a case reminiscent of the King’s Speech, she helped him to overcome his difficulty.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JMAQ4F2H5FAMXAA74DPXW3G52Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"Her love of speech, drama and, in particular, language was honed at Muckross Park College in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, where she took part in several school plays. While playing Yum Yum in The Mikado, she met Christian Brothers College (CBC) pupil Eoin O’Sullivan. They were a couple for 75 years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XBAYDRZBAREJPFE6SDG5BYTILU","additional_properties":{},"content":"She grew up in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, but moved to Dublin, aged 12, with her parents Tess and Frank O’Donnell and her younger sister Miriam. She excelled at Muckross, going on to become head girl and captain of the hockey team. She later played for Leinster. She was also a gifted swimmer, representing Pembroke Swimming Club.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQSEGNJTH5FSZKBXYIZDLBMR5I","additional_properties":{},"content":"She married Eoin O’Sullivan in June 1958, aged 24, and unusual for the time, continued to work. As independent contractors, RTÉ's first female broadcasters were exempt from the marriage bar which obliged women to resign their posts after marriage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MA4MRHRJLFADXDDDTFLYVJPNFE","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the late 1970s, she stepped back from broadcasting to look after her four children full-time, but she remained deeply interested in current affairs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"63VQC467KBFCTMZDAGFSSWOYKU","additional_properties":{},"content":"Her wide range of interests included poetry, a good book, the arts, furniture restoration, flower arranging, gardening and being a reader at her local church in Foxrock, Dublin. The biggest of all her interests, though, was people. When she died last month, she was remembered as beautiful, loyal, kind and welcoming but, most of all, as a lady.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7BA6XTLKWZBPJGQP2I7A4U44MM","additional_properties":{},"content":"She is survived by her husband of 66 years, Eoin; her children, Kate, Owen, Frank and Donel; sister Miriam; son-in-law Maurice; daughters-in-law Maria, Fiona and Linda; grandchildren Kara, Mark, Kym, Eli and Tien; godchildren, nieces, nephews, extended family, neighbours and friends.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Clodagh Finn"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2024-12-29T18:58:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Marie O’Sullivan – the voice of radio, television and cinema commercials in the 1960s","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KEJJJBHWEJDDFLHFYWZVELDYHU","auth":{"1":"7660efde809694bdecbc83496399fc65ec08bab543c4ee1ab07d882c49a478a2"},"focal_point":{"x":489,"y":1114},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KEJJJBHWEJDDFLHFYWZVELDYHU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/29/marie-osullivan-the-voice-of-radio-television-and-cinema-commercials-in-the-1960s/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"YVE454FQ2RGERADNR4TXCDXNNY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":4559,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-cdn-b7fyckdeejejb6dj.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/64c6a1d3-b860-4382-b115-a34bba1fbd58/versions/1735227730/media/95fd5edfc83b5c6aa69654061f97a7c3_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/27/obituaries-of-2024-charlie-bird-nell-mccafferty-ian-bailey-and-more-50-people-who-died-in-2024/","content_elements":[{"_id":"DKX2X7O2FZGH3ISPWMYGVWLNGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264398},"content":"The weekly Irish Times obituary page highlights the deaths of people whose lives made an impact, for better and occasionally for worse, on Irish society or on the greater world. This year, obituary writers remembered the lives of more than 110 people. They included broadcasters, environmentalists, soccer managers, judges, writers, journalists and business people. Some were household names, such as politician Mary O’Rourke, journalist Nell McCafferty or broadcaster Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh while others quietly made a huge impact in their chosen fields. Frank Hayes shaped Kerry Group’s public identity during pivotal years. Hazel Allen was a gifted restaurateur who preferred to remain out of the limelight at Ballymaloe House, while Justin O’Brien was a lifelong campaigner for the most marginalised people in society. And some were controversial figures who merited inclusion because of their newsworthiness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HPB4ADXF4FBTRPXRJU2COLPJQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264400},"content":"All these obituaries can be read on <a href=\"http://irishtimes.com/obituaries\">irishtimes.com</a> but here we select 50 people whose deaths were marked by an obituary in the newspaper this year:","type":"text"},{"_id":"DVE6XR7N6VBVJKCDZATH2BZFHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264401},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/01/13/eddie-oconnor-obituary-global-entrepreneur-in-the-energy-sector-and-radical-thinker/\" target=\"_blank\">Eddie O’Connor</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"FRABIYK6GBGKLMBD6DZI3F4OFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264402},"content":"Entrepreneur","type":"header"},{"_id":"UTILFUUKNZDERA4D54MLBH6CEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264403},"content":"Eddie O’Connor, who died on January 5th aged 76, was a pioneering figure in the renewable energy sector, particularly wind energy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2G4HRJ2XCRE3HBPE2XMDY5GDNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264404},"content":"He was chief executive of the Irish semi-State peat development company, Bord na Móna, when, in 1989, a board member told him that carbon dioxide was dangerously heating the world. He later recalled his shock at realising that the company he led was responsible for 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from peat used in power generation. From then on, he decided that renewable energy was going to be the mission. In 1997, he founded Eirtricity (now SSE Airtricity), an electricity supplier and wind farm development company which constructed the Arklow Bank offshore wind farm. He was also co-founder of Mainstream Renewable Power.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WMG34N7D6JDRVBBRXNTAWY4NZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264405},"content":"He was a strong advocate for a European supergrid using thin, fast, cost-effective and energy-efficient cables to distribute electricity from renewable sources, using technology he was developing in the SuperNode superconductor technology project with his Norwegian partner company, Aker Horizons.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KZQDSG5PKBH57N44GLK4MEREXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264406},"content":"In 2003, O’Connor was named World Energy Policy Leader by Scientific American magazine while in 2009, he was presented with the first leadership award at the annual Ernst & Young Global Renewable Energy awards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"674LMD6K5VE6XHZJSURPQBVODQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"VP6JJ2IBLJDVTIQFD7SAQA6RDI"},"content":"Tributes at Eddie O’Connor funeral reflect on his ‘bold, critical mission’ to bring wind power to the grid","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QBNTOBJTA5CQXHTING5ZCUPV7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264408},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/02/maire-ni-mhurchu-obituary-award-winning-broadcaster-and-documentary-maker/\" target=\"_blank\">Máire Ní Mhurchú</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"DPPH2G4GSZF2BEF3TDWUQC7XQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264409},"content":"Broadcaster","type":"header"},{"_id":"TUMWIM5KANASZNZ4XWZGMAO3KY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264410},"content":"The Cork-based RTÉ broadcaster Máire Ní Mhurchú died on January 11th, aged 90. She was an award-winning presenter and head of regional radio broadcasting in Cork City. When she joined RTÉ Cork local radio in the 1950s, she travelled to schools and homes to record many hours of interviews with children for series such as Young Munster on the Air, Munster Journal and Children Talking. She also worked with broadcaster Síle Ní Bhriain on a series entitled A Woman’s World. And, with a team of helpers, she put together the annual hour-long programme about the Cork Choral Festival.","type":"text"},{"_id":"75GS35E53ZEDNJMTC4JBGKO32Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264411},"content":"Her most celebrated documentaries include The Echo Boys, a profile of the newspaper boys who sold The Evening Echo on the streets of Cork City, and Someone To Love, a two-part radio series on the harsh life in a convent orphanage in the 1960s. She won a Jacob’s Award in 1969 for her broadcasting work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5R2CIS4L4NCQ5DUVQMIR5KI4VM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264412},"content":"In 1989, Ní Mhurchú was promoted to divisional head of Cork Local Radio, which was rebranded as Cork 89FM when the first independent radio stations were being licensed. She retired in 1998.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PCVAQ6N4YRHQLNMCGHFA3JJ6ME","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264413},"content":"She was credited with launching the careers of broadcasters such as Mary Wilson, Tony O’Donoghue, Eileen Whelan, Ger Canning and Marty Morrissey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z3HYFURV45C3HFGNPCT3XRHSDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264414},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/10/christopher-moriarty-obituary-biologist-with-a-rare-ability-to-see-nature-in-a-human-context/\" target=\"_blank\">Christopher Moriarty</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"NEL7XVQRSNFRTJ744N2MMAHGE4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264415},"content":"Biologist","type":"header"},{"_id":"4OMUMHL2RFBVZEOBUKKKBYLZXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264416},"content":"Christopher Moriarty, who died on January 13th aged 87, was a biologist who developed innovative strategies to expand the Irish eel fisheries industry. He was also a prolific author of books and articles on many aspects of nature in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"762AFFLM4NFGRLELOQT734LLSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264417},"content":"His parents encouraged his passion for the outdoors in the still partly rural Rathfarnham where he grew up. As a student, he expanded the natural history society membership of St Columba’s College to 40 members. After attaining a zoology degree from Trinity College Dublin, he joined the Civil Service in 1959, and rapidly became the national expert on eels.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IL762NF7BGOPGPQAUGQ7Z63MM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264418},"content":"He regularly published highly regarded scientific papers and was an influential figure in the European Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture Advisory Commission of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. He was also a key figure in the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club and served as its president in the 1970s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZNYF6CQ4JJB7DCLDV7Z2AXSILQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264419},"content":"His publications include books on the river Liffey and the Dodder, a guide to Irish birds, a natural history of Ireland, an exploration of the history of Leinster<i> </i>and a collection of his eponymous columns in this newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AY2LA2ET4BGLRKIEJXNZD2NUTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264420},"content":"He was also one of the first Agency for Personal Services Overseas (APSO) volunteers, taking two years’ leave to help set up a successful course in fisheries management for the Ibadan University of Nigeria in the mid-1970s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S2PLHIN2TZDW5K4XFW3SG42VBU","additional_properties":{"_id":"IKOVQTEFCREJHCAUJBQ655JOFA"},"content":"Finding the Liffey’s source: Anna Livia takes her first steps – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ZL6UACNH4ZDMBAXGRMLXWELWGU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264422},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/01/27/ian-bailey-obituary-suspect-in-one-of-the-countrys-most-notorious-murders/\" target=\"_blank\">Ian Bailey</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"WF3YJMYRFBARPE356QSE3QMAZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264423},"content":"Murder suspect","type":"header"},{"_id":"IVJL6XXSC5BJ5HJEODNKGNQRGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264424},"content":"Ian Bailey, the chief suspect for the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, died in west Co Cork on January 21st, days before his 67th birthday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OON3OIUE3NB2BFW724EQ2TCJAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264425},"content":"A controversial figure, some saw the Englishman as the victim of a grave injustice while others believed he was a calculating individual whose portrayal of himself as the wronged party was the ultimate affront to Toscan du Plantier’s family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LKGHYENYRFEUJFBYYXQPKZ3N4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264426},"content":"He had been working as a freelance journalist when he moved to Ireland in 1991, and later moved in to the home of Welsh artist Jules Thomas, near Schull. After Toscan du Plantier’s body was found at her west Cork holiday home on December 23rd, 1996, he reported as a journalist on the murder but later became the prime suspect.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B2QDT7FL3BBDLJPX6EIPRO3TGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264427},"content":"Despite being arrested by gardaí for questioning in 1997 and 1998, no prosecution was brought. When a European Arrest Warrant issued by the French authorities was endorsed by the High Court in 2010, he appealed to the Supreme Court and won his case.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WNC574H34VE5TFNJ6UBT3EWE6Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264428},"content":"He subsequently lost a civil action against the State for wrongful arrest and conspiracy to frame him for the murder. In 2019, Bailey was convicted in Paris, in his absence, of voluntary homicide but served no jail time having successfully blocked his extradition in the Irish courts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SE5UAFRG5RAXNAUSE6CDGOCEOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"3O5ONF7BKJCVZNC4CTPXEU73MI"},"content":"‘There is probably a sigh of relief communally... it has consumed our lives’: West Cork after Ian Bailey – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OR44HU33PVAF3H6LJFLRONDVYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264430},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/03/ivor-browne-obituary-pioneering-psychiatrist-who-was-a-musician-at-heart/\" target=\"_blank\">Ivor Browne</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"2X4M7AJG2VDZZCZHVYWA2N3FUI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264431},"content":"Psychiatrist","type":"header"},{"_id":"4DQT6PAXGFE2LIOEFVYZSCIQOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264432},"content":"Pioneering psychiatrist Ivor Browne died on January 24th, aged 94. He has been credited with transforming attitudes to mental illness, particularly his understanding of the role of trauma. He believed that mental illness was rooted in traumatic experience and, while he believed that drugs could play a role in helping patients, he campaigned against the overuse of medications and electroconvulsive therapy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KLVJEKF3PVDV3FHEDYDC7CP5FQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264433},"content":"From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, he was chief psychiatrist with the Eastern Health Board and became professor of psychiatry at University College Dublin. Over those decades he led a revolution that saw a dismantling of institutions in Ireland such as St Brendan’s, Grangegorman, and the development of community clinics. Professor of psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin Brendan Kelly described this as the reversal of “Ireland’s fatal weakness for institutional solutions to social problems”. Browne’s most profound legacy was “the additional liberty enjoyed by thousands of people who avoided institutionalisation as a result of the reforms which Ivor came to represent”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TTKDG6HXUJBUNAR5Z6ZVTYIHIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264434},"content":"Prof Browne also founded the Irish Foundation for Human Development, as well as developing linked community models in Ballyfermot and Derry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"J3IKMIBHBJDZFCXPBBZ2LC6ID4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264435},"content":"President Michael D Higgins said he had fearlessly challenged what was a dehumanising system. “His respect for the dignity of those under his care was renowned and is often recalled by his former patients,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"K2IPNWBCN5GLNPDDA3LC5TOA3I","additional_properties":{"_id":"INJH57GBSRCSJBOVIXIHHZUJD4"},"content":"Fintan O’Toole: We trusted Ivor Browne with our darkest secrets. He was one of Ireland’s great liberators – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"4TFKVDWMJRASLMQJ37NAGUOVZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264437},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/06/mary-hobart-obituary-gallery-owner-who-played-a-crucial-role-in-raising-awareness-of-irish-art/\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Hobart</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"K5RWOFFCRRFCHAFPCYCEQN52GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264438},"content":"Art gallery owner","type":"header"},{"_id":"GJBIEOHX5JA4NKXRUAEQSBIH7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264439},"content":"Mary Hobart, who died on February 2nd aged 81, played a crucial role in raising awareness of Irish art in this country and internationally. Originally from Scotstown, Co Monaghan, she owned Pyms Gallery in London with her husband Alan Hobart. Neither had any formal training as artists or art historians when they opened the gallery in 1975.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NCM3I454KNDEHFCSX5JP3PWARI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264440},"content":"They had a passion for Irish art at a time when it was far from fashionable and they travelled through Britain and Ireland to find overlooked paintings and sculpture. They bought and sold hundreds of works by William Orpen, including On the Beach, Howth (1910) and A Summer Afternoon. In 1996 they set up the Orpen Research Fund to further enhance knowledge of the artist’s work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTSI4TBWRBGZDGSTTY5LKQN77I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264441},"content":"Throughout the 1980s and 1990s they brought work by the greatest Irish artists to London. In their 1982 show, The Irish Revival, they exhibited works by John Lavery, John Luke, Walter Osborne, Paul Henry, Jack B Yeats and Louis Le Brocquy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7VPQCBNIVCTXIG2C6NONFC74Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264442},"content":"Other artists promoted by them included Rita Duffy, Hector McDonnell, Norah McGuinness, Nano Reid and Mainie Jellett. They also championed the art of modern artist Mary Swanzy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YYUAT4R3VRA5DJZ4KIIVH5Q2VI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264443},"content":"One of their shrewdest purchases came when they paid $7.7 million for Edvard Munch’s 1902 painting Girls on the Bridge, in 1996. They sold it on a few years later for $30.8 million.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2HNLLIJCMJHGNDO74ZW2ZNBJBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264444},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/02/06/john-bruton-obituary-tenacious-former-taoiseach-who-led-rainbow-coalition/\" target=\"_blank\">John Bruton</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"VC4S4VZ5BFAMNGSEAE45SOYQCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264445},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"3SZZIT3K65F2DKM3CVLGZNTX4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264446},"content":"John Bruton, who died on February 6th, aged 76, was taoiseach and European Union ambassador to the United States.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7NQVLR6GH5AQNON32XD4A6OVCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264447},"content":"From a farming family in Dunboyne, Co Meath, he was elected to the Dáil in 1969 for Fine Gael at the age of 22. He was appointed minister for finance in 1981 and became party leader at the end of 1990.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BUGT7Q5UKZAN5GNYSSUVDBTB5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264448},"content":"He had the unique distinction of being the only person in the history of the State to become taoiseach because of a change of government without an election halfway through a Dáil term. He succeeded to the office in December 1994 when the Labour Party pulled out of government with Fianna Fáil and did a deal with Fine Gael to form a new administration.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CNBYIXH66FBHLIAATRXU5EGK4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264449},"content":"His rainbow coalition narrowly failed to win re-election in 1997. After fighting off two challenges to his leadership, he fell to the third challenge in 2001.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQ46ZUMY55GNRD5VPKH6S6OFC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264450},"content":"He was the European Union’s ambassador to the United States from 2004 to 2009. After his return to Ireland he served as chairman of the financial services body IFSC Ireland and as chairman of Co-operation Ireland which promotes good relations between the two communities on the island of Ireland. He also took a leading role in the Brexit debate and gave evidence to the House of Lords in London about the implications of Brexit on the peace process.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EYXZCGV2UVDLPCD7Y3LQOYWWJU","additional_properties":{"_id":"LYHOQLOUAJG3RFIV3IFOPXWRRI"},"content":"Miriam Lord: John Bruton is mourned as a loved one and revered statesman at a funeral both public and private – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DNEFQTPLPRAFHPNDU36TV42HG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264452},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/02/20/michael-oregan-obituary-astute-political-journalist-and-proud-kerryman-to-his-core/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael O’Regan</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"MHJS4X3HVNCQ3KF5MW7Q5HQYG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264453},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"CQ2IJU5AZREPTBEZGEHI55HOVE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264454},"content":"Michael O’Regan, who died on February 18th aged 70, was an Irish Times parliamentary correspondent, political analyst and broadcaster.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AUHVRU7PXBB4JAWDOV6MCVUENQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264455},"content":"After studying journalism in the College of Commerce, Rathmines, he got a job as a junior reporter with the Kerryman newspaper. It gave him an insight into local politics and he often said nothing could rival the bear pit that was Kerry politics. He won a national journalism award in 1980 and joined The Irish Times the following year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QQD6HCYWRBGBNN54OFQAKPYGDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264456},"content":"In 1988, he moved into politics and had a front-row seat to observe every political crisis that emerged in the following three decades. His encyclopedic knowledge of political constituencies and his ability to make politics interesting led to regular appearances on current affairs shows on radio and television.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6KFY6TU4NRGTFLZFS4QA24WMWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264457},"content":"He covered the Kerry Babies tribunal for this newspaper in 1985 and wrote a book, Dark Secrets, about the case, with Ger Colleran.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5LGY7HDKGZDK3HUJXRHRXYDRTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264458},"content":"A Kerryman, he was a vociferous supporter of his native county and served as president of the Kerry Association in Dublin in recent years. He appeared on Radio Kerry’s Call From the Dáil slot on the Kerry Today show, where he provided a lively retelling of the week’s political events.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZ6CCGCLJ5FILOAFS5UBFC5O6U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264459},"content":"He wrote about his cancer diagnosis and ongoing health issues in this newspaper and after he retired in 2019, he continued to be a regular voice on television and radio.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S3ZIV34SCBBMFEARMXWLXZWRLQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"JAZ7KT4G4BAARLUNMDXUEX5PM4"},"content":"‘I knew from a really early age my father was not an ordinary dad’: a tribute to Michael O’Regan – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5744R7YR4JEODOFPWNXATGW5CM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264461},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/09/michael-gibney-obituary-prominent-food-scientist-was-a-colossus-in-nutrition-and-an-original-thinker/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Gibney</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"PTLPVGFUNFHQTAEG26D4YYRV4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264462},"content":"Food scientist","type":"header"},{"_id":"C4GRMZTSBZARVDUED3AXAWEOSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264463},"content":"Prof Michael Gibney, one of Ireland’s most prominent food scientists and an internationally renowned researcher, died on February 23rd aged 75.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CD2JJ6TFUJBN7FYQLV2WJLIZMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264464},"content":"He was professor of human nutrition at Trinity College Dublin Medical School for more than 20 years before moving to University College Dublin where he was professor of food and health. He was also director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health from 2006-2013 and was professor of nutrition at the University of Ulster from 2013-2016.","type":"text"},{"_id":"35HO3S6JEFD6NEKZT5ZIKFC4SY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264465},"content":"At TCD he developed a worldwide reputation for his work on metabolic nutrition and molecular nutrition and became renowned for his work on public health nutrition. He was the first Irish person to be elected a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3336JLEQFNDKFDKOTMQYIV3L6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264466},"content":"Gibney served on food safety and health advisory committees and boards of national and international agencies and food manufacturing companies. He was a member of the EU scientific committees for food in the 1980s and 1990s and on public health, where he advised the European Commission on the BSE crisis.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6355VMB62RHAFPCT3FC6HZEFR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264467},"content":"He chaired the first EU expert group on recommended dietary allowance, which set out the average daily nutrient requirements for healthy individuals and also chaired the FAO/WHO joint consultation on dietary guidelines.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMBMQFYGEFH67ONL7ELPHXX6YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264468},"content":"He chaired the Food Safety Authority of Ireland from 2013-2018. A prolific writer, he was working on his fourth book when he died.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JJMWBVG4U5D4JGCCAP33WZJHXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264469},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/12/charlie-bird-obituary-one-of-irelands-best-known-journalists-for-nearly-40-years/\" target=\"_blank\">Charlie Bird</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"QNUGSB456ZA3PAOFUKNUO3XWNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264470},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"QBZWBUXAVZDUXE3RQECVGSVOPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264471},"content":"Charlie Bird, who died on March 11th, was one of the best-known broadcast journalists in Ireland for nearly 40 years. As chief news correspondent, and special correspondent for RTÉ, he reported on most major Irish and international news stories from the early 1980s until 2012.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTK4ND3APBHXPO75QIQTUVLS3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264472},"content":"His death, at the age of 74, followed his diagnosis with motor neuron disease in 2021. He went public about his illness, and his decision to climb Croagh Patrick saw him raising more than €3.3 million for charity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4JW2FLI6ENE7FCBLFMCHGMRUYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264473},"content":"His journalism career started with a job in this newspaper’s library. He joined RTÉ as a researcher in 1974 and quickly gained a reputation for diligence and resourcefulness on programmes including Seven Days and The Late Late Show. Recruited to the newsroom in 1980, his reports on the Stardust fire in 1981, and from the prison cell of the wrongly-jailed Irish priest Niall O’Brien in the Philippines in 1984 brought him to national prominence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJWWSVWOLRDVRKGYA7GQOAXBIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264474},"content":"He became known for his distinctive reporting style and his empathy with subjects. His interview with Nelson Mandela in South Africa’s first post-apartheid general election in 1994 scooped the world’s media and featured in Mandela’s autobiography. Investigative work led to him being named Journalist of the Year, jointly with colleague George Lee, in 1998, for investigating allegations of tax evasion at National Irish Bank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F7NT3RGQ2JH6PHFC7574LOEYQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":"SH4ILEFWQVDQRBUUUL6N5556NY"},"content":"Charlie Bird: A life in pictures – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TQ3OYCY5OFHETEBMLCEWIAPAG4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264476},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/23/malachy-mccourt-obituary-larger-than-life-author-who-put-a-comic-spin-on-his-limerick-childhood/\" target=\"_blank\">Malachy McCourt</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"TDDYBMEPPZFWXIEVF3XITMO6W4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264477},"content":"Writer, actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"YDFYFX6BSVH5FH5M24W6F7EPIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264478},"content":"Malachy McCourt, the<b> </b>Irish-American actor and writer, died on March 11th, aged 92. His celebrated biography, A Monk Swimming, followed the hugely successful memoir Angela’s Ashes, written by his older brother Frank.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OMCHDW2SVFD2JIOYZIUE5QMDWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264479},"content":"Malachy McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1931 but returned as a three-year-old to Ireland with his parents. He spent his formative years in Limerick and moved to England to find work, arriving back in New York at the age of 20 after Frank, working as a teacher in the city, sent him the fare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZHKDZB6335HE5HNXFKHCUQLAZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264480},"content":"A natural performer, he appeared regularly on soap operas – notably Ryan’s Hope, on which he had a recurring role as a barman – and played bit parts in several films such as Reversal of Fortune and Bonfire of the Vanities. He was a well-cast Henry VIII in a television commercial and he enjoyed periodic turns as a television and radio host.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XXTCTFW5IFHPDCB43BZAKH7AWQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264481},"content":"In the 1950s he opened what was considered Manhattan’s original singles bar: Malachy’s, on the Upper East Side.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2BE5RAC33NFFZPQH5TTK64WNPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264482},"content":"His biography was a bestseller when published in 1998 and he followed it with Singing My Him Song in 2000, and Death Need Not Be Fatal in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJVLHOOKCNC7VEAZUDCQSJEH6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264483},"content":"He ran for governor of New York in 2006 but lost out to Eliot Spitzer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LDFVITPSABHV3MJVEGUAIDAPVI","additional_properties":{"_id":"AIEUMPDGOVDRHGGLZO7DROTMXI"},"content":"Malachy McCourt’s final interview: ‘We’d a miserable Irish childhood, but I escaped all of that and I had a happy life’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XW2BADGFHRD4FIULYRQECDNP4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264485},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/30/emmet-bergin-obituary-actor-who-was-part-of-irelands-sunday-nights-for-18-years-as-raffish-dick-moran/\" target=\"_blank\">Emmet Bergin</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"DC44AQS7LNB25NY5CEUISHH7HA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264486},"content":"Actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"NRWNW54PHNGEXH27R574YGKH7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264487},"content":"Emmet Bergin, who died on March 15th aged 79, became a household name in the 1980s when he took on the role of the urbane solicitor Dick Moran in Glenroe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PICO7UF42ZGFJONPRIZJQKD53A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264488},"content":"After beginning his theatrical career as an assistant stage manager at the Eblana Theatre, he soon moved towards the spotlight. He appeared in the debut production of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! at the Gaiety Theatre during Dublin Theatre Festival in September 1964 and toured with the Abbey and the Irish Theatre Company.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MUWI4NV3KFHFZCDKTWPAIGWYEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264489},"content":"Known for his versatility, he played Biff in Death of a Salesman, Eilert Lövborg in Hedda Gabler and Mr Parksy in The Unexpected Man. In 1969, he had a small part in David Lean’s film Ryan’s Daughter and later appeared alongside Gabriel Byrne in John Boorman’s Excalibur, as Sir Ulfius.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2WR7CJEVZNHP5ELU4MVIVETO5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264490},"content":"He joined the cast of RTÉ's Sunday-night staple Glenroe in 1983 and his character’s forbidden romance with the then-married Mary McDermott brought him to a whole new level of fame. Such was his charisma, viewers did not turn on his character after Dick Moran had a fling with businesswoman Terry Killeen while married to Mary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R3INDKQKH5EUXPZLBJM4ZM3JO4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264491},"content":"He continued to work after Glenroe was cancelled in 2001 and played Sunday Independent editor Aengus Fanning in Joel Schumacher’s Veronica Guerin movie in 2003.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZYAAKH7Y5ZCMBGUPD3EHRZTHME","additional_properties":{"_id":"TFHR2MAFABAIFI4NFW2D66SMWQ"},"content":"Emmet Bergin was ‘a remarkable man’ and ‘an inspiration’, funeral told – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DVKKQLBWXFAFDLYWLXLSONXH2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264493},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/21/obituary-rose-dugdale-the-london-debutante-who-became-an-art-thief-and-ira-bomber/\" target=\"_blank\">Rose Dugdale</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"CBUE56LVHVAPFDHLISULBP2R3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264494},"content":"IRA bombmaker, art thief","type":"header"},{"_id":"E6RXFOZSYNHV7F4XQ5X3PYHOEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264495},"content":"Rose Dugdale, who died on March 18th aged 82, was an IRA member and bombmaker but also a wealthy British heiress and Wittgenstein scholar. She was presented as a 17-year-old to Queen Elizabeth as part of the 1958 summer debutante season. She studied economics, politics and philosophy at Oxford, before becoming involved in IRA activities during the Troubles. She said it was Bloody Sunday in 1972 that prompted her to join the paramilitary group.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OOIBYYZEZCGDJQWWBSHXYCAMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264496},"content":"In 1973, her future husband Eddie Gallagher recruited her to assist him in seizing a helicopter, from which he attempted to bomb a barracks in Strabane.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ITXVAMWQDNA67IKMIL6SAGZVEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264497},"content":"The following year she was a member of the gang that stole 19 paintings – then valued at IR£8 million – from Russborough House. Sir Alfred Beit and his wife Lady Clementine were bound and gagged during the raid and the paintings were later found in Co Cork.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LU5G24YW2VCVBGHROCMCEOV2C4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264498},"content":"She was jailed for the robbery and gave birth to her son in Limerick Prison.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KK5UW3YAG5HCBBNHKMY3DC6TLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264499},"content":"Gallagher, who remained at large, subsequently kidnapped Dutch businessman Tiede Herrema, demanding in vain Dugdale’s release in exchange for Herrema’s. She continued her involvement with the IRA after being released from prison and with partner Jim Monaghan she developed several lethal home-made explosive devices.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4X7B7TX2L5F2FNM5SO7NONIBI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264500},"content":"She was the subject of a new book, television series and film in recent years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A7TX4SXKAZATLDZYTODWZAAB7I","additional_properties":{"_id":"4DCMUNI3H5EY5LSOZTBBUSLEZI"},"content":"Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber by Sean O’Driscoll – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"PHWWWPM7GZEAPL3WXVFWJTD65A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264502},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/27/dr-eilish-cleary-obituary-champion-of-public-health-who-gave-a-voice-to-those-who-didnt-have-one/\" target=\"_blank\">Eilish Cleary</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"UFFEPF3APRGFPGFMDF5HMRIRBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264503},"content":"Doctor","type":"header"},{"_id":"23M4QJGCB5GI3KJPAVJIKPRM7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264504},"content":"Eilish Cleary, the Dublin-born doctor and public health advocate, died aged 60, on March 22nd. After training as a GP, she spent most of her working life in Canada. In Northern Manitoba she worked with Cree Nation, one of the largest indigenous communities in that part of Canada, and she became a strong advocate for equity in healthcare for First Nations communities. Soon after, she got a job as assistant chief medical officer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and later became chief medical officer for New Brunswick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NLAXLMJI6FFW3FIKOYX22BW4BA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264505},"content":"She played a key role in the province’s fight against the 2009 swine flu pandemic.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U63U46OYTNE3HJZZOUB7M754J4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264506},"content":"In 2012, she issued a report about the negative impacts of fracking on public health and the environment. She was later seconded from her job to work on fighting Ebola in West Africa with the World Health Organisation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2ATWEGHFFBZRPENXHBAIJHGDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264507},"content":"She was fired without explanation from her post in 2015, after she had begun investigating glyphosate, a herbicide widely used on forest lands in New Brunswick. There were public demonstrations in front of the Health Department’s office and calls from academics and physicians for her reinstatement but to no avail.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQ22YMNGG5AYPOHX7GUMAFLD3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264508},"content":"Not long after her termination, Cleary received the President’s Award from the Public Health Physicians of Canada, for her “outstanding contribution to public health and preventive medicine”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MXXEJKVEFNBDRA6WOOMSW5DCOU","additional_properties":{"_id":"WELXGHSMQRC5VIFEBGJZI6N35E"},"content":"Death of Irish doctor and chief medical officer who highlighted fracking dangers in Canada – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"L75V62HSURBDXKA4ZAVWI72BYE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264510},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/03/30/imogen-stuart-obituary-renowned-sculptor-of-works-that-spoke-to-the-heart/\" target=\"_blank\">Imogen Stuart</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"SS4A74PUQJFLXMGIJYITYO42MI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264511},"content":"Sculptor","type":"header"},{"_id":"E66YYMCAURB4BMLO6YE5KMBPKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264512},"content":"Imogen Stuart was one of Ireland’s leading sculptors and her works can be found in churches and public spaces all over the island. She died on March 24th, aged 96.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TIZQJG655FDVDA6H4Q6NDNH7GQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264513},"content":"She grew up in Germany but came to Ireland in 1949 after meeting her future husband Ian Stuart, son of Francis Stuart and Iseult Gonne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HDBQMU6EJVFETFFNOSDQWALSZ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264514},"content":"Working mainly on church commissions, she honed her distinctive style which was influenced by German expressionism, Romanesque style and early Irish Christian art.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YSNE34TLPVGQZKK34RMS6AYYWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264515},"content":"Her significant church commissions included the Angel of Peace at St Teresa’s Carmelite Church on Dublin’s Clarendon Street, the decorative doors of Galway Cathedral, the altar and baptismal font in UCC’s Honan Chapel, and the monumental sculpture of Pope John Paul II in Maynooth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FOJTB6BI6JGNBEYSPHTIARTXEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264517},"content":"Among her other key works are The Fiddler Of Dooney at Stillorgan Shopping Centre, the Flame Of Human Dignity in the courtyard of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and The Arch Of Peace, in Cavan town.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PMVLRZ7OW5FZBM6LUSBE5GI4WM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264518},"content":"Her numerous awards include the Oireachtas art exhibition award and the ESB Keating McLoughlin Award at the Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibition. She was elected a member of Aosdána in 1981 and a full member of the RHA in 1990. She was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2018 – the highest tribute paid to individuals for services to Germany.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YTSAHG7TLJBQ7BQDC7G3DY3RVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"FZPPLWT4OVHC5K2IK7REOV25EQ"},"content":"In the moment – Derek Scally on artist Imogen Stuart, ‘the last living Prussian’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"KMDHU2CX5NASHAC5U7Z3O5U2BI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264520},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/06/michael-coady-obituary-a-poet-profoundly-at-ease-in-the-world/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Coady</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"A2U6ALDKKNGCTMWUKKIYHBG45M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264521},"content":"Poet, writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"D7SLPAMIWJCDRPBKEMLNC7FWFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264522},"content":"Michael Coady, the poet and short story writer, died at the age of 84 on March 25th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MU4E57QQCREMTNJE5V5YS4O33Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264523},"content":"From Tipperary, he trained as a schoolteacher and saw his first poem published in the New Irish Writing page of the Irish Press. In 1979, he won the Patrick Kavanagh Award – a prize for emerging Irish poets – and Gallery Press published his first collection of poems, Two for a Woman, Three for a Man, soon after.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZYYVXVXARVCJ3FV3QGDQLGIBSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264524},"content":"Five collections followed that first success: Oven Lane (1987, revised edition 2014), All Souls (1997), One Another (2003), Going by Water (2009) and Given Light (2017).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SZ5EJPSWRC5NKLZTLWGOFYMSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264525},"content":"In 2004 he won the Laurence O’Shaughnessy Award, presented by the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, to outstanding Irish poets. His short stories won the Francis McManus Prize and the Listowel Writers’ Week short story award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"34EFUCDETZHG7DLAYYOWE4WZRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264526},"content":"In the 1990s, Arts Council bursaries allowed him to travel to Newfoundland and the United States. He held the Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2005 and he also held a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. He was elected to Aosdána in 1998.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RW5PW4ZTDNBW5AC624G7GG5I4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264527},"content":"As a self-styled “lapsed trombone player’', music was a constant theme in his work and he collaborated with composers such as Rhona Clarke and Bill Whelan. Other publications include a personal memoir of the musicians Packie and Micho Russell, and Full Tide<i>,</i> an illustrated miscellany.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RACRX5MFSREQJCQDHQWGSYFMXQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"LXSVJO7LGNAB3AZZHVI2IK2P5Y"},"content":"Poem: A Sweet Bell Ringing, by Michael Coady – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DUQSYLB7NRCATDBGXRUZPHSA4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264529},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/04/20/joe-kinnear-obituary-archetypal-colourful-cockney-footballer-straight-out-of-crumlin/\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Kinnear</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"BIQ7OR4OHVEM5NYWBGRI7OBXKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264530},"content":"Soccer player, manager","type":"header"},{"_id":"IFCKBR2IDFHZPIZYZKM6ASZWK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264531},"content":"Former Republic of Ireland defender and Wimbledon manager Joe Kinnear died on April 7th, at the age of 77.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VVVHTQJYPJHTTKBYIAT5Z7BEZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264532},"content":"He was born in Crumlin, Dublin, but moved to Hertfordshire in England with his mother when his parents separated. After excelling in schoolboy football, he was playing for St Alban’s City when he was spotted by a Tottenham Hotspur scout and signed. By the age of 20 he was the club’s established right-back and starred in their FA Cup final win over Chelsea at Wembley in May 1967. Kinnear would win several more medals with Spurs: a pair of League Cups in 1971 and 1973, and a Uefa Cup in 1972.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DWZ23SY4OVGHBLF2ADIC3B2ISU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264533},"content":"He made his Ireland debut in a European Championship qualifier against Turkey in Ankara in 1967 and went on to win 26 caps with the Republic of Ireland during his career.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V546R3FFBVGTTFAQGK5LD57MOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264534},"content":"His final playing season was with Brighton before knee trouble forced him to retire in 1976, aged 30.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MPFC6Y3NNRDKBBHA6UU2JVEJJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264535},"content":"He served his coaching apprenticeship as an assistant to Dave Mackay at two clubs in the UAE. He also managed Nepal and India before returning to Britain. Kinnear went on to manage Wimbledon from 1992-1999 until a heart attack led to his resignation. He later returned to work, managing Oxford, Luton, Nottingham Forest and, most recently, Newcastle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DRZNTUPS4RALXOWJL7SM4WEOMM","additional_properties":{"_id":"XOZ7KLAAMBEWLOUOOSCJ5FRUCM"},"content":"Former Ireland international Joe Kinnear dies at the age of 77 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"QDCKGL7NRRBK3KSMJA6H2XULDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264537},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/25/jo-english-obituary-inspiration-to-a-generation-of-sailors/\" target=\"_blank\">Jo English</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"KTK33X4SGFB2JANQCPYDW6OKKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264538},"content":"Sailor","type":"header"},{"_id":"KPZ6EDAHYZEIFF63LLY56ICQHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264539},"content":"Jo English, who died on April 8th, aged 59, was a sailor and co-manager of SailCork, the sailing school based in Cobh.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F4CVVEYBYRDLBFJJR3D5JKAIFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264540},"content":"She studied hotel and catering management in Galway and spent many years in the hospitality business before sailing became her life. She worked in hotels in San Francisco, in the Blarney Park Hotel, the catering department of the Mercy Hospital in Cork and as a manager in Brennan’s catering emporium in the city.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SEC4GD7KNBB6BGH5JM24O6QHLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264541},"content":"An accomplished cook, in the mid-1990s, she opened her own cafe and deli, The Bluebell Nook, in Mallow.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A5TXAVUVWZDVBJDR2YJWW4FFPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800428858},"content":"When she met her husband Eddie English, she gave up her job and joined him in the sailing school. She first completed all the sailing courses the business offered, and later took over a lot of the administration, dividing her time between the business and rearing of their two children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NGVBSUGBZRFV7DUXEIR37GPAII","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800428859},"content":"For almost 20 years the couple ran SailCork’s “sunshine yachting holidays”, bringing groups on chartered boats in the Mediterranean and Caribbean seas. He did the teaching while she did the cooking and she was known for producing exceptional meals from the confined galleys of boats.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q2ETQJJTMBCWLMOILEVUAZIAQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264544},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/04/larry-masterson-obituary-rte-producer-and-social-justice-campaigner/\" target=\"_blank\">Larry Masterson</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"TTR3JNTJT5CY3D3Z7QFDOHK4GY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264545},"content":"Television producer","type":"header"},{"_id":"HMBQXBIINVFBDG6ROP5O25THJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264546},"content":"The RTÉ producer and social justice campaigner Larry Masterson died on April 14th, aged 74.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRW5GRTAA5BEBB2VRTTDULNLDU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264547},"content":"From Dublin’s Gardiner Street, he studied social science at UCD. After attending a talk at Trinity College by a co-founder of the Simon Community in London, he and friends Brian McCarthy and Denis Cahalane set up the Simon Community in Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CLQUEVWP4BBTZCUBDCYS6QH7LQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264548},"content":"After graduating, he worked in social services in Drogheda and appeared on panel shows to discuss the social issues of the day. This led to him being offered a job as a researcher on Bunny Carr’s Encounter. He went on to work with Mike Murphy on the series The Live Mike in the late 1970s and left RTÉ with him in the early 1980s to start Emdee Productions with cinematographer Seamus Deasy. He also worked with Tyrone Productions and produced shows for TG4, Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel among others.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7MZ2JJPO7RCVHC3QGVZHX5KJWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264549},"content":"One of his most significant projects was 2001′s If I Should Fall From Grace with God: The Shane MacGowan Story, which told the story of the Pogues singer and featured interviews with Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Johnny Depp and Sinéad O’Connor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"36X7RBLLKNABHIEEKCIJRW52FY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264550},"content":"He returned to RTÉ as a freelance producer on Brendan O’Connor’s TV debut, The Saturday Night Show and was executive producer on The Late Late Show during the Pat Kenny and Ryan Tubridy years. He retired in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MG3LYFLAYJAQVE64E7PGHT35MQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"IULD3D3AGZA75OVQU2FDFGZKMM"},"content":"Friends, colleagues and family bid farewell to the late, great Larry Masterson – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ETEQUFHLAJDH3OLYX6W6ZWXMTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264552},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/08/teri-hayden-obituary-trailblazing-agent-who-guided-the-careers-of-some-of-irelands-most-successful-actors/\" target=\"_blank\">Teri Hayden</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"UPPGIM4FXFAZ3BSC6A4P6F2CQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264553},"content":"Agent","type":"header"},{"_id":"W45UADJEHFACJCSJF7W3GHGO5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264554},"content":"Teri Hayden, who died April 18th aged 75, was a trailblazing agent who guided the careers of many notable Irish actors including Brendan Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Negga and Gabriel Byrne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6SCDVMFVHZDJZBBM63ZOI7NNMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264555},"content":"Her clients have won Golden Globes, Baftas, Tonys, Oliviers, Emmys and Academy Award nominations, as well as numerous Iftas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMXMYOQ5XNDMZLZ54CJUUPF7LM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264556},"content":"From Derry, she studied economics and finance at Manchester University before working at RTÉ. In the early 1980s she saw an opportunity in the growing demand for actors’ representation in Ireland, predicting that Irish theatre, TV and film was about to expand.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5QFC5IQZP5ED5ECP2MPI2BZPNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264557},"content":"Soon she had become Ireland’s leading talent agent, and rapidly won respect and recognition for her skills. She was known as a fearless negotiator, determined to secure the best possible deal for her clients and she also brokered many projects, even when she had no stake in the productions. Brendan Gleeson dedicated his Ifta win for best supporting actor in The Banshees of Inisherin to Hayden, “who has led me through this minefield of a profession that we embrace for years and years”. Gabriel Byrne credited her with getting him the help he needed when he realised he had a problem with alcohol in the late 1990s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQEGS2P5HBAX3L6UMDTOQZVK2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264558},"content":"She reportedly rejected an offer from an A-list Hollywood agency to buy her out, and the Dublin-based agency is now run by her son Karl.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QSVT4IWF5ZBTXCOA4Q33SEUJOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264559},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/04/ethna-viney-obituary-irish-times-nature-columnist-environmental-and-feminist/\" target=\"_blank\">Ethna Viney</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"CTCY2CPVNJE65FOL3UVIGQSZDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264560},"content":"Nature writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"CWIVY5PKRFBINMTR2QWSJIQH74","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264561},"content":"The nature writer and TV and film producer Ethna Viney died on April 26th, aged 95.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5SNNVH3Y75AENOMG77Y7KJD4SQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264562},"content":"A woman of many careers, she first trained as a pharmacist and ran her own chemist shop in Killala where she also organised a group of women to form a cheese-making co-operative. She later moved to Dublin to study politics and economics in UCD. She married young British journalist Michael Viney in 1965 and worked as a researcher and producer in RTÉ.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SVENZ2BCWFGJNFZJM4GC5HBG3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264563},"content":"When the couple were in their 40s, they relocated to a remote cottage on one acre on the west coast of Mayo. While he began his weekly Another Life column for this paper, she took on many projects. She brought together the fishermen of north Connemara and south Mayo in a co-operative mussel farming project.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D4ZYP2EP3FBBDK732BQIZGYULU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264564},"content":"She was an editor of Technology Ireland and became a freelance writer for this paper on economics and women’s issues. And she was also a founder member of the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN).","type":"text"},{"_id":"U5KAC63QT5HBBN6IXK32H2EJ5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264565},"content":"When Michael’s second column An Eye on Nature – which answers readers’ queries – began, she ran it for years under his name until she was finally acknowledged as the author. She also co-authored Ireland’s Ocean: A Natural History with him. Her documentary-making focused on features that dealt with the human impact on the environment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2JCIIDWFUJGERNZASCFWCDNXRA","additional_properties":{"_id":"744VGPXUWVDTRNBEAWPYO2JO6U"},"content":"Former Irish Times columnist Ethna Viney dies aged 95 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"BJ2YKXTCUBBWJFQX6ZGMMH5KCE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264567},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/18/mary-banotti-obituary-a-talented-politician-and-campaigner-for-social-justice/\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Banotti</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"HO5AGEV2EZFWJH4INSK7CK22CI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264568},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"6UKFM3KK4RGSDJSGFNOSCCUXTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264569},"content":"Mary Banotti was a Fine Gael MEP, a presidential election candidate and a committed campaigner for the rights of women and children. She died on May 10th, just weeks before her 85th birthday.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NYOCXSNKMVBONO2654WTH6CYFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264570},"content":"She trained as a nurse which led to a stint as a development aid worker in Kenya. There she met and married an Italian doctor, Giovanni Banotti. After the marriage broke up, she returned to Dublin with her daughter in 1970 and threw herself into social causes involving the welfare of women.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3K24FTQFUJG7HD2UUV3FRRTTCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264571},"content":"She was a co-founder of Women’s Aid, which opened the first refuges for the victims of domestic violence, and she served as chairwoman of the Rutland Centre. Her appearances on RTÉ led to her selection as a Fine Gael candidate to contest the 1983 Dublin Central byelection. While she failed to win that seat, she went on to win a seat in the European Parliament.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5PYJTU2C2FHOJLBNVYOBNBDVVM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264572},"content":"She continued to campaign for women’s and children’s rights and was the first EU mediator for parentally-abducted children. She was named one of the top 10 environmental legislators in Europe in the late 1980s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOJZKB7RG5FT7JRAAJ6PN4L5QY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264573},"content":"In 1997, she won the Fine Gael nomination to contest the presidency in succession to Mary Robinson but ultimately lost out to Mary McAleese.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZQ2NMB7P7NHSLA6PV4FMXV5XTI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264574},"content":"After 20 years in the European Parliament, she retired in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QJ4FFODLBFBDHDQJLQMPL7MBVY","additional_properties":{"_id":"E2BKI2TFNVD2BFHZNEXKESR2SY"},"content":"Mary Banotti ‘worked fiercely for real change for Irish women’, funeral hears – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GOS6M5XMARDMBKHC5HBZN4HEPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264576},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/06/josephine-bartley-obituary-a-driving-force-in-the-elevation-of-nursing-in-ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Josephine Bartley</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"ISIEGQTCAFHITPODWQ4ZQSX5BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264577},"content":"Nursing director","type":"header"},{"_id":"OTUZKUNEJVFP3FQJJBGEMKYC6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264578},"content":"Josephine Bartley, who served as director of nursing at Beaumont Hospital from its opening in 1987 to her retirement in 1998, died on May 13th, aged 90. She was also a founder member and former dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery in the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI).","type":"text"},{"_id":"3X3COMC2OVEJ7PGSW7JIAI4J2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264579},"content":"The Limerick-born nurse will be remembered as a driving force in the development of education and specialist training for nurses in Ireland during the time when the nursing profession began to have a higher status within the healthcare system.","type":"text"},{"_id":"35RZRFL2INEPRPX2WT6UUPZHSE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264580},"content":"Early in her career, she oversaw training for all registered nurses in regional centres throughout Ireland. During her time as dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the RCSI, the first four-year Bachelor of Nursing degree courses were offered at the college. She also conferred the first honorary fellowship of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery on St Teresa of Calcutta in Rome in 1992.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JKUMZTHLDNGLRIMP2MXDDYKLQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264581},"content":"A woman of strong faith, Bartley acted as matron of the volunteers for the Dublin Diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes each year. She was also an active member of the Guild of Irish Catholic Nurses and represented the International Catholic Committee of Nurses and Medico-Social Assistants at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ITXYXL55RFDK3GY7IH7TV7PVZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264582},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/05/18/tony-oreilly-obituary-irelands-first-business-superstar-whose-spectacular-fall-led-to-bankruptcy/\" target=\"_blank\">Tony O’Reilly</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"O4Q4MVE2ARGMJITYYCRQMT72CI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264583},"content":"Businessman","type":"header"},{"_id":"RGPXPDKTUJHFDN5B5GPVQ5EUOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264584},"content":"Tony O’Reilly was remembered as Ireland’s first business superstar after his death on May 18th, at the age of 88.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VRH4M5CQUREBREOZJ7FA6WONLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264585},"content":"He first came to public attention as a rugby player who earned 29 caps for Ireland, and a record-breaking 37 tries with the British and Irish Lions. He enjoyed early business success as the head of Bord Báinne – the Irish Dairy Board, where he pioneered the dairy brand Kerrygold.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4UU5CNRSFZBDXH7NNPJBFM54VY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264586},"content":"His stewardship of the Irish Sugar Company brought him into the orbit of Heinz and he would go on to become its chief executive. He bought into Independent Newspapers in the 1970s and built it into an international media empire with publications and broadcasting interests in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6S4EVLY2ONABZMULKIAB32HQSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264587},"content":"His business interests took a downturn in the last decade and a half. His attempts to stave off the collapse of the Waterford Wedgwood business saw him suffer a huge financial loss. And he was involved in one of the most high-profile corporate clashes of recent decades when he lost control of Independent News and Media to Denis O’Brien. Once reported to be Ireland’s wealthiest person, he was declared bankrupt in 2015.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SH6ZYKFZ3ZHADM47B5FV3Q7GLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264588},"content":"A generous supporter of the arts and academic institutions, he was also a founder of the US Ireland Funds, which raised funds to promote peace and reconciliation. In 2001 he was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BBR3LHO6OBFL7FVX2G57S7GQ4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":"IHHKQKF3WBHWTP5PTOICE3VRFI"},"content":" Tony O’Reilly: President leads tributes to businessman who ‘touched so many aspects of Irish life’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"ACBQXIDH4JE5HGL2VV7BMELFRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264590},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/01/fran-rooney-obituary-poster-boy-for-the-dotcom-crash-who-regretted-nothing/\" target=\"_blank\">Fran Rooney</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"7MFC4Y65OBHK7FHPDXA3F7HFSU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264591},"content":"Businessman","type":"header"},{"_id":"SQ2EKDPUFBCXBADQAWXVMUWAHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264592},"content":"Fran Rooney, who led Baltimore Technologies to a multibillion-dollar valuation, and went on to lead the FAI, died on May 20th, aged 67.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GLPVSR6EOVCPXOMQXZYVCZBWOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264593},"content":"An accomplished footballer, he played for Home Farm, Shamrock Rovers, St Patrick’s Athletic and Bohemians, and managed the Irish women’s soccer team between 1986 and 1991.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B4XKLDC52BEK3FDXZK2W6JJBMA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264594},"content":"He worked in several government departments and in National Irish Bank, before setting up Meridian International, a VAT processing company. Along with a group of investors, he bought Baltimore Technologies, which specialised in internet security, for the equivalent of about €381,000 in 1996.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7JOSZY27ZFA33JNQGUF5LOIUNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264595},"content":"This coincided with the start of the boom in internet-related companies which led to Baltimore being listed on the Nasdaq in New York in 1999. The company’s market capitalisation ballooned to more than $13 billion (€12 billion) putting Baltimore in the FTSE 100, an index of the most valuable companies on the London market. When the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, the value of the stock collapsed. Efforts to turn around the fortunes of the company failed and he stepped down as chief executive in 2001.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5EZZFKPF5ZCLXAZBVTOMY6NMN4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264596},"content":"He became chief executive of the FAI in 2003, in part to implement the findings of the Genesis report commissioned after the Saipan saga, when Roy Keane left the squad in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup. He left the association in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FQCEK4BYGREUBGZ7WCH7ZZ6U5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"ILHHUFHXJ5CSHNZ3SU2SAQ6G24"},"content":"Former Baltimore Technologies, FAI CEO Fran Rooney has died – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"47OW3L3U3RHKTHWTOFCDIJITI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264598},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/15/joe-joyce-obituary-outstanding-journalist-writer-and-biographer/\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Joyce</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"2HPTR35UDVHOBORIEOA5RYTZEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264599},"content":"Journalist, author","type":"header"},{"_id":"57RR6JLU5BAZ3JWWGDB6QLVISI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264600},"content":"Joe Joyce, who died on June 6th aged 76, was an award-winning investigative journalist and author.","type":"text"},{"_id":"T2JRFK37FJGWPFHDHCQNMEW36E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264601},"content":"His first reporting job was with The Irish Times, where he gravitated towards politics, as well as justice and policing matters. With colleagues Renagh Holohan and Don Buckley he wrote a series of Irish Times investigations into the activities of the Garda’s Murder Squad, known more colloquially as the Heavy Gang.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HEOBOSN2HBFAXFIMGFJQMRJ3HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264602},"content":"Along with Don Buckley, he revealed the Kerry Babies incident in 1984, while writing in the Sunday Independent. They detailed how gardaí had obtained confessions from an entire family to a murder that subsequent forensic evidence proved they could not have committed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O6XDXZZJFZHBTIQIRE7KX33WUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264603},"content":"He twice received the national Journalist of the Year award for his investigative work.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JCL6B5ELVZB6XCJ2KJUNAN2GSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264604},"content":"He left his staff job in 1978 and went freelance, working for Reuters news agency, Hibernia magazine and the Southside newspaper. He also worked for the Sunday Tribune and the Guardian.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MA52C5L6T5FDDET3IDHAH7KD6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264605},"content":"He was co-author, with Peter Murtagh, of The Boss, a biography of the 1982 government of the former Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey, and of Blind Justice, an examination of the Sallins mail train robbery and subsequent investigation.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AZO6SR6JNBB63L3ALNECITLXBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264606},"content":"In later life he became an accomplished author, penning a series of thrillers, historical novels, plays and a biography of the Guinness family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WMNU36IG7ZFSPJFLGTDNSH6OKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"JM5RYEXYVRDIVO2MCJRIDRJLH4"},"content":"Joe Joyce: The quiet man who was a great journalist, funeral told – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"BKLIBVTWBNGO7ODJUVSC4J4LCY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264608},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/22/charlie-lennon-obituary-influential-composer-and-musician-who-never-stopped-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">Charlie Lennon</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"A4FZETRJVNEZFEKWKZCI6FQ6A4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264609},"content":"Musician","type":"header"},{"_id":"5NR4YSFA5NCM3JPD2VZECHHHCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264610},"content":"Charlie Lennon, who died on June 8th, was a traditional musician and prolific composer. He died a month before his 86th birthday and just a few nights after a memorable concert performance by fiddle player Martin Hayes in Lennon’s Stiúideo Cuan, in Spiddal.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBWERMI5DZEPDHU2EXRJRX7SJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264611},"content":"Originally from Kiltyclogher, Co Leitrim, he studied classical piano but couldn’t resist his first love, the fiddle.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YCGUKYKVKFHK7DHWH4PP3WVZLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264612},"content":"He embarked on a professional career as a musician as a young teen, touring with bands across Ireland and the UK, playing a wide mix of styles including English and Scottish country music.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZWTQFDDB6BD4PPRVM27U6C2LSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264613},"content":"He later returned to education and excelled academically, receiving his PhD in nuclear physics in 1969. While he worked as a software and management consultant, he pursued a parallel life as a prolific performer, recording artist and composer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XBMRFITPWVD4VIFDRKCBCLTIQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264614},"content":"Lennon recorded more than 50 albums, both as a fiddle player and as a piano accompanist. He regularly played with Matt Molloy, Mick O’Connor, Johnny Connolly, Joe Burke and many others, and his tunes were sought out by musicians such as Frankie Gavin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WQPEAKKH2NB6TNAKUO625JIIOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264615},"content":"He began to compose orchestral works in the 1980s, leading in 1991 to the performance of Bainis Oileáin/Island Wedding, by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Later orchestral works included The Famine Suite and Áille na hÁille. He was awarded the TG4 Gradam Ceoil for Composer of the Year in 2006.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GCSUGBWZCRDXRBS3Z7LC4BZTKA","additional_properties":{"_id":"IPFNVSKPXNENXLEJS3EL3TDLEU"},"content":"Irish traditional musician Charlie Lennon has died aged 85 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HG44ANZF4BGS3ICZNO76KDJEOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264617},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/22/paul-mackay-obituary-one-of-four-founders-of-the-progressive-democrats/\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Mackay</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"LCZIAGILEZAW5A3XYARDFL6ZIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264618},"content":"Co-founder of the Progressive Democrats","type":"header"},{"_id":"U65LLDJAJVG3VBP7PCXE4QFN4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264619},"content":"Paul Mackay, who died on June 11th aged 83, was one of co-founders of the Progressive Democrats (PDs), along with Des O’Malley, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S24HRISUU5FNVHEEAR4LGV7FFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264620},"content":"He qualified as a chartered accountant in 1965 and began a private practice specialising in corporate recovery in 1971.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BNZB3UUXTFCN7H67QWOZCCBJGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264621},"content":"An admirer of Seán Lemass, he joined the Clontarf cumann of Fianna Fáil in the 1960s. He was made auditor of the party finances in Charlie Haughey’s Dublin North East constituency in 1981, but after he asked to see the accounts, a dispute followed and he was dismissed in May 1983.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HBWEPHP3ABBD5KK3DHBMGNRQLA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264622},"content":"Two years later Des O’Malley was also expelled from Fianna Fáil and Mackay told him he would have strong support should he form a new political party. The party was formed at Mackay’s home in December 1985 and a reluctant O’Malley agree to lead it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6ZPRZ77KAVGNZAEMHKNX3HQTIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264623},"content":"Mackay raised the bank loan for party headquarters in Dublin’s South Frederick Street and played a central role in the 1987 general election when the PDs won 14 seats. He was director of elections in the 1989 contest which saw the party reduced to six seats but ended up into government with Fianna Fáil.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTACDZP56JGNDMSGARUJFZPIWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264624},"content":"Over the following two decades, Mackay played a leading role in the PDs as treasurer and election strategist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5AAZEBJ3W5E65BHB42LZMREJNY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264625},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/29/tommie-gorman-obituary-veteran-journalist-covered-a-pivotal-period-in-northern-irish-politics/\" target=\"_blank\">Tommie Gorman</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"4RKEYVDCLZFENDJ4F5QSWBZCYM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264626},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"Y47SJZYRF5AR3JQYJK4QN4FC7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264627},"content":"Tommie Gorman died on June 25th, three years after he retired from his role as RTÉ's Northern Editor. The Sligo-born journalist was 68 years of age.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWDZQMP3BFDILJOOZHCLIBRGVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264628},"content":"His first byline as a journalist appeared in The Sligo Champion, over match reports on his beloved Sligo Rovers’ games in Dublin, when he was studying journalism in the College of Commerce, Rathmines. He went on to work as a correspondent for the Western Journal and became its editor aged 23. He joined RTÉ in 1980 as its northwest correspondent. In 1989, he moved to Brussels to become its Europe correspondent.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HQFAHKI2NZAT7DG5GKIFB5YC2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264629},"content":"In 1994 he was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumours, a rare form of cancer, and lived stoically with it for 30 years. He highlighted his success in accessing treatment for his illness in Sweden via an EU scheme, which encouraged others to explore this option.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XAZ37UQHZDQHHZ7FBCILF6ZTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264630},"content":"As RTÉ's Northern editor, he reported on Stormont politics from 2001 and earned the trust of leading politicians across the political spectrum. He also landed one of the most memorable sporting scoops when he secured an interview with footballer Roy Keane after he left Saipan in the build-up to the 2002 World Cup.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQ46MW346NFZXAXNTGAPOOM72Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264631},"content":"He retired from RTÉ in March 2021. He made several documentaries, the last of which was Ireland, Cancer and Me, a personal account of living with neuroendocrine tumours.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5XZEFBBZY5FCVMKD3DICBCDPII","additional_properties":{"_id":"MSFZPDNX6VBMXB7PEDNEMXLE6U"},"content":"Tommie Gorman funeral told there was nobody he could not connect with – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XD6637AVUVC6HNUWERIPEWOHKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255796},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/06/25/micheal-o-muircheartaigh-obituary-gaa-commentator-whose-voice-was-central-to-the-all-ireland-championship/\" target=\"_blank\">Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"YOW5TV2BTBG4RAAHVYYNCKV43A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264634},"content":"Broadcaster","type":"header"},{"_id":"SP55PPU4IVDBNEMM3Y5W67I7HE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264635},"content":"Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s voice was a constant summer companion for generations of GAA supporters. He made his radio debut in 1949 and commentated on his last All-Ireland final on television in 2010, earning himself a place in the Guinness World Records for his longevity. He was as popular for his GAA knowledge as for his unique turn of phrase and distinctive Kerry lilt.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FTD4W473NJAFJHO5SRX37CO2MA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264636},"content":"His passion for Gaelic games was matched only by his love for the Irish language and his native Kerry. He was a student teacher when he broadcast the 1949 Railway Cup football final and he combined broadcasting work with teaching until 1981 when he took up a full-time post with Raidió na Gaeltachta.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HOOITV4K2VHL7KPXUU4SE7ZNLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264637},"content":"He took part in RTÉ's first television broadcast of the All-Ireland hurling final in 1962, alternating Irish language commentary with Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin doing English. In 1964 he took over the live television coverage as Gaeilge of All-Ireland minor finals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JV6BWM4EINCWNF2YA4A7LV3EIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264638},"content":"From 1985, he broadcast English radio commentary on all All-Ireland senior finals – a total of 55, including replays. His friend, Raidió na Gaeltachta commentator Micheál Ó Sé, told his funeral mass that his gifts as a broadcaster would remain unequalled. “The microphone in his hand was like the brush in the hand of a great master,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"THBET33UTZD4LEQTQCGOUE6FSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264639},"content":"Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh died on June 25th, aged 93.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H2JUPLYZEFHKHIUTMNU3TMMC7I","additional_properties":{"_id":"XST7RW43BVH33OC2GVDN4Y7U5I"},"content":"Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh: People felt they knew him and that he knew them too – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"2DURK52IY5EI3DCBMQM6OIKAFY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264642},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/27/judge-elizabeth-macgrath-obituary-a-fierce-defender-of-the-judiciary-who-believed-in-second-chances/\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth MacGrath</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"SU5OCDP27BCU3MFUBPEC5C6464","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264643},"content":"Judge","type":"header"},{"_id":"KPCT5YJYTRHYTINKKTNJWBUEMI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264644},"content":"District Court judge Elizabeth (Liz) MacGrath died on July 3rd, aged 65, after a short illness. She began practising as a solicitor in the mid-1980s in the firm established by her grandfather and county solicitor for Tipperary, Patrick MacGrath. In 1989, she set up her own solicitor practice, MacGrath and Co, in Nenagh, taking on cases in criminal and civil litigation, family law, probate and conveyancing. She also represented the local authority in planning, environmental and regulatory matters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ASYMWXYDIBBJVK6RJLQQ2SNKOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264645},"content":"She was appointed as judge of the District Court in 2007, and in 2012 she was assigned to District Court 8, which covers her home county of Tipperary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DR67ONWS7RB4BE25XXV47M2VUA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264646},"content":"MacGrath had a reputation as a straightforward and reasonable criminal judge and was not afraid to speak publicly on legal matters and in defence of her profession. In 2016, she spoke out about the limitations of the judicial system to enforce drink-driving legislation and to prosecute drunken drivers. She also wrote so-called bench books for judges on her experiences of case law and legislation – particularly in relation to drink driving.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3XN5CBQTZNBP3BGGSRWMQ4IANM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264647},"content":"She was president of the District Judges Association and was the elected District Court representative on the board of the Judicial Council, which promotes high standards of conduct among judges.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIBFXTTVPZA55PJZQSFYQPC3YQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"4OD63OFG7VAGNJCQ6ECS7S4ZSY"},"content":"Judge Elizabeth MacGrath had a ‘passion for justice’, funeral hears – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XAUTCCGZCVGARBJNA2UR6OBIXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255811},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/13/john-omahony-obituary-influential-figure-in-gaa-and-politics/\" target=\"_blank\">John O’Mahony</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"FIHCOIQQVNA2HDBUH6K7UPCDBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264651},"content":"Football manager, politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"XOOZR22YSNHMPASBKC4NS54D4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264652},"content":"The All-Ireland winning manager and Fine Gael TD and senator John O’Mahony died on July 6th, aged 71.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U2J7UJWTKFHW7HVDEWYT7QN73Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264653},"content":"As a player he won a minor All-Ireland medal with Mayo in 1971, and an U21 medal in 1974. He would go on to manage the U21 team and led the county to the 1983 All-Ireland U21 title.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RYYBM4ZPZFELPHNPBRKNKWNSLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264654},"content":"He was an early adopter of the inclusion of sports psychology and performance coaching with his teams and he earned his reputation as a pioneering leader with a series of historic triumphs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D5TDKNORJJHNRI6JKTC5NCP46E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264655},"content":"In 1989, he brought Mayo to a first senior All-Ireland final in 38 years. His leadership saw Leitrim winning a first Connacht championship in 67 years in 1994, while he led Galway to its first Sam Maguire in 32 years in 1998, and another in 2001.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EOT6TBZQWVE65L6OAWN3PD6TSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264656},"content":"He took over Mayo for a second term in 2007 and won the Connacht championship in 2009. He was also a respected pundit in local and national media outlets, including as a columnist for this newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OJM2CGZXCBCAZCAXIXTPRUIPGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264657},"content":"He won a seat for Fine Gael in the 2007 general election and was re-elected in 2011. After constituency lines were redrawn, he lost out on a seat in Galway West but went on to serve in the Seanad from 2016 to 2020.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VZG7QSKIZZDHVLXYTHVZM7QB5I","additional_properties":{"_id":"EOKNGYTOOJGWJPY5XQSELI7EBY"},"content":" Seán Moran: John O’Mahony — a life raising bars and awaking the west – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5KEQCPB4DFHOVBLTOCM7S74VTM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264660},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/20/hugh-geoghegan-obituary-popular-retired-supreme-court-judge-who-had-a-charmed-life/\" target=\"_blank\">Hugh Geoghegan</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"Z4FV4MJFO5G7VCEP6I243A4ZAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264661},"content":"Judge","type":"header"},{"_id":"BY7BV7WT2NBKLILH6YFJJADGDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264662},"content":"The barrister and Supreme Court judge Hugh Geoghegan died on July 7th, aged 86.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBANYWWQLFANNOYOP5ASOIC5DE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264663},"content":"He came from a long line of legal experts that dated back to the 1840s. His father James was a minister for justice, attorney general and Supreme Court judge. His wife Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan was also a Supreme Court judge, and two of their children became barristers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IKDMWYWTOVDALGSQRVOD6WIEUQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264664},"content":"He was called to the Bar in 1962 and became a senior counsel in 1977, practising in Dublin and the Midland Circuit. He appeared as counsel before the tribunal into the Stardust fire disaster and chaired a commission that recommended the formation of the Labour Relations Commission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HVN4VUGJDBDFTBB3VFKMBJFAKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264665},"content":"From 1984, he combined a busy practice with service as Public Service Arbitrator and was known for his courtesy and fairness to all parties.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CSWZ2RYTANFQJI2U23WFQJCUPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264666},"content":"He was appointed a judge of the High Court in 1992 and became a judge of the Supreme Court eight years later. When he retired in 2010, he was feted as one of the most respected and well-loved judges of his time, whose judgments were infused with humanity and compassion. He went on to chair the Barristers’ Professional Conduct Appeals Board and was the Independent Appeals Commissioner for the College of Surgeons. He was active in the Irish Legal History Society and wrote several ground-breaking essays on the early legal history of independent Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZUES65YFF5F67NEJYTTRC3SRVE","additional_properties":{"_id":"3X72Q46KLBEFHCS2D3CYS7ARS4"},"content":"Retired Supreme Court judge Hugh Geoghegan remembered at funeral Mass as man ‘of boundless curiosity’ – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5ZNZBFHNAZD4ZLPLAOUW5QPZJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264669},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/03/justin-kilcullen-obituary-an-architect-of-buildings-and-human-rights-campaigns/\" target=\"_blank\">Justin Kilcullen</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"NOWTHKRZN5CMBEAYKUISWO7YDE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264670},"content":"Charity worker","type":"header"},{"_id":"UZPLJJJGKJBK7NKZ6HS4RUE7QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264671},"content":"Justin Kilcullen was the public face of Trócaire, the overseas development agency of the Catholic Church, but he also supported numerous organisations helping disadvantaged people. He died on July 16th, aged 73.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QW5FPUBVWVGL3HWMXPRWTF2EK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264672},"content":"A trained architect, he was inspired by his two Jesuit missionary uncles to work with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Tanzania. He later worked with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, where he helped develop housing facilities for Vietnamese boat-people and Cambodian refugees. In 2002, he was awarded the Robert Matthew Prize by the International Union of Architects for his work on human settlements. On his return to Ireland, he worked with the Voluntary Housing Association movement in Belfast to refurbish inner-city housing on the Falls and Shankill Roads.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AJHHRCO2CBHWNNUWDCS5MQSMKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264673},"content":"He joined Trócaire in 1981 as Africa programme officer and was appointed executive director in 1993. He held that position for 20 years until his retirement in 2013. In 2019, he was awarded a papal knighthood of the Order of St Gregory the Great for people of distinguished character, reputation and accomplishment. Caoimhe de Barra, current chief executive of Trócaire, said he had “a passion for justice and a deep belief in the dignity and rights of every human being which drove and defined him”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5NPSEQV4FGCZHOEFW5AJPILI4","additional_properties":{"_id":"RYNDZNFYDJFWVFSJ25U6ARNFYU"},"content":"Tributes paid to former Trócaire head Justin Kilcullen following his death – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GLOHLLFVZZDF5NZFKQAKULSLQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264676},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/07/28/edna-obrien-obituary-flamboyant-fearless-and-outspoken-irish-writer/\" target=\"_blank\">Edna O’Brien</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"COSZG2PWKZGSXGMZLQRUSCEMCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264677},"content":"Writer","type":"header"},{"_id":"K63XBBBTR5DYVAI2NDMFOTH3HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264678},"content":"Edna O’Brien, the novelist, short-story writer, playwright and screenwriter died on July 27th, aged 93. Her trilogy of novels which debuted in the early 1960s – The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl [later renamed Girl with Green Eyes] and Girls in Their Married Bliss – were banned by the Irish censorship board.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IYATSRSTVNG63KPOSMP4QM2TFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264679},"content":"She wrote more than 20 novels, biographies of James Joyce and Lord Byron, plays, screenplays and a memoir.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GKMOIRO4IZA5LMBI37Y6O4UHWI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264680},"content":"Born in Tuamgraney, Co Clare, she had a well-publicised love-hate relationship with her native country and lived abroad for most of her life. She never baulked at tackling difficult subjects and themes of her later novels included murder, terrorism and rape. Her final novel, Girl, was published in her late 80s, and involved her travelling to Nigeria to carry out research.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ITGH2NHRPVGEHBSQRR6DB6VKQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264681},"content":"Among her numerous awards were the Kingsley Amis Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the European Prize for Literature and the Pen Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. She was also a member of Aosdána and was elected as a Saoi (wise one) in 2015.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SK2NWC6NPRCNVPAS54Q3PQWWLI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264682},"content":"President Michael D Higgins said she was “a fearless teller of truths” and “one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SGHJ7KQHU5AATCZCEP4ITVBRQU","additional_properties":{"_id":"QEJOHGZSV5CGDNLC5O2HIVC4EM"},"content":"Anne Enright on Edna O’Brien: She never left Ireland, yet couldn’t live here either – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3HHUJDKDSZGVDIRHB3S6E2PIQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255842},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/10/leigh-gath-obituary-a-thalidomide-survivor-who-became-a-tireless-advocate-for-people-with-disabilities/\" target=\"_blank\">Leigh Gath</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"OCQL72TWFZDP3A5CYOSTOJWWUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264686},"content":"Disability campaigner","type":"header"},{"_id":"RMXY37EJ7BBNHL4FHMMXE2BBUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264687},"content":"Leigh Gath, who died on July 27th, aged 62, was a thalidomide survivor who spent her adult life campaigning for the rights of people with disabilities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIOP6MJOIBF53D4FTRHNR7SLXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264688},"content":"She was born with shortened arms and legs, due to the side effects of the morning sickness drug thalidomide. Growing up in Newry, Co Down, she advocated for those who didn’t have the confidence to speak up for themselves. When she was campaigning for accessible footpaths, she led local MP Enoch Powell down the centre of a busy street to show him the obstacles facing wheelchair-users.","type":"text"},{"_id":"65CXAYWO4JHG5DQIOM4HQHKMS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264689},"content":"In 1991 she married her first husband and the couple later moved to Texas. After they divorced, she met and married a fellow thalidomide survivor, Irish man Eugene Gath, in 2003. The family returned to live in Co Limerick in 2006 and she became involved in disability issues. In 2012 she led a sleep-out outside the Department of the Taoiseach to protest against cuts to personal assistance and home-help services for people with disabilities.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMVXSOV7BJH7DKIFHTTYUZYAUA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264690},"content":"She was appointed the HSE’s first confidential recipient in late 2014, following the abuse scandal in the Áras Attracta centre for adults with intellectual disabilities in Co Mayo. Her job involved examining concerns relating to HSE-funded services for people with disabilities and older people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FLK67BQWZZFPVEPO3NCCXUSZUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264691},"content":"Her autobiography, Don’t Tell Me I Can’t, was published in 2012.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IBJ26CMMEZDQNMOFZ2HTIZVZPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"FWBWGRBI3ZFVFDRUGIQDTWPFVY"},"content":"‘She gave a voice to many’: Disability campaigner Leigh Gath dies – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"DX4F5TIRFVEUTFUIK2SNS3HIPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264694},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/17/aidan-oleary-obituary-outstanding-irish-humanitarian-who-led-who-polio-eradication-programme/\" target=\"_blank\">Aidan O’Leary</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"X56ZHM2AINECREE5H6O6B2SSAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264695},"content":"Aid worker","type":"header"},{"_id":"D2EYZLOVPRHP7CGHW5JVWEJQ3I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264696},"content":"Aidan O’Leary, the Irish director of the World Health Organisation’s polio eradication programme, died on August 6th aged 59. Known for his collaborative leadership style and his ability to solve complex problems, he worked in war-torn parts of the world including Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.","type":"text"},{"_id":"23KK5352ZFHZZBFCY5FIDYLASY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264697},"content":"The Dubliner joined the Irish Army in 1983 and served initially in the Supply and Transport Corps in Cork and Dublin. As part of his military service, he completed a degree and master’s in economics and also studied chartered accountancy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U67WSXXCDJDPVACZXQW55WKQBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264698},"content":"He was seconded to the Department of Finance in 1991 as a policy analyst for a year and became the right-hand man of the chiefs of staff as a strategic planner. During this period, O’Leary did two tours to Lebanon and one to Yugoslavia. He was promoted to captain during this period.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LVMTNDIQ7JD2XFTHIC62P4XCJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264699},"content":"In 2000, he was headhunted to work for the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He went on to work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency with Palestinian refugees, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) and finally the WHO. He moved to Geneva to head its polio eradication programme in 2021. One of his last tasks involved preparing for two rounds of polio vaccination campaigns for young children in Gaza.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ENGWITVQUZE4HKXE5QIXC6JBK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264701},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/08/21/nell-mccafferty-obituary-journalist-and-feminist-campaigner/\" target=\"_blank\">Nell McCafferty</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"BATFQJORXVH5VJJTPEC3MLUZM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264702},"content":"Journalist, campaigner","type":"header"},{"_id":"A37G2Z54BVFX5GOLZHAMURGI4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264703},"content":"Nell McCafferty was remembered as a fierce and feisty campaigning journalist and author when she died on August 21st aged 80.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGZDDHT2ZFGLPC62ZOPZVHPYLE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264704},"content":"From the Bogside in Derry, she fought for equal rights for women and gay people and railed against social injustice. She became involved in civil rights politics as a student at Queen’s University Belfast in the 1960s, before becoming a journalist with The Irish Times and a founder member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. She was on the famous contraceptive train which brought condoms and pills from Belfast to Dublin, where they were illegal, in 1971.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JKGIX52F2JDULPTLCIFKUF5TMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264705},"content":"Her reports from the courts in the In the Eyes of the Law series broke new ground between 1970 and 1980. In vivid, searing and humorous prose she brought a fresh insight into what was happening in the courts.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNUNC4TR2FEIBAOJBUVUPACQOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264706},"content":"Among her noted works were the book A Woman to Blame, on the ordeal of Joanne Hayes in the Kerry babies’ case, and The Armagh Women, on woman republican prisoners and their hunger strikes in Armagh jail. She also wrote for In Dublin, the Sunday Tribune and Hot Press and was a regular contributor to news and current affairs shows.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LB5ULPIECNBYLNYPAIS2HQHY5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264707},"content":"Veteran civil rights campaigner Eamon McCann said she had changed the world “and in the course of that she entranced as many women as she alarmed men ... they had never seen or heard the like of her”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5NUUHCUOE5GNNGGPAQA3FG2DUA","additional_properties":{"_id":"N7KOA2S3EJHJHEM42AKL2QV63E"},"content":"Olivia O’Leary: It could be terrifying to be with Nell McCafferty. You never knew what she was going to do or say – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"3IZVRWDAC5CEXGLGEJEYT3BW2E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264710},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/09/07/sr-theresa-kane-obituary-irish-american-nun-who-challenged-pope-and-embraced-feminism/\" target=\"_blank\">Sr Theresa Kane</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"XDAXYQ22NRAYDJM2S2GA22UH24","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264711},"content":"Nun, campaigner","type":"header"},{"_id":"27HAWACYXJELXGCIAEBUFZ2JJM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264712},"content":"Sr Theresa Kane, who died on August 22nd aged 87, was a Catholic nun who publicly challenged Pope John Paul II to allow women to become priests.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZJ7UWYZJO5DADCR7GU4Q2PBZ54","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264713},"content":"The Irish-American was just 27 when she was named chief executive of St Francis Hospital in Port Jervis, New York. She became the head of the Sisters of Mercy’s New York province a few years later, and in 1977, president of the entire order. She was also president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q7SGTC55QRCBLLTFXHX53GRIFU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264714},"content":"In 1979, she was chosen to give a welcome address for Pope John Paul II during his Washington visit. A few days earlier, in Philadelphia, he had made his opposition to the ordination of women clear. Not to be dissuaded she told him that, in order to join the pope in his mission, women needed to be equal participants within the church hierarchy.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EXPT7IC4QZC7PFT7N75D3K67HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264715},"content":"Sr Theresa’s address was televised and was front page news in the New York Times and in this newspaper. She faced a backlash after her speech, as did the groups she led, under both Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GQRCW234NZH5DDK7UIAMVWSCUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264716},"content":"She was a leading figure among progressive Catholic women and took liberal positions on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. She was among the first prominent church figures to champion the rights of LGBTQ+ Catholics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7XSSCW4O3JBV3F53CCHPECFLHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264718},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/09/28/paul-good-obituary-cofounder-of-one-of-the-countrys-most-prominent-commercial-and-residential-property-agencies/\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Good</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"OI24CUGFORH43GVT75BFZSUEKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264719},"content":"Estate agent, mediator","type":"header"},{"_id":"DI4KIKTVBZAERNL3N4UIQTY6J4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264720},"content":"Paul Good, the co-founder of Douglas Newman Good (DNG) property agency, died on August 24th, aged 83. Widely respected within the property industry, he was renowned for his expertise in arbitration, mediation, compulsory purchase order negotiations and commercial valuations.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXBJRKC5FBCBPDDQS6HSOPC2TQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264721},"content":"He initially studied architecture before switching to quantity surveying. The firms he worked with included Donal O’Buachalla, Jones Lang LaSalle, Lisneys, Dublin Corporation and Druker Fanning. In 1982 he joined forces with Edmund Douglas and Paul Newman to establish DNG, which went on to be one of the country’s leading commercial and residential property agencies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFOBFZJIKBHNVI5JNARJAY7SBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264722},"content":"In 1994 Good left DNG to work for himself. During the following three decades, he did commercial and residential sales and rental valuations and acted as a mediator in disputes between landlords and tenants, and homeowners faced with compulsory purchase orders. He was also an independent expert for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, the now defunct Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute and the Law Society.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBFDNN3TJBHMFM7ZPSSYU4RBXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264723},"content":"Between 2009-2011, while the financial crisis was raging, he reviewed more than 100 projects for WK Nowlan Consortium on behalf of the National Asset Management Agency. He was also a member of the Private Residential Tenancies Board’s Dispute Resolution Committee.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WW6LZNDTTNEZBCTYQSKNLYM5GU","additional_properties":{"_id":"2O722OXUCNFWXPPVUUJ6PFGGQQ"},"content":"Paul Good, co-founder of DNG, dies aged 83 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OK7LVKI4PNF4NHS6C3QRCNQT64","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264726},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/12/fred-johnston-obituary-poet-who-helped-found-cuirt-literary-festival/\" target=\"_blank\">Fred Johnston</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"IDMZSWGRVFEZPBATXRIGZWZPCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264727},"content":"Poet","type":"header"},{"_id":"344Y66HI6ZGSFPHQTNUJKVNFTU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264728},"content":"Fred Johnston, the Belfast-born poet, died on September 9th, shortly before his 73rd birthday. He was also a translator, literary critic, musician and human-rights campaigner.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AXTQRJG7NFHINAGRFMWJH6MTOM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264729},"content":"He moved to Dublin in 1969 and was awarded a Hennessy Prize in the New Irish Writing section of the Irish Press three years later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6AKESQZJBDS5MNITP55HSJ6OU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264730},"content":"He settled in Galway in 1978 after attending a writer’s workshop there. Johnston’s first book of poetry, Life and Death in the Midlands, and his first collection of short stories, Portrait of a Girl in a Spanish Hat, were published the following year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2VTJCBMDLFFCXPHP62CCGIBGAI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264731},"content":"He was one of the founders of the Cúirt Festival of Poetry and also set up the Western Writers’ Centre. In total, he produced three novels, four volumes of short stories, nine books of poetry and a play. His work as a critic was published in Poetry Ireland, The New Statesman, The Spectator, The Irish Times and Harper’s and Queen magazine.","type":"text"},{"_id":"M7I6JE2HCBHMVAMVIVL7ZMOYJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264732},"content":"A year spent in Algeria fostered his love of French and he later became a translator of the work of the Senegalese poet Babacar Sall and the Breton Colette Witorski. He was awarded the Prix de l’Ambassade by the French government in 2000 and was writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco in 2004.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IMVA5T5WNVHOREA63YNG5YBSEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"DXGIMK366NDKRJQB5SO74CAQX4"},"content":"Singing an Irish song of parting and loss – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TF6GPKNTZ5G6ZLEYHDKAL3S6GE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264736},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/12/john-odriscoll-obituary-garda-who-broke-the-grip-of-gangland-figures/\" target=\"_blank\">John O’Driscoll</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"X3OHDKA2Q5DKNONO6HXFK5NO6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255887},"content":"Garda","type":"header"},{"_id":"S4AE3AMLTBDKXO37YCNN4TEH5Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264737},"content":"Assistant commissioner of An Garda Síochána John O’Driscoll was remembered as a gifted leader and a skilled communicator, after his sudden death on September 27th, aged 64.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WJUHX5AUDBC2LDQF53T3ARBK2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264738},"content":"He was credited with providing the leadership that helped gardaí to break the grip of gangland figures and seriously disrupt the activities of criminals such as the Kinahan family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DK7IAXQ635GRPN5TN622FRIMH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264739},"content":"He joined the guards in 1981 and his early Garda career centred around the Dublin Metropolitan Area, chiefly Fitzgibbon Street, Store Street, and the Bridewell where he was inspector. While working in the north inner city, he put huge efforts into fostering links with the community and steering young people towards sport whenever possible.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A2KEGHQQ4RFLDFAEBFPRF36I7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264740},"content":"In 2000, he was transferred into the Garda National Immigration Bureau and was asked to lead the office in 2009. He had been promoted to chief superintendent at this stage and he oversaw prosecutions against child traffickers and people smuggling.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4D3LNEOC5RHKDA5IW5UNNMLRC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264741},"content":"He took over as head of the National Drugs Unit in 2014 and became head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation the following year. His promotion to assistant commissioner in 2016 gave him the responsibility for combating organised and serious crime and made him the public face of these Garda operations.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4UH2RXTZURA55M55FY4G44IVXE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264742},"content":"After 41 years of service, he retired in 2022. His memoir, On Duty: Reflections on a Life in the Guards, was published after his death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3PYBNTO3EVCNNKGWBP36UIQSWA","additional_properties":{"_id":"H27AIMWACZB57D43U6KKBNTURY"},"content":"‘Fearless and dedicated’: Former Garda John O’Driscoll was a true patriot and family man, funeral hears – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GWE2OTD5I5FUBA2USBD23FJA7Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264745},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/10/03/mary-orourke-obituary-fianna-fail-grandee-blessed-with-deep-political-stamina/?\" target=\"_blank\">Mary O’Rourke</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"MKRIZ63YBVCSRPZZ26FL3OOKC4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264746},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"QZOXLQD3KNFDHLO36TP4WXC37Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264747},"content":"Mary O’Rourke, who died aged 87 on October 3rd, held senior positions in government and opposition for 30 years. After her political career ended, she remained in the public eye as a media pundit and author of a bestselling memoir.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SYY4SODICRGT5L6ETN4ED6P4E4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264748},"content":"While she came from a leading Fianna Fáil family – the Lenihans of Athlone – she carved out a political career on her own merits. She served in several senior ministries, including education and public enterprise, and was deputy leader of Fianna Fáil from 1994 to 2002.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XH55JDVRBREVDMSEWZZFFTUMKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264749},"content":"When Charlie Haughey appointed her as minister for education after the 1987 general election, the minister for foreign affairs was her brother Brian Lenihan. They remain the only brother and sister to have served together in Cabinet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5HXPT35LKFHNXGAFU3VEQ3YG7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264750},"content":"She was one of the shock losers in the 2002 general election but was elected to the Seanad and became leader of the House.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6F5MZCM6GNBUTMUC2EWHNGLTYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264751},"content":"O’Rourke relished the cut and thrust of politics, enjoying spats with opponents and the intrigue that went with internal party manoeuvring. She cultivated good relationships with political journalists in Leinster House and was always a lively and entertaining guest on current affairs shows.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KYK7WYN255GLNBN64SDQM5UH7E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264752},"content":"Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said she was a “a commanding and engaging figure – an insightful observer of both political life and societal trends”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GLKS4RU3ONH2RGMUMQTFQOW5T4","additional_properties":{"_id":"DPRV6M73S5EQPFRXWR7U4OFZXA"},"content":"Mary O’Rourke laid the critical groundwork for State’s success in tech – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"KDEWEHXKUFBPZOACD46YRWHMNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264755},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/09/david-davin-power-obituary-a-trusted-and-impartial-political-correspondent-for-rte-during-a-golden-era-in-broadcasting/\" target=\"_blank\">David Davin-Power</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"EFLCV5TJDNHQDMF6D7ZQUBGVS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264756},"content":"Journalist","type":"header"},{"_id":"TUNVMJG2CBB63EP36T32MTKTDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264757},"content":"David Davin-Power had a long and varied career in the media and was known for reporting on some of the momentous events in modern history in an incisive and impartial manner. He was 72 when he died on October 31st.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TQZH7XB7DNDITMRZE2HIX7ENAY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264758},"content":"He began his career in journalism with the Irish Medical Times, and in 1976 he moved to the Irish Press as a subeditor, where one of his colleagues was David Hanly. The two of them moved to RTÉ in the late 1970s and were appointed as the first presenters of Morning Ireland which went on air in November 1984. The radio programme quickly developed a wide listenership, making household names of its two presenters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPKQCNUDFNHLNO246IIJLKT4LA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264759},"content":"He left RTÉ to head the news operation of Ireland’s first commercial broadcaster, Century Radio in 1989. After the station closed, he was appointed political correspondent at the Evening Press, and almost simultaneously, RTÉ offered him the job of Northern Correspondent. He decided that broadcasting was where his future lay and headed for Belfast. His time in Northern Ireland coincided with a crucial period for the evolving peace process and he kept listeners and viewers up to date with the events that ultimately led to the Belfast Agreement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ESZRAFEN5BDXPJJSJGCHZHMKVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264760},"content":"In 2001 he returned to Dublin and held the role of RTÉ's political correspondent for 16 years. His calm demeanour and precise use of language were the hallmarks of his broadcasting style.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PYAXDIYWZ5DEZOC5FX4S7ENAJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"757Q2AEMAVBNVH7QIS3CZRJ3HQ"},"content":"Bryan Dobson: David Davin-Power was a natural storyteller in both professional and personal life – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OE2U2OQKFBHTHGW6XHGX7C2DK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255911},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/12/kathleen-watkins-obituary-broadcaster-author-and-one-half-of-the-original-power-couple/\" target=\"_blank\">Kathleen Watkins</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"ZL3U4W2HMNB6DOQG6T2BMW3NUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264764},"content":"Author, broadcaster, musician","type":"header"},{"_id":"TUUZOSGO7NFHRB6EEHHOSFGFKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264765},"content":"Kathleen Watkins was a broadcaster, award-winning author, musician and patron of the arts. Her death, on November 7th at the age of 90, came almost five years to the day after the death of her husband, broadcaster Gay Byrne. They were television’s golden couple and were familiar faces at arts and cultural events in Dublin for many decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4G4VCN4Z2VFF7EIOIFJV3ON6XA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264766},"content":"She was an accomplished harpist and singer and made history as the first continuity announcer to appear on screen on the opening night of Telefís Éireann on New Year’s Eve, 1961. Her honeyed voice meant she was always in demand for voiceover work while her on-screen television work included presenting shows such as Faces & Places and Holiday Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ER2D7HLNWFDKZEQQTMINNUJSEI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264767},"content":"She said no one was surprised as she was when she became a children’s author at the age of 82. Her three children’s books were based on stories she told her grandchildren about a piglet called Pigín. Her great love of poetry led to her compiling two books of poems – An Ordinary Woman, in 2019 and One for Everyone, in 2020.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FA5T37NC4ZE3NABGSR7O7UYMBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264768},"content":"President Michael D Higgins said Ms Watkins “represented the best of her generation in so many ways and during such a formative period in our country”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KHO7V62RMNF7RJZTC3NYQ2YGRE","additional_properties":{"_id":"4VLUCVTEVNGGXPQ5CSGWVGQOF4"},"content":"Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"34KO4CZZYJH2XLMWENCQ5O27S4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264771},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/12/07/johnny-duhan-obituary-formidable-musician-and-family-man/\" target=\"_blank\">Johnny Duhan</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"GKQCWBVFLBFQFLJMGD7ZNMBC2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264772},"content":"Musician","type":"header"},{"_id":"WMH4Y5SH4FHHDLUP4VR5XQG3FE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264773},"content":"Songwriter and musician Johnny Duhan died in a drowning accident in Galway on November 12th at the age of 74.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGH5BW6FINDW5I5GK5IOXBAKPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264774},"content":"Originally from Limerick, he joined the band Granny’s Intentions as a teenager and moved to Dublin, where he once shared a flat with Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. The band toured Ireland and the UK, and later moved to London. He composed eight of the band’s 11 songs on their sole album, Honest Injun. When he was 21 he struck out on his own and settled in Galway with his wife-to-be, Maureen.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SFHOEXDGEBF5HANKIIRHZMWKPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264775},"content":"Duhan wrote songs and performed solo in the early 1980s and occasionally toured with other bands. Artists who recorded his songs included Christy Moore, Dolores Keane, Mary Black and The Dubliners. Many years later, regular references to him in Ken Bruen’s series of Jack Taylor detective novels brought him new fans from all over the world. He also composed the music for the 1988 film Reefer and the Model.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ECITDAVUVJF63BMWTH3XNS6NPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264776},"content":"His most famous song The Voyage was recorded by Christy Moore in 1989 and has become a folk standard. As well as his eight solo albums, he wrote a series of autobiographical books, beginning with There is a Time<i> </i>in 2001, while Waltons published his songbook in 2003.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I3P4FGVSLVGIHKW37R7757ER7A","additional_properties":{"_id":"UOQGKLD4QBEFXCRB5U24TSM35U"},"content":"‘A life well-lived, a talent realised’: Tributes paid to Johnny Duhan who died in Galway swimming accident – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"EJNW43PIIJDATNLHQ56ULX6Y3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734796255925},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/30/dervilla-donnelly-obituary-internationally-renowed-chemist/\" target=\"_blank\">Dervilla Donnelly</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"VYLTDZGHK5EYXFYWUJXOCGG7IE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264780},"content":"Scientist","type":"header"},{"_id":"VSC5TPAJ5VEWNLWZ7V4YVOSKI4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264781},"content":"Prof Dervilla Donnelly, a chemist who made a major contribution to research, science policy and public service both in Ireland and abroad, died on November 14th, aged 94.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WBURRC5WA5B6JMEVB2BDYJ34YA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264782},"content":"She began her teaching career in University College Dublin (UCD) in 1956 in the old School of Chemistry and later moved with the university to its present location in Belfield. She was professor of phytochemistry – the study of chemicals with biological activity derived from plants – for 16 years. She was described by UCD as “one of the most respected and influential chemists” of the university.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TIOYGJSXAJFAFFKESQGIPEMOTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264783},"content":"Prof Donnelly was the first female president of the Royal Dublin Society, from 1989 to 1992, and the first woman to receive the Royal Irish Academy’s highest honour, the Cunningham Medal, in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3BNZ347WO5FU3ICEJKNB6RXJIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264784},"content":"Always in demand for her skills, she served as chairwoman of the Custom House Docks Development Authority, the National Education Convention and the Forum on Early Childhood Education. She was also chairwoman and director of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction from 2000-2005.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2KDK6U2BJVDYBJMPXJANA3Z6E4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264785},"content":"In 2000 she was appointed to the Austrian Council for Science and Technology, a position she held for 10 years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NYN5DC2NZJCKNFQYWOBD77WJOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264786},"content":"Other appointments include her presidency of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland, governor of The Irish Times Trust and a director of The Irish Times Limited.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XTDVPSIHEBCFHBOGO5OI4UE5IU","additional_properties":{"_id":"Q3PGSYIFN5GO5K4OM5KCBLDFFE"},"content":"Renowned Irish scientist Dervilla Donnelly dies aged 94 – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"UTEQIRITZ5GBVGWBSHVZU4QXBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264789},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/11/20/jon-kenny-obituary-portraits-of-irish-eccentricity-that-mingled-hilarity-with-sadness/\" target=\"_blank\">Jon Kenny</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"KZ2NND5TINCBBKNCPNL5M32KT4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264790},"content":"Comedian, actor","type":"header"},{"_id":"JEDAKEPYMBBDZCOKX53DUS76XE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264791},"content":"Jon Kenny, who died aged 67 on November 15th, was one of Ireland’s most beloved comedians, and a respected actor on stage and screen. He was also a talented musician who continued to write and perform songs throughout his life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LUCKWMXDUFAE7HAZGOIDUT25XM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264792},"content":"The Limerick man first found fame as one half of the D’Unbelievables, a duo he began with Pat Shortt, whom he met in the late 1980s. Their act became one of the biggest names in Irish comedy and they played to packed houses all year round. When Jon Kenny was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2000, he had to stop performing while receiving treatment. He returned to a successful solo career, while he and Shortt reunited for a sell-out D’Unbelievables tour in 2011.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HLOCSPBW7REBHM6EMJM3MIEAFQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264793},"content":"On television, he will be forever associated with the Father Ted series, where he played two roles – the local cinema manager owner, and a Eurovision host – but he excelled in straight parts too. His work included sharing the screen with Liam Neeson in Les Misérables. He voiced a woodcutter in Wolf Walkers and portrayed Gerry the fiddler in The Banshees of Inisherin. He also appeared in Angela’s Ashes and The Van.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L5M75BUSUFFEFMPK3MV724LIBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264794},"content":"On stage, his portrayal of Bull McCabe in Shoestring Theatre Company’s run of John B Keane’s The Field received rave reviews, while he made the role of Dicky Mick Dicky O’Connor in The Matchmaker his own.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7T5ESXJPGFC3ZMXEY5G4VSTHYE","additional_properties":{"_id":"ANLCPODPBNHWBCUBJ5K2RODKOE"},"content":"Jon Kenny ‘sprinkled laughing love wherever he went’, funeral told – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"TUE2Q6TW3FHXTETLGP34K6IZ6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264797},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/12/07/gemma-hussey-obituary-second-woman-ever-to-be-appointed-to-cabinet/?\" target=\"_blank\">Gemma Hussey</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"A5WET4XPVZDIHEY45B6OUPVQMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264798},"content":"Politician","type":"header"},{"_id":"KP2OTXHSSNEMZHYYLCIGUT43ZI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264799},"content":"Gemma Hussey, who died on November 26th aged 86, was the third woman to hold Cabinet office since independence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NFD52O2GTZFN5PY7IYHROH2KWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264800},"content":"After studying languages at UCD, she set up her own language school. She cofounded the Women’s Political Association and was its chairwoman from 1973 to 1975. She was elected to the Seanad in 1977 as an Independent and, four years later, stood for Fine Gael in the general election. While she failed to win a Dáil seat at her first attempt she was re-elected to the Seanad and was appointed leader of the House by the incoming taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HAJ24ME6L5EX7FQE5MVFYG6ZS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264801},"content":"She was elected to the Dáil in the first general election of 1982 and when Fine Gael made it back into government in the second election of that year, she became minister for education.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CQUW3IMEBVBCXERG7DJDMRVCFA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264802},"content":"She established aural and oral exams and created the National Parents Council, but it was the battle over teachers’ pay that dominated her tenure, as the government struggled to get public finances under control.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5ZSVSIZVM5HYDMY66IBXOI2GTY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264803},"content":"She also served as minister for social welfare and minister for labour before retiring from politics in 1989. She wrote a memorable book about her time in office – At the Cutting Edge: Cabinet Diaries 1982-1987.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QSLHLDR4ABAL5H4VFWO54LKDPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264804},"content":"She later immersed herself in the European Women’s Federation, encouraging women in eastern Europe to become active in politics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DVLCF2G4EBFIPBSPNE6FQ2FC3E","additional_properties":{"_id":"KNGM3MKX3VARFH4ELOP6DCQM3A"},"content":"Gemma Hussey remembered as a ‘trailblazer’ politician in humanist funeral ceremony – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"5DLVP2P3ZFAJ7K4YCAMLQIHKYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734800429103},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2024/12/12/dickie-rock-obituary-irelands-first-rock-star-who-blazed-a-trail-through-the-1960s-music-scene/\" target=\"_blank\">Dickie Rock</a>","type":"header"},{"_id":"OGF6XDGHBJFANFVRGJ2ADOACL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264809},"content":"Singer","type":"header"},{"_id":"HOG6WLBSUJAILF3H26AB4PW2RA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264810},"content":"Singer and former Eurovision contestant for Ireland Dickie Rock died on December 6th at the age of 88.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IVPUIQKTPRB3NGB4TXTAVUWGHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264811},"content":"The Dubliner was one of the biggest stars of Ireland’s showband scene as a member of the Miami Showband and later as a solo artist, with a career spanning seven decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5AGBRRBLMBGVPJGMJU5R7TUPWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264812},"content":"An apprentice welder, he was recruited to lead the Miami Showband in 1963. That December, he enjoyed his first number one when the band covered Elvis’s There’s Always Me. In all, the band had seven number one hits during his tenure, with songs such as From the Candy Store on the Corner, in 1964, and Every Step of the Way which became the first release by an Irish band to go straight to the top.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YC6ME4J5GBCH5OUQRGN3DLWDLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264813},"content":"In 1966, he came fourth in the Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg, with his song Come Back to Stay, another number one hit in Ireland. He left the Miami Showband in 1972, three years before the group was ambushed by loyalist paramilitaries and three of its musicians murdered.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OUXX7RTWKNFI3DJCH32I64QV3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264814},"content":"His first solo single, The Last Waltz, reached number 15. But his biggest hit would be a cover of John Denver’s Back Home Again, which went to number one in 1977.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LRKHMVPVWBA77BZVTSZLAPUKBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734794264815},"content":"He continued to tour to packed houses into his 80s, finally announcing his retirement at the age of 84 in 2021.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MFL6XY2VRBDA5K4MDNABPAIHTQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"RLMEUOPKJ5DF3KYECGWNXEWCGI"},"content":" In pictures: Twink, Finbar Furey, Gordon D’Arcy, attend ‘legend’ Dickie Rock’s funeral in Dublin – The Irish Times","type":"interstitial_link"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Alison Healy"}},"name":"Alison Healy"}]},"description":{"basic":"The Irish Times’s obituary writers have marked the deaths of more than 110 people this year, from entrepreneurs to musicians to journalists. Here is a selection"},"display_date":"2024-12-27T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Tony O’Reilly, Nell McCafferty, Ian Bailey and more: 50 people who died in 2024","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"KD7YZX6HVVGKXKUD76DJOMBYEM","auth":{"1":"4cf9c8f44705624e435584565fb7c580eb6f07ca8e008cdd7a78e6991daff04b"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KD7YZX6HVVGKXKUD76DJOMBYEM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"Ireland"},{"name":"Opinion"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/27/obituaries-of-2024-charlie-bird-nell-mccafferty-ian-bailey-and-more-50-people-who-died-in-2024/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"M2OOCGJJDNH57HRCB4K3GNA2EY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":265,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/cc5e3b6e-be7b-4b65-997d-87d197872cd6/versions/1734815076/media/07382dee5e96e3449bbd196a22163309_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/22/merrily-harpur-painter-cartoonist-author-and-co-founder-of-the-strokestown-international-poetry-festival/","content_elements":[{"_id":"5KGR5ZXU6FBW5FOLSB52O6LLTI","additional_properties":{},"content":"It was typical of Merrily Harpur’s joie de vivre that she arrived at the Trinity College Elizabethan Society Garden Party in 1968 wearing a stuffed hen as a hat, an act of bravado commemorated by a photograph in the Irish Times the following day. A bright, witty young woman with a flair for drawing, Merrily became editor of Trinity’s Icarus magazine along with her great friend Margaret Hickey, and blossomed under English teachers such as Brendan Kennelly, David Norris and a youthful Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. She relished student life and the atmosphere of Dublin, the birthplace of her father Brian, who grew up in Timahoe, Co Laois. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HHZVAZ4WDFB5ZOCNXKT3M6LO5Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"After Trinity she started training as a picture restorer, before making a decisive entrée into Fleet Street as a cartoonist – at a time when cartooning was almost exclusively a male bastion. Alan Coren, editor of Punch, was an early mentor of her work, and soon her drawings began to appear in the Guardian, the Times of London, Sunday Telegraph, Evening Standard and various magazines, including Tara, the Aer Lingus in-house magazine. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"V5HBJZDDZZFFZGC4ILEVVJ5QEU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the mid-1980s, weary of metropolitan life, she decided to renew her Irish connections by moving to a cottage in Toormore, near Schull, West Cork, continuing her cartoon work via the relatively new invention of the fax machine. She immersed herself in Irish culture, especially traditional music, becoming friends with members of the Chieftains, and penning CD sleeve-notes for Matt Molloy and John Carty. She also indulged in her favourite pastime, fly-fishing, especially in Oughterard, Co Galway. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PIQCPTYPE5DF7NFFUWENI5LKDU","additional_properties":{},"content":"In the mid-1990s, she relocated to a remote cottage on the side of Sliabh Bawn at Strokestown, Co Roscommon. There she built an artist’s studio, planted a circle of oak trees, kept hens, peacocks and a trusty tortoise, and created a full-size maze with a “hazel tree of knowledge” at the centre (still regularly enjoyed by children of the local Clooncagh national school). Most of all she co-founded the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, which still thrives. The festival was intended to raise the profile of the town, and this ideal seemed to reach its apogee by the attendance of Seamus Heaney in 2006. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"HJUCJIGQPFHFDNTOHQKQDIZAVQ","additional_properties":{},"content":"Merrily herself was a talented poet. She won the Irish K250 International Poetry Prize in 2004, and her poems were shortlisted for the Irish National Poetry Competition and the UK Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition. All the while she was painting, cartooning and writing. Books appeared: The Nightmares of Dream Topping poked fun at urbanites moving to the country; Unheard of Ambridge brought to life the silent characters in BBC’s long-running radio series The Archers. Another book, Mystery Big Cats, explored the strange world of “anomalous big cats’”, including sightings of them in Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XSLXU6YXHFHINCPVCX2ZUD754A","additional_properties":{},"content":"Merrily loved an adventure and in 2003 she decided to change her life again, moving to the west of England and embracing village life in Dorset. There she organised “Mythic Imagination” weekends and a “fox festival”, while, initially, continuing to direct the Strokestown poetry festival. She was also able to focus on her great love for painting, mainly oils of landscapes and still-lifes. She threw herself into the biennial Dorset Arts Week, holding sell-out shows from her cottage and persuading her fellow village artists to form the soi-disant “Tate Cattistock”. An early riser and enthusiast of life, Merrily was also pragmatic, wise and kind (she devotedly looked after her 90-year-old aunt, Daphne Harpur, in Schull). She continued to travel to Ireland in her seventh decade, visiting her relatives and friends in Laois, Kildare and West Cork. Although proposed to by several boyfriends, Merrily preferred her independence and never married. She leaves behind three brothers, Patrick, John and James; and a niece, Arin.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"James Harpur"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2024-12-22T18:50:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Merrily Harpur – painter, cartoonist, author and co-founder of the Strokestown International Poetry Festival","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"FTCU4IV72RAMFJNJUN2UZ4GJ7Q","auth":{"1":"5b036a7c10cc9cb729b0f27acc116a16ffc29aeefbec5458f8752b0398372c95"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/FTCU4IV72RAMFJNJUN2UZ4GJ7Q.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/22/merrily-harpur-painter-cartoonist-author-and-co-founder-of-the-strokestown-international-poetry-festival/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"2FLN7RJQ6JCPVO7GDODY5OPT7A","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":356,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/df12e853-136c-4626-8dbd-1d8b9ddcff16/versions/1733908084/media/e6df50a4ff45ce39e4d0631d4aa016b4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/14/anna-lo-obituary-fearless-and-trailblazing-politician-who-stood-for-equality/","content_elements":[{"_id":"63L3ZDWLYFB45DKPEF7IDT5THE","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>June 16th, 1950","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 6th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDGTNGUV3BDTHNXPFLXWQPG4JA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337256},"content":"Anna Lo, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/11/08/anna-lo-tributes-after-former-alliance-party-mla-dies-aged-74/\" target=\"_blank\">who has died</a> aged 74, was the first politician born in east Asia to be elected to the Northern Assembly. She was described by the Alliance Party leader Naomi Long as a “trailblazer”. Lo, who was born in Hong Kong and served at Stormont from 2007 until 2016, was also a driving force in the Chinese Welfare Association in Northern Ireland and a member of the North’s Equality Commission.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VZ4AE7AD5JBR3I73QSSXABAXHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337257},"content":"A feminist and self-described humanist, she campaigned against racial discrimination, while herself suffering from racist threats and intimidation – one of the reasons she cited for not seeking to continue as an Assembly member for the constituency of South Belfast in the 2016 Stormont election.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5GXOWT3R65BWVL3VP5Q5PTYO64","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337258},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/breaking-new-ground-1.1292971\" target=\"_blank\">In an interview with Susan McKay in 2007</a> she explained how her mother named her Manwah, meaning elegance. However, her teacher in her Hong Kong primary school, whom she remembered as a towering bullying Scot with a colonial attitude, insisted pupils must have English names.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7QLMOSX2SVHQZDSDMYGHW7U5KA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337259},"content":"She asked one of her brothers what name she should take. “He was reading Pride and Prejudice at the time and said I should take the name of Mr D’Arcy’s sister, Georgianna,” she said. “He wrote it out for me but half the class couldn’t say it and I couldn’t spell it, so I became Anna.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NG3YWZ4OAJA4XD7PIAVREKGBL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337260},"content":"Her brothers went to university but her parents decided she was through with education. “My mother said girls shouldn’t be too clever – if you are too clever you won’t get a husband,” she recalled. “That infuriated me. I loved school. I was burning inside. I was determined to get ahead in life just to show my mother.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3BNX7OG7JADDJATQDX3RMKTMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337261},"content":"Her first job after school was as a clerk, and then a secretary. In Hong Kong in 1972, she met and later married a Belfast journalist, the late David Watson, who was then working on the South China Morning Post. They moved first to London and then in 1974 to Belfast, where her husband worked for the Belfast Telegraph. The couple divorced in 2010.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SD46IZPTC5FVHANGU5WVOE2OVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337262},"content":"She first did secretarial work at a newspaper and then at the BBC where, when it was learned she spoke fluent Cantonese, she became a contributor to the World Service. She reported on the Vietnamese boat people who came to Northern Ireland in 1979.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7OFTNGZYJFB4BOAEMN5TBELDZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733907764792},"content":"She took a period away from work to have her two sons. Around this time she became aware of the racism some Chinese people, many of them working in restaurants, were suffering in Belfast. She worked for a time as a police interpreter and in 1986 got a job with the newly created Chinese Welfare Association (CWA).","type":"text"},{"_id":"SWUVIQ54FBAB5HXIE2HTCRWUPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337264},"content":"At this time, she finally fulfilled her wish to go to university, attending the University of Ulster and graduating as a social worker in 1993. She worked initially with Barnardo’s and then in 1997 was appointed director of the CWA, where she was instrumental in getting British legislation to outlaw race discrimination extended to Northern Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4UCDYW3N2BANPFQ4WXMBBD5KZU","additional_properties":{"_id":"XF4O4YTNJBHBNMJFPLZKR2GQTY"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"22ASV55VPJHOXHOKJA6WFFGV2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337265},"content":"She told McKay that a couple of years before her election in 2007 she asked a respected Northern Ireland political figure to say a few words in Chinese at a launch she was attending. “Och, I’ll just say, ‘Give me a number 44′,” he replied.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UAQ4FMKAUNHVBIHJDLYA4USA2I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337266},"content":"That was at the softer end of racism. As an elected representative, the hostility became more pronounced. Possibly her worst experience was in 2009 when the PSNI warned her of death threats against her. This was after she campaigned on behalf of more than 100 members of the Roma community being subjected to intimidation in south Belfast.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KPL7EEOVYJCWLJUIMSJRYPY6RI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337267},"content":"“I’m not going to be deterred by these people,” she said. “If they think that they can stop me from speaking out against them or speaking for the vulnerable people, new ethnic minority communities or migrant workers, they are mistaken.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VHIQQMKMJBDZHKPXJWO4AKLIDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337268},"content":"Former Alliance leader David Ford, in paying tribute, recalled how once she fearlessly confronted people who were interfering with her car. “She just went straight down towards them and they ran away. So five-foot-nothing Anna was able to terrify street hoodlums who were probably 30 years younger than her.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"GRUGLJW5SZCHJLI5NYLFYY25Y4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337269},"content":"Lo was the centre of controversy in 2014 when <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/anna-lo-seeks-to-recover-lost-ground-over-united-ireland-comments-1.1735392\" target=\"_blank\">she told</a> the Irish News she favoured a united Ireland while adding that it was “very artificial” for Ireland to be divided up and for “the corner of Ireland to be part of the United Kingdom”. This discomfited some senior party figures, who feared it would damage support. Alliance was then facing into the European Parliament election with her as party candidate. Nonetheless, she won 44,432 votes, increasing the Alliance vote by 1.6 per cent, although failing to be elected.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CDOMJ7NUJ5DLLA4FAIVUNWFIXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337270},"content":"David Ford said she was a “formidable politician”. Current leader Naomi Long said “her service to the Chinese community, to good relations and to the city of Belfast, much of which went unseen by most, was transformational”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RXXHBMNBFRGD7DRODOBUT3X7EQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337271},"content":"Lo died in Belfast City Hospital following complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Her family said she “stood for and fought for equality, for women’s rights, against discrimination including racism, and for a political system to serve the needs of people rather than reinforce historic divisions”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKR43NU5PRC27HI5NGYH3PMABE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733906337272},"content":"Anna Lo is survived by her sons, Conall and Owen, two grandchildren and partner Robert.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"A feminist and self-described humanist she campaigned against racial discrimination while herself suffering from racist threats and intimidation"},"display_date":"2024-12-14T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Anna Lo obituary: Fearless and trailblazing politician who stood for equality","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"ZAQNE7MTJUW7GUA3TX3V3A3ZMA","auth":{"1":"c4227728056310bc6c141cac92fa30324963282802bf2ad2578d4b89f1f5af96"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZAQNE7MTJUW7GUA3TX3V3A3ZMA.JPG"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/14/anna-lo-obituary-fearless-and-trailblazing-politician-who-stood-for-equality/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"FS3HGREK4FDQ7MMYFEVB5FP37M","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":559,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/7ad47568-515a-42d1-b6d4-70ae754842c7/versions/1733954765/media/7812b6774595d49fdfeb5bd7f03a2cb0_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/12/dickie-rock-obituary-irelands-first-rock-star-who-blazed-a-trail-through-the-1960s-music-scene/","content_elements":[{"_id":"2QGF4SDQGJCAHMRBA65F3CDQ4I","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 10th, 1936","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>December 6th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"UNZ7YTXF6BHMJOSLKQW6TR42KE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018799},"content":"Dickie Rock, who has died aged 88, was Ireland’s original pop idol. Known for his expressive singing voice and incendiary stage presence, he blazed a trail through the sleepy world of 1960s Irish music – first as frontman of the Miami Showband, later as a solo artist. Where Britain had Beatle-mania, Ireland was swept aloft by “Dickie-mania”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AFI2CNCLNVCDNORFGQQKBMO2TE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018800},"content":"Rock grew up worshipping Frank Sinatra. But it was Elvis to whom he would be compared when the former welder from Cabra in Dublin was recruited to lead the Miami Showband in 1963. Shy offstage, he seemed to come alive when the music struck up and the crowd roared. “When I hit the stage I change. I metamorphosise. I become a different person. I give off a vibe,” he would observe.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N6K4HXHFJZGSBOKJS4BEX5YPXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018801},"content":"Success came quickly. Music in the 1960s was a production line, and the Miami Showband churned out singles at a blistering rate and with immediate results. In December 1963, Rock enjoyed his first number one when the Showband covered Elvis’s There’s Always Me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AIXVGC3UZNCQ5IXCA2K7T2M2ZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018802},"content":"Over the next two years, they would top the charts on four more occasions. In 1964, From the Candy Store on the Corner to the Chapel on the Hill made history as the song with the longest title to reach Irish number one. Twelve months later, they smashed the record books all over again when Every Step of the Way became the first release by an Irish band to go straight to the top.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXU7FBYPUZB5LGV75FOYISGCNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018803},"content":"Rock was a superstar in a country where celebrity remained a largely unfamiliar concept. “Spit on Me Dickie” became the unlikely byword for rock’n’roll mania, Irish-style. Meanwhile, the revelation, years later, that he’d fathered a child out of wedlock after a backstage assignation with a fan confirmed the domestic music scene to be wilder than its staid image.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AVK5JRVMQRGNPLZD34NADBXCD4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018804},"content":"Then there was his unlikely 2020 feud with Johnny Logan. Here was an Irish style Blur v Oasis ding-dong that briefly dominated the news cycle, after <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/johnny-logan-dickie-rock-is-a-legend-in-his-own-head-he-lives-in-a-fantasy-world-1.4245362\" target=\"_blank\">Logan made remarks about Rock in an interview with The Irish Times</a>. That was before the two parties made peace in the traditional Irish fashion of saying nice things about one another on Joe Duffy’s Liveline.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RD2XQMQRHDFMH3KTCVIVI2XMJM","additional_properties":{"_id":"2X36VIATCNDHTADNQ4MT5AMOLM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"FMGOLQBA25E6VLVXDUHOLFN2ME","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018806},"content":"Rock was born Richard Rock on North Strand, Dublin in October 1936. His great-grandfather was a clockmaker from Germany, while Rock’s father was a blacksmith who worked in the docklands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZRKL4AC7GNCSPA3U5TBWJPSZHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018807},"content":"It was a tough, working-class upbringing, blighted by tragedy when Dickie’s younger brother, Joseph, was struck by a motorist and died. “He got a bang of a car, while he was just sitting on his bike, he died,” Rock would recall.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GN4HGUYQ5RGNFC4LIQPTEKHUDI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018808},"content":"But he also remembered there being great love in the household. The 1966 RTÉ documentary, Dickie: Portrait of an Artist, begins with the rest of the family at the breakfast table. Rock’s mother calls him, and the star pokes his head shyly around the corner. Of the superstar who had dance-hall crowds swooning to every hip-swivel, there was not a sign.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPKUBR2LZ5CCJMC5774UR7K25E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018809},"content":"“We were working class,” he recalled in 2016. “I remember before central heating was a fixture in most Irish houses, my da used to go upstairs and lie on each of his five kids’ beds for 10 minutes a piece, so they would be nice and warm for us when we went to bed.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TDFHPYIF7FG7DR7FIVBPWNCDOI","additional_properties":{"_id":"W7VT7M2BUZAQHC5GOHGLNLJ22E"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"X3GS65T5ZRHVHG3PU2YFZP3TFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018811},"content":"Like Elvis, his singing talent was evident from a young age – and as was the case with Presley, he never regarded music as something to which he could realistically aspire. His first job after leaving school was as a jeweller’s assistant in Talbot Street. He emigrated to Manchester at 17, though he didn’t settle and pined for Dublin. “I used to walk up to Manchester Airport to hear the announcements of the planes leaving for Dublin. I used to be crying. I just missed home.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WG5MIVQO4VD6TAO5H7M5S7RGZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018812},"content":"He returned to Dublin and became an apprentice welder. “I was approached by a fellow worker, who used to hear me singing while I was working and he asked if I wanted to join his band, as lead vocalist,” he recalled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RNODSO5HRJEUDGFLEGQPEDMVZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018813},"content":"By the time he joined The Miami Showband in 1963, Ireland was ready for a musical star to call its own. A new optimism had replaced the moribund economy and mass emigration of the 1950s – and a generation of young people saw a life for themselves in Ireland. They also saw something in Rock – a forceful singer who could move as wildly as Mick Jagger and had a better voice than all of The Beatles combined.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7CDQK3SY5DI7NF6NSCH7RTS5I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018814},"content":"“I wasn’t born six foot one and fantastic looking, like Elvis,” he would reflect. “Still, neither was Sinatra or Tony Bennett. But something happens, you give off something, whatever it is.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UQYGGI5A2JDOFGB7FRYYGCV4RU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018815},"content":"Whatever it was, people couldn’t get enough. In 1966, he was invited to enter Ireland’s first National Song Contest and was chosen to represent Ireland in Luxembourg, where he placed fourth.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UKR4APVQK5CE7LLH32FDGPPFKY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018816},"content":"That same year, he married 20-year-old Judy Murray, whom he had met at her uncle’s ballroom, The Ierne, at Parnell Square in Dublin. “He was on the bill and came down to the kitchen to get a drink,’ Judy would say, “and we’ve been together ever since.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C2CRQ2U3URAZ3NHG3XRHVLZIFI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018817},"content":"Rock was a showman, but unlike many of his peers, he understood that music was ultimately a business. It was obvious to him that the Miami Showband was bringing in huge sums. “I’m walking down the street and people are asking for autographs, yet I’m thinking, ‘What good is being Dickie Rock, having hit records, if you’re not having the rewards?” he would reflect. “I’m still getting the same money as the sax player. You can replace the sax player. Don’t dare say you can replace me!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OA42JHKFWRHJVKEFXOFDMI75LA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018818},"content":"He officially left the Miami Showband in 1972 – three years before the group was ambushed by loyalist paramilitaries while crossing the border from a gig in Belfast, resulting in the murder of three of the musicians. He had a moderate smash with his first solo single, The Last Waltz, which reached number 15. But his biggest hit would be a cover of John Denver’s Back Home Again, which went to number one in 1977, when punk was sweeping Ireland and U2 were bringing Irish music kicking and screaming into the future.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6I32MLG2BNA6VOWXFNOOVXGKS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018819},"content":"Dickie and Judy had six children: sons Joseph, Jason, John, Richard and Peter, and daughter Sarah Jane. Joseph, the eldest, had a developmental disability and died in 1992 after accidentally scalding himself in a care home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"56JU5MCNZNAMJHV2VT2SXJ2IQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018820},"content":"Another son, Richie, was briefly a member of Louis Walsh’s Boyzone, featuring in the group’s notorious 1993 debut on the Late Late Show, where they mimed and danced for a speechless Gay Byrne.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7Z5LIH2WXJEMPNYSELXUFPRJ2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018821},"content":"There was further turmoil in Rock’s private life when a tabloid revealed that he had fathered a child with a 17-year-old fan in 1975. “I’d only met the girl a few times over the years,” he wrote in his autobiography, Always Me.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FBVHW4DEFVAKJNWZP4ZIEG7QHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018822},"content":"“The first time was when she approached me and told me I was the father of her child. Initially, I didn’t believe it, but when I heard all the facts I eventually realised it was true. When I accepted this, I suppose I panicked. I was terrified, realising the hurt it would cause Judy if she found out. I knew it would be like a knife slicing through her heart.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6FEQXQJY3NB4JJBWAOZ4LYOTOA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018823},"content":"His wife was “extremely upset”, though the marriage survived. “You just have to carry on,” Judy said. “We had a lot in common and a lot going for us and I didn’t want to throw it all away.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"W3LFUTWYRNAPDPP2PCE556HBIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018824},"content":"Tragedy struck in 2001 when his foster brother Vincent (43) died from a heroin overdose. Rock would be heartbroken all over again when Judy died in 2022 from Covid.","type":"text"},{"_id":"B6TYHNMISJE27F5GEUD3CO4PV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018825},"content":"In his later years, Rock became notorious as a skinflint – a reputation he embraced. In an interview with the Irish Sun, he jokingly recalled an exchange about his tightness with a friend, comedian Sil Fox. “Sil says I’m so mean even the pockets on my pool table are tight,” he told the Irish Sun. “My fridge has a lock on it. I put a fork in my sugar bowl when visitors come around, to save money.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"H6NWIXGDDNCGPGUFEEZRY5HIDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018826},"content":"Dickie Rock’s popularity never waned. Unlike many showband singers, he remained a household name and continued playing to packed rooms. He was Ireland’s first rock star and blazed a trail to the end.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FD5V3JQTR5ELZEDRHFFXPHEWHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733953018827},"content":"He is survived by children Jason, John, Richard, Sarah Jane and Peter.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"Shy off-stage, once the music struck up and the crowd roared, he became an icon"},"display_date":"2024-12-12T07:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Dickie Rock obituary: Ireland’s first rock star who blazed a trail through the 1960s music scene","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WZN5TPXY244KPRZ7N27KSFZNOU","auth":{"1":"dc236636ef9db8f7898a95fa83bc749863797ce6be166eb4d1d582988b464dc9"},"focal_point":{"x":2593,"y":1362},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WZN5TPXY244KPRZ7N27KSFZNOU.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/12/dickie-rock-obituary-irelands-first-rock-star-who-blazed-a-trail-through-the-1960s-music-scene/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"OBAAYU7BWVHIBG5BL6GYV2YT6I","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":337,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/3036e3c4-00dc-4db2-b119-1aa906b8797c/versions/1733307336/media/6a680e4f5789bfca0dc8cbf406fc20f7_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/johnny-duhan-obituary-formidable-musician-and-family-man/","content_elements":[{"_id":"GA4GB7D4GBE7FA3R557ACBJUVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>March 30th, 1950","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 12th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"BTF7LNR6FNBKBN6U5MFKHJGBNQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382548},"content":"Songwriting is all the poorer for the recent death of one of our finest. Johnny Duhan, born in Limerick, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/12/body-recovered-in-search-for-two-swimmers-missing-in-co-galway/\" target=\"_blank\">drowned</a> while swimming off Silver Strand in Galway. A kind, thoughtful and selfless man, for whom family was everything, he left behind a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/12/body-recovered-in-search-for-two-swimmers-missing-in-co-galway/\" target=\"_blank\">formidable musical legacy.</a>","type":"text"},{"_id":"2W2O2QXDBRBOTHXEWD6DOORW64","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382549},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/09/15/spiritual-inspiration-after-a-nasty-review-drove-me-to-write-one-of-my-best-songs/\" target=\"_blank\">The Voyage was perhaps his best-known song</a>, having been covered first by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/christy-moore/\" target=\"_blank\">Christy Moore</a> and then other artists. A philosophical reflection on familial ties, the song’s maritime metaphors charted the odyssey of a couple navigating the gale force winds and doldrums that inevitably beset anyone on their life’s course. Although not Johnny’s personal favourite, The Voyage marked him apart as a songwriter of substance whose songs were also covered by Mary Black, Dolores Keane, The Dubliners and others.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P4YPU356X5C75N6MKIHBI4WTBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382550},"content":"Johnny was one of nine children, one of whom died before Johnny was born. His parents, John and Christina (nee Murphy), raised their family on Wolfe Tone Street, Limerick. Johnny attended the Christian Brothers national school on Sexton Street but hated it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"O4QOYUKWBBEHPCDT5Z63B6Y57A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382551},"content":"Duhan was writing songs from an early age. He left school at 15 and joined the band Granny’s Intentions. He moved to Dublin, where he shared a flat with Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. The band toured Ireland and the UK, and later moved to London on the promise of a major record deal. They recorded their sole album, Honest Injun, on the Deram label in 1970, with Duhan composing eight of the band’s 11 songs. Granny’s Intentions melded a bluesy rock sound with a down-home earthiness. Gary Moore had joined the band at the age of 17, and Pete Cummins (later of The Fleadh Cowboys) was also a member.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BKOBW6EFOBDXDIMQSY43G23VTA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382552},"content":"Duhan’s girlfriend, Maureen, left her job as a teacher to travel to London with him, and the band had their sights set on a further move to LA, but the deal fell through. In London he was offered a job as lead singer with St James Gate, but that deal fell through too, so he and Maureen moved home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V23HEXVM44WGUYSJRNGSZVRWGE","additional_properties":{"_id":"A7T6PZPGJBC7TMNYMH7E677QPQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HYJEVJA4VZCR3EOG4U6HRP2SBM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382553},"content":"They returned to Maureen’s parents’ farm in Woodlawn, outside Loughrea, with 21-year-old Duhan in his pink flares, ankle-length coat and long hair not even raising an eyebrow, such was the affection in which he was held by his future parents in law.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AIDNVKZEA5BLDEC7DGWJTJPFXY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382554},"content":"From there, the couple set about a different kind of life, with Duhan growing his own vegetables and embarking on a path as a solo singer-songwriter in earnest. Duhan had a cry in his voice that was plaintive and highly distinctive. An advance from Arista Records allowed him and Maureen to put a deposit on their first home in Sandyvale Lawn on Headford Road in Galway. Later they moved to Barna, where Duhan enjoyed a quiet but very orderly, some might say even regimental life: rising daily before dawn, attending daily Mass, reading vociferously and enjoying his daily swims on his beloved Silver Strand. He climbed Diamond Mountain most Sundays and Carrauntoohil annually.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IE4QO4TNYNDI3PH5D36D27DCY4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382555},"content":"His daughters, Ailbhe and Niamh, described Duhan as a kind, gentle and selfless soul. He was a true family man. Headstrong in his beliefs, he never followed trends. He spent his life seeking meaning, delving deeply into philosophical and theological works. Mornings were devoted to reading and studying his favourite writers, making meticulous notes on whether he agreed or disagreed with their thoughts, and more importantly why. He taught all his children to play music, and Niamh is now a music teacher.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DL2BJBYXIRDEFPUDX32VUEPT5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382556},"content":"Of his songs, Duhan held <a href=\"https://youtu.be/0SyLZaYmq4k\" target=\"_blank\">Flame</a>, the title track of his 1996 album, the dearest. His 1992 album, Just Another Town, gained widespread acclaim, its autobiographical themes resonating far beyond the confines of his home place. Duhan toured solo and loved meeting fans but found his biggest audience in Derry when he performed during the Clipper Race festival in 2014.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YDW7IO2LBFAVJAFV2J7GPQP2EM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382557},"content":"One of his deepest frustrations was his struggle to get airplay on Irish radio, and he lobbied for a quota of Irish music to be adopted. Ronan Collins and Fiachna Ó Braonáin championed Duhan’s music however, along with journalist <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/author/tony-clayton-lea/\" target=\"_blank\">Tony Clayton-Lea</a>, and he greatly valued their support.","type":"text"},{"_id":"THTXGMFGZ5HZTOXPCEGQYU7ENM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382558},"content":"A writer to his core, no song was ever complete. It was always a work in progress. Duhan published two biographical works, There Is a Time in 2001 and To the Light in 2009. The Voyage: Johnny Duhan Songbook was published by Waltons publishers in 2003.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SKRQAUORM5BDDCCNY7FF2EMDAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382559},"content":"Duhan’s most recent project involved setting the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh to music, which he was enjoying immensely. He considered it some of his best work and was very proud of it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LJGAJ2MDC5CARBLUX5E6R6C7MU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382560},"content":"Songwriting, family, faith and friendship were what Duhan held dear, and The Voyage was played at his requiem Mass, a fitting finale to a life well-lived.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WFEM2PVALBCPNL2NL3KFYZFURQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733248382561},"content":"Johnny Duhan is survived by his wife, Maureen, his five children, Ronan, Niamh, Kevin, Ailbhe and Brian, his daughter- and sons-in-law, his 10 grandchildren and his brothers and sisters.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"One of his deepest frustrations was his struggle to get airplay on Irish radio, and he lobbied for a quota of Irish music to be adopted"},"display_date":"2024-12-07T00:30:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Johnny Duhan obituary: Formidable musician and family man","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"T7UGXWGLQYBYQL7ZH2EYZJ47PA","auth":{"1":"2d5cd0a5383543f9e18eb395bb6dad37ec8f90691c0ac9dbd4a6ec7925303a07"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/T7UGXWGLQYBYQL7ZH2EYZJ47PA.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/johnny-duhan-obituary-formidable-musician-and-family-man/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TE26PN2MPZDHJFOQH36XAYWQMA","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":456,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/a323e189-b8a3-47ff-bb7e-156a3bcd7aba/versions/1733234991/media/9552a2a4be12a58ad6198489ed151906_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/gemma-hussey-obituary-second-woman-ever-to-be-appointed-to-cabinet/","content_elements":[{"_id":"JCZSC2MRKZDJTE3LPKSUUTEPKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>November 11th, 1938","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 26th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"S4ACERHYCZDAVHO3PVL7AOBIPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865958},"content":"Gemma Hussey was a trailblazing figure in Irish politics. She entered as a campaigner for more women in public life and became the third woman ever to be appointed to Cabinet, serving in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/garret-fitzgerald\" target=\"_blank\">Garret FitzGerald</a>’s 1982-1987 government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2QJIRCBFMZHZBMACAF3Z5SGB2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865959},"content":"As minister for education in a time of recession, she had the unenviable task of trying to restrain the pay bill for the country’s teachers and was embroiled in a series of controversies as she become the target of a sustained campaign of vilification by the Fianna Fáil opposition.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S4BX4IW46JCQXPWJAKDIW5WISY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865960},"content":"As the only woman in Cabinet she was often in a lonely place, particularly as the government of which she was a member wrestled with one problem after another, and there were fractious difficulties with some Labour members of the Cabinet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"R2TRBTCA3VG27GQJJRHD3ZUJ6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865961},"content":"After leaving politics she published a memorable diary of her time in office, which provided a fascinating glimpse into the operation of the Cabinet. It is a vital source for historians seeking to understand the challenges facing the country in the 1980s.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVZWBTZCRJCK7KJ46GCNG37G7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865962},"content":"Many of her Cabinet colleagues resented the publication of the book. They may have had a valid argument that she had breached Cabinet confidentiality, but there was also a strain of misogyny in the personal nature of the criticism levelled by some of the men who had served with her in government.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTZNMHQX6NAVTGM27W65YUTFRM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865963},"content":"What they missed was the fact that the diary gave the public an insight into the hard work senior politicians do, often under incredible pressure. One of the many memorable phrases she coined in the diary was her description of the way Garret FitzGerald’s interminable Cabinet meetings often went on into the early hours of the morning. She recorded that when the meetings ended, exhausted ministers sat down to “cold chips and warm gin”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MHGDF64AEFGEPHVSSQFIY3U5HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865964},"content":"Gemma Moran was born in 1938 into a comfortable middle class family in Bray, Co Wicklow. She was educated at St Brigid’s school in Bray and later attended the Loreto secondary school in the town before going to the exclusive Mount Anville in south County Dublin to finish her schooling.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JVRB4X65YNH7FNJGCDI42NVHJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865965},"content":"She went on to UCD, where she studied languages. Later, after a spell teaching, she set up her own language school. The publication in 1973 of the report of a Commission on the Status of Women prompted her to become active in the women’s movement. With Audrey Conlon and Hilary Pratt, she founded the Women’s Political Association designed to encourage more women into politics.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SRRRCZ3CQNDCZHO43MDCK46RGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865966},"content":"She was chairwoman of the organisation from 1973 to 1975, and that brought her into the public eye as an articulate advocate on women’s issue. She went on to become a member of the Council for the Status of Women. In the 1977 general election campaign they attracted attention with the slogan: “Why not a woman”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFFDNMY43BCVNB4R3RBCB546HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865967},"content":"While she joined Fine Gael in 1972 she did not become an active party member for a number of years, and was elected to the Seanad in 1977 for the NUI constituency as an Independent. She took the Fine Gael party whip in 1980, and contested the 1981 general election as a party candidate in Wicklow. While she failed to win a Dáil seat at her first attempt she was re-elected to the Seanad. She was appointed leader of the House by the incoming taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLO2UJLZ6RPKJP6WIF6RA2AHQI","additional_properties":{"_id":"4TYJOMLCEVDNXAN7ARTKFWSTXE"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"SMLZ3VCO3NBSXFQ2MJEM6SXMZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865968},"content":"Hussey and her businessman husband, Derry, who was a member of the Fine Gael back room team, moved in the same social circles as FitzGerald and his wife, Joan. He was an ardent supporter of hers and as party leader did everything he could to further her political career. She was elected to the Dáil in the first general election of 1982. When Fine Gael made it back into government in the second election of that year she knew that she was assured of a Cabinet post. She lobbied FitzGerald to be appointed minister for education and he duly obliged, moving John Boland, who had been minister for that department in his first government, giving him responsibility for the public service.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VZWKF2TF5RAQDC57O7IH247V34","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865969},"content":"Entering the department with plans for sweeping reform, Hussey did have some important achievements, such as the establishment of aural and oral exams and the creation of the National Parents Council. But she found herself frustrated by officials who put obstacles in her way and by the teachers’ unions. The battle over teachers’ pay dominated her tenure, when the government refused to pay an independent arbitrator’s award in full as part of its struggle to get the public finances under control. Hussey defended the decision, and drew the ire of the unions in what became a bitter struggle. Another bruising political row ensued over her decision to close Carysfort teacher training college.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FRBIZF5X5FHBPASAZCHBNNID6E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865970},"content":"Removing the constitutional ban on divorce was one of her priorities in politics and she ardently supported FitzGerald’s decision to hold a referendum in 1986. Despite the fact that opinion polls in advance of the referendum showed a two to one majority in favour of lifting the ban, it was rejected decisively by the electorate.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CH6ZSIQ6BFDM7M3FQWV6NGLFBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865971},"content":"Hussey suffered another political blow that year when FitzGerald moved her out of education in a botched Cabinet reshuffle. His original intention was to split the Department of Foreign Affairs in two, giving her responsibility for European affairs. Minister for foreign affairs Peter Barry was horrified by the plan and his fellow Corkman, Barry Desmond, effectively scuppered it by defying the taoiseach and refusing to move from the Department of Health. “Of course Barry’s position of refusing to move wrecked all that and I got shafted,” she noted in her diary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2EO3OJ3UPJLYLJET4EP34QNQII","additional_properties":{"_id":"J35VBTK4YVH35DJADRIGYV5Y4M"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"PWEPJKU4ARG2RDHXG2WL3W5FXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865972},"content":"The upshot was that Hussey was moved to social welfare while education went to veteran Fine Gael politician Patrick Cooney, who had opposed the legalisation of divorce. He brought the long-running dispute with the teachers to an end, while she ran into another row with the Labour Party over a scheme to equalise welfare payments for women and men which had the potential to involve reductions for some recipients.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JMBSY7HKJZADDB4XEQJR3KB5QU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865973},"content":"The government lost office in 1987 and while Hussey held her seat she felt there was nothing else she could achieve in politics and did not contest the next election in 1989. However, she did turn the trials and tribulations she faced during her time in Cabinet into a riveting book, At the Cutting Edge: Cabinet Diaries 1982-1987.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UXK4LTXKFD6HHFI6MWPJLAPGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865974},"content":"That book drew the ire of some of the Cabinet colleagues with whom she had tussled, notably John Boland, who gave it a damning review, and Barry Desmond who responded in his own memoir by accusing her of arrogance towards Labour ministers and deep ingratitude to her patron, Garret FitzGerald.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CPDTDJV27NFWVDEU4YEGUI5SB4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865975},"content":"Having left Irish politics in her early 50s, she immersed herself in the European Women’s Federation, encouraging women in former Eastern-bloc countries to become active in politics for the first time. She wrote a second book, Ireland Today: An anatomy of a Changing State,<i> </i>which offered insights into Irish politics and the changes in society that occurred during her time in the Oireachtas. She supported Mary Robinson in the 1990 presidential election and backed a Yes vote in the 2015 marriage equality referendum.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EBH43MQ7FFA4JB52VNBJU4S6LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733230865976},"content":"Gemma Hussey is survived by her children, Rachel, Ruth and Andrew and her brother Paddy. Her husband, Derry, predeceased her.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"After leaving politics she published a memorable diary of her time in office, which provided a fascinating glimpse into the operation of the Cabinet"},"display_date":"2024-12-07T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Gemma Hussey obituary: Third woman ever to be appointed to Cabinet","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"6H2GNQN4QBLI3PXUQOTDRUZIFY","auth":{"1":"747b634f632ee12c237c8d93875e8120850a3c29f6ead715f315074e1b0a3548"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/6H2GNQN4QBLI3PXUQOTDRUZIFY.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/12/07/gemma-hussey-obituary-second-woman-ever-to-be-appointed-to-cabinet/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"IX7X3SNKFNDJHGNTGSLOFOTQHE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":412,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/db954f78-990b-4ce3-83f5-7e4589675444/versions/1732701243/media/a3f60e0974e087436c17d71d7511f9cc_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/dervilla-donnelly-obituary-internationally-renowed-chemist/","content_elements":[{"_id":"MPKDL63NKRAMPECDBTGG3PKRQ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>April 25th, 1930","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 14th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"3IDSUPXXVBGF7EPOPBKLE26YKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140062},"content":"Prof Dervilla Donnelly, an internationally renowned chemist who made an extraordinary contribution to research, science policy and public service both in Ireland and abroad, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/14/renowned-irish-scientist-dervilla-donnelly-dies-aged-94/\" target=\"_blank\">has died</a> aged 94.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TLPNQEZUWJB5FEHNXY4ERIOID4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140063},"content":"Donnelly, who was professor of phytochemistry – the study of chemicals with biological activity derived from plants – at University College Dublin (UCD) for 16 years, was the first female president of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), from 1989 to 1992, and the first woman to receive the Royal Irish Academy’s highest honour, the Cunningham Medal in 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7K4PXDPZR5GPXNMHBCBMUEJ36Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140064},"content":"Her position as chairwoman of the Custom House Docks Development from 1991 to 1997; chairwoman and director of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction, 2000-2005; board member of the National Museum of Ireland and governor of The Irish Times Trust and director of The Irish Times Ltd, 1992-2002 were among her many leadership roles in Irish society. She also led the revitalisation of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies as its chairwoman, 1995-2000. She was a strategic thinker and a good collaborator, who drew on the skills and talents of others in her orbit.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YMTQFQ6FEVDXVOHAUMFDNKZ47Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140065},"content":"Donnelly’s commitment to European research was recognised by her election as chairwoman of the European Science Research Councils in 1985. She was vice-president of the executive council of the European Science Foundation and vice-president of European Science and Technology Assembly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PNEQQSJU5RFMLCKJ6HCHT76FEA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140066},"content":"As one of the first to develop an academic research network throughout Europe in the late 1970s, she later extended these collaborations to include scientists in the United States, South Africa and South America. During this time, she became particularly interested in the chemistry of wood, the results of which were applied to various problems encountered in the Irish forest industry. Early in her career she was a visiting scientist in Stockholm, Sweden and at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Gif-sur-Yvette, France with Prof Derek Barton, the Nobel laureate in chemistry in 1969.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DZVWRNDENZBH3IWPPPPUTBX3QM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140068},"content":"Her internationally significant group research led to more than 150 research publications and review articles. One of her former students said that she was equally kind and tough, which was “exactly what they needed”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HOKMMLFCYZD5BK7EUXCA2OOWZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140070},"content":"Her deep involvement with the RDS led to her being appointed at its first female president, 1989-1992. During her tenure, she led the organisation back into a better financial position and revived the Boyle Award for high-calibre scientific research in association with The Irish Times for a number of years. While governor of The Irish Times Trust and director of The Irish Times Ltd, she influenced the then editor, Conor Brady, to establish the position of Science Editor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RGIFJ2VBTFEKHCN23D3X3OLCII","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140071},"content":"A true mentor, friend and role model to many – and particularly to women – her inspiration was acknowledged in 2011 when she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Technology and Science (WITS). The year before she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YGHLN4KN4JASJFWVS7UVHV7F3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140072},"content":"She inspired secondary-school students through her role as a judge in the Young Scientists Exhibition from its first competition in 1964 until 2004. Donnelly was also awarded a number of honorary doctorates.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ENGV46KCT5EX5NVADWN7KLNX6M","additional_properties":{"_id":"4H6FZFDTWFCMNJARYR4H4M6R3Y"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"NWDBCVKHCBBZ5C5NAND4KRGDH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140074},"content":"Dervilla Maura Xavier Donnelly grew up in the south Dublin suburb of Dartry, the second of three daughters of May and Kieran Donnelly. She attended the Sacred Heart School on Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, where the emphasis was on languages rather than science. She studied chemistry theory privately in her final year of school before completing the entrance exams for UCD. She later credited her interest in science to her father, an engineer, but her mother was determined her three daughters would be well educated.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFOEMO2725CT5J7YIBVWPLXHDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140075},"content":"Graduating with first-class honours in chemistry, she remained at UCD to do her PhD into flavonoid chemistry under Prof Tom Wheeler.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5SZLFX2DPNDVXP2WJY6UY6MN7A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140076},"content":"Following postdoctoral studies at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), she opted to return to her alma mater rather than take a lectureship in pharmacology at UCLA. She began her teaching career in 1956 in the old School of Chemistry on Merrion Street, Dublin, and later moved to lecture at the new campus at Belfield in 1965. She was made professor in 1979, a position she held until her retirement in 1995.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LBDF2LEG7JD5RCRM4NBWRQG7SM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140077},"content":"Her research shaped the development of the School of Chemistry and is recognised in the annual award of the Prof Dervilla Donnelly medal to the highest-achieving student in the BSc in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JC2QOYI6TBFJVMDOHAIZRLXH3U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140078},"content":"However, in spite of her absolute dedication to her career and her roles in several public bodies, she also found time to enjoy her favourite sport, horse racing (steeplechase). She often said that she had a golden rule: that one day a week she didn’t do any chemistry. “Every Saturday, you’ll find me at a racecourse somewhere in the State.” With her sister, Keara – with whom she lived in the family home in Dartry – she held shares in several horses and used to joke “we only need one more leg to have a complete animal”. She also enjoyed tending to her wonderful garden, playing golf and nurtured close relationships with her niece, nephews and their families.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7W5CAXYQSNGDFLB2XFFNBUKK4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140079},"content":"At a ceremony in UCD in 2023, the current president of the RIA and professor of synthetic chemistry at UCD, Prof Pat Guiry, presented Donnelly with a newly commissioned portrait of her by artist Emer Doyle. As one of her 85 PhD students, he thanked her for her support, career advice and kindness.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZDMBND64D5B3ZFOSWKDYHGQBT4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140080},"content":"“Her leadership experience and ability to chair boards and committees, work well with people and to clearly identify both the problem and the solution are well recognised,” Guiry said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JLCEB57FJNBCDGH2ZE3KAOOVWY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140081},"content":"The portrait of Donnelly is on permanent display at the main entrance to the UCD School of Chemistry in the Science Centre South on the Belfield Campus.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ICO3CTZPBFFDVLD7HHK7MKLM3E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732633140082},"content":"Dervilla Donnelly is survived by her niece, Frances; her nephews, Charles and John; grandnieces and grandnephews; and great-grandnieces. She was predeceased by her sisters Liobháin (Meenan) and Keara.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"UCD professor was a mentor, friend and role model to many, particularly to women"},"display_date":"2024-11-30T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Dervilla Donnelly obituary: Internationally renowed chemist","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"IHZSH4PMZRB7LFLWRCUGE3G6WQ","auth":{"1":"0f76aabf047595bbce0649fc030d5443a0ce50c4c5aa7ffbefe96b0e98a6a48d"},"focal_point":{"x":1136,"y":639},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/IHZSH4PMZRB7LFLWRCUGE3G6WQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/dervilla-donnelly-obituary-internationally-renowed-chemist/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"6RYDKTD5M5AE7OPBCT3GPQ3MHI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":387,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/6bce7bd9-881b-46b2-95fc-2e02bba18060/versions/1732697608/media/d70664df7014d9af5f87c25fdfce4a18_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/john-prescott-obituary-plain-speaking-former-uk-deputy-prime-minister/","content_elements":[{"_id":"TJUE5F2KZ5GCDMTA7J3N6UBVLA","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>May 31st, 1938","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>November 20th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"345IUS3X45DHFCMKWLNHMURSDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732642448712},"content":"John Prescott, who rose through Britain’s trade union movement to become one of the country’s best-known politicians, serving as deputy prime minister for a decade, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2024/11/21/former-uk-deputy-prime-minister-john-prescott-dies-aged-86/\" target=\"_blank\">has died</a> aged 86.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PEFO7QZPDVHEHN4DAIPDEMLKEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793040},"content":"Plain-speaking and proudly working class, Prescott was a visible link to Labour’s traditional origins when the party came to power in 1997 under the modernising leadership of Tony Blair.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KXHTNSWKTNAXDHGCRB2I2NAUXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793041},"content":"In government, Prescott championed environmental causes – playing a key role in international climate negotiations – and worked to shift power from London to the English regions.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OKJTXQEWOZCCRDHTSRZKZ4DAEQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793042},"content":"More important for Labour, he helped defuse internal tensions between Blair and his chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, a rival who would become Blair’s successor. At the time, Prescott was jokingly referred to as the political equivalent of a marriage guidance counsellor.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WJL3EOU3YZBHLJNRZ5PMQOK7VM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793043},"content":"In an age when politics became increasingly managed by media advisers known as spindoctors, Prescott stood out as an authentic, if unorthodox, communicator. He sometimes mangled his sentences, a result of his dyslexia, but even when his syntax was less than perfect, his meaning was clear.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q6DLPZ7UOZFNZOWY5PFX2OCLRU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793044},"content":"He had a reputation as a political bruiser. When a protester on the campaign trail threw an egg at him before the 2001 general election, Prescott turned and punched him. Some assumed his career was over. But polling showed that most Britons concluded that he had done what they would have done in the circumstances, and Labour’s campaign proceeded to victory uninterrupted. Blair characterised the incident as a case of “John being John”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2BLHH2HESGXZCFCSSRNPQIU6VA","additional_properties":{"_id":"2BK7UPOG65CW5LIG3Z7WA7JPP4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"3FFU7TY2JNHL5KLPDRB5P45NQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793045},"content":"John Leslie Prescott was born in Wales in 1938. He did not prosper in Britain’s selective education system of the time, which streamed children’s academic futures via an examination at age 11. He failed that test and, unlike his brother, who passed, was denied the new bicycle he had been promised by his father. He left school four years later, although he subsequently studied at Ruskin College, a higher education institution in Oxford, and at the University of Hull, in the city that became his home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5JRNQQ2FBBHW7N3CK3Z47OJVVU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793046},"content":"As a teenager, Prescott became a steward on a cruise ship, embarking on a career at sea that was to shape his rise in politics. Years later, political opponents would taunt him by suggesting that he fetch them a gin and tonic, but he remained proud of his origins. As a senior politician, he would hold a summer party on a boat in the Thames and make a point of extracting money from his guests to tip the staff.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZMG7ZW7P2JARJE3L2L4REIKUHY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793047},"content":"In 1968, Prescott became an official at the National Union of Seamen. He was elected to parliament two years later as Labour MP for Hull East, in northeastern England. He joined Labour’s top opposition team, the shadow cabinet, in 1983.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ORCK3S2LYJAQBPI4D5PQHW6RRA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793048},"content":"In 1994, after the death of Labour leader John Smith, Blair was elected as Smith’s successor. Prescott won the deputy leadership, a victory that reassured many traditional Labour supporters that the party was not abandoning its roots by embracing the solidly middle-class Blair, who rebranded the party as “New Labour”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJQ2IDPLLZD6FMWIHLMEUBGTOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793049},"content":"Even as Prescott became a symbol of social mobility and a mascot of “Old Labour”, he was on board with the project of modernisation and of finding “traditional values in a modern setting”, as he would put it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZLWMA4APMREZXN54YQMOAAHFVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793050},"content":"His reward came when, after 18 years out of government, Labour won the 1997 general election. Prescott became both deputy prime minister and the cabinet minister responsible for the environment, transport and the regions in the new administration.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GQ7FKHGWXGHTIZTIMFL5R54QFI","additional_properties":{"_id":"FYCKOEUIOBDNJAR5Q5325PLDFM"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"Z7EH527TF5DRZAUDESTZEOMHBY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793051},"content":"Entering his government office for the first time, Prescott, who was not normally at a loss for words, stopped in mid-sentence when the blinds started to lower. “Yes, deputy prime minister,” a civil servant explained, “it is an automatic device to control the internal temperature.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RPEBEAOHKREQXNII34QCVJLFGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793052},"content":"Prescott became used to his elevated position and to the trappings of power. He was nicknamed “Two Jags” by the tabloids, which enjoyed taunting him, after it emerged that he owned two Jaguar cars. He was photographed playing croquet with his staff on the lawn at Dorneywood, the official country home that came with the job of deputy prime minister. His reputation suffered in 2006 when he admitted to a two-year affair with a civil servant.","type":"text"},{"_id":"24SAESEJ55HF7AMZEW5F6R5JHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732642448726},"content":"He suffered from chronic illnesses: <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/british-mp-john-prescott-praised-for-admitting-he-suffered-from-bulimia-1.915287\" target=\"_blank\">bulimia</a>, which he struggled with in silence for 20 years, and type 2 diabetes, diagnosed in 1990, which he also kept quiet about.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EA27TFSIGBABJM4RLZDDM5LTKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793053},"content":"In Prescott’s political endeavours, environmental issues were a central concern. Among his achievements were his part in negotiating the Kyoto climate change agreement.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FASHOCIIHFGADNOC7ITQLKHNWM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793054},"content":"During his decade as deputy prime minister, Prescott remained committed to advancing the causes of working people. In an interview in 2005, he said: “The one distinctive thing about the European approach, both right and left, is the belief that the social dimension goes along with the economic. The American model might produce more jobs, but it couldn’t really care a damn about the social justice.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IXPQ35LCDNBBTEGH2YCDFMR7B4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793055},"content":"He retired as an MP in 2010 and was made a member of the House of Lords.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BVYZZVUEZVDIVPNDC4DZBLQJAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793056},"content":"Blair paid tribute to his former deputy, telling the BBC that there was “no one quite like him in British politics” and calling Prescott “a titan of the Labour movement”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNZH6UDWCRDVXF77G4AN54DU2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793057},"content":"Peter Mandelson, another architect of Labour’s modernisation who is now a member of the House of Lords, said Prescott had “kept us anchored in our working-class roots, our trade union history”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UFPQRQARKJG5JGJL63GMEWR5A4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732640793058},"content":"He added: “He was in many respects the cement that kept New Labour together.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"5L4MGNTOENDJ3PAHS4LR5KOVMQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732642448733},"content":"He <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/john-prescott-former-deputy-british-pm-suffers-stroke-1.3935708\" target=\"_blank\">suffered a stroke</a> in 2019, and was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Pauline, and two sons. – <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/world/europe/john-prescott-uk-dead.html\">The New York Times</a>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"In an age when politics became increasingly managed by media advisers known as spin doctors, Prescott stood out as an authentic, if unorthodox, communicator"},"display_date":"2024-11-30T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"John Prescott obituary: Plain-speaking former UK deputy prime minister","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5CT6T5USOQWSSXGZXPXU2S2P6Y","auth":{"1":"ad2d984888ed59191911be1855303ff4742ba88f24ab4ce52619177d08d78f13"},"focal_point":{"x":1070,"y":241},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5CT6T5USOQWSSXGZXPXU2S2P6Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/30/john-prescott-obituary-plain-speaking-former-uk-deputy-prime-minister/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"BIPXMYIRDFHUBKFN73T3BIJBF4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":381,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9ce7123e-c27e-40bd-a8d5-257bc1b45546/versions/1732093487/media/7cda64fd90b78b45cccbe93c1b3cc693_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/23/tom-toner-obituary-former-chairman-of-forfas-who-believed-economic-growth-was-a-precondition-for-a-fair-society/","content_elements":[{"_id":"G5MGEDGCVJBSPAI6S4V63PP524","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born</b> June 2nd, 1932","type":"text"},{"_id":"G7SK3TV72RCBFF4UKNSBRRJDNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166915},"content":"<b>Died</b> October 26th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"F3NK3ELC25BNFESAX6UWQ4TQHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166916},"content":"Tom Toner, a businessman and public servant, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/10/29/veteran-of-irish-business-tom-toner-has-died/\" target=\"_blank\">has died</a> following a short illness at the age of 92.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KGRIE4LCS5A63KUDQXURYPQXPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166917},"content":"In a storied career that embraced the public and private sectors, Toner had many achievements under his belt by the time he transitioned to semi-retirement in 2000. However, possibly his most lasting legacy is his chairmanship of Forfás, the State agency responsible for advising the government on economic policy, from 1993 to 1999. One of the first challenges he faced after taking on the job was to deal with the European Commission’s decision to end the state aid waiver that had enabled the government to extend the special 10 per cent corporate tax rate for manufacturing to create a special economic zone that became the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin’s docklands.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FJXIX7WCP5BY7FENL7GSOSGW7U","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166918},"content":"Forfás recommended that a 12.5 per cent tax rate be applied to all industries. It was the single most important policy decision that transformed Ireland from a backwater to one of the most successful economies in the developed world. Other notable achievements during his period at Forfás were the creation of a number of agencies to develop industrial policy, research and innovation, particularly in the areas of science and technology. This culminated in the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland in 1999. He developed a close working relationship with John Travers, the chief executive of Forfás, and they remained friends until his death.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AYGVWCCIYJDKHLI4D3N3OODHQU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166919},"content":"Toner was born in the Curragh army barracks in 1932. His father had fought the War of Independence in his native Armagh and later joined the Irish Army upon the foundation of the Free State. A sign of his later character was evident in his early years at the Curragh. He chafed at the social hierarchy of the camp as the families of army officers were extended privileges, including their own entrance to the church, that were not available to lower-ranking personnel. He said that although his time at the Curragh was happy, he never felt he belonged there.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BGDTOV7W3JH77FYDWQUA3W4ETY","additional_properties":{},"content":"Toner attended De La Salle school in Kildare, where he was described as a gifted student. Sport was an early passion. He captained the Kildare minor football team in 1950. He was also a voracious reader.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IQTKNRVE6RDZ7OST433O6MRQHQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166921},"content":"He won a Kildare county council scholarship to study science at UCD in 1950, although he quickly transferred to commerce. He completed an MA in economics in 1955. His first role was with CIÉ in 1954, where he would come under the guidance of Todd Andrews, one of the founders of Fianna Fáil. Toner used the management principles he had learned in his economics MA to help modernise CIÉ. In later life, Toner said his proudest career achievement was a collaboration with Donogh O’Malley’s Department of Education in 1966 to roll out free transport to second-level students in rural areas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YXUGQNBESVEQDMVW4P4KEAMXPU","additional_properties":{"_id":"5ME2VUT5TRFG5JKGJHX46E3HUU"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"SAPRSMWEZNA4THBV54BZVB5S7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166922},"content":"In 1968, he left CIÉ to join Allied Irish Investment Bank, where he met his close friend Richard Hooper. In 1972 he took over Brooks Watson, a food and drinks company, with two AIIB colleagues, Martin Rafferty and John Harnett.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BH2MHIHMRNBVBJPSARX4RAGETM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166923},"content":"In 1970 he stopped drinking and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Even though he faced many personal and professional hardships in the years ahead, he never touched alcohol again.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OJ6AELD2SNBQVIRKNJUN6BFY74","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166924},"content":"The 1973 oil crisis roiled the Irish economy. Toner had to make many painful redundancies to keep Brooks Watson afloat. He later said it took a huge toll on him.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6A57ATOPOVCX3LZYXWCR2LDQBQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166925},"content":"However, much worse was to come. In 1956 he met Audre Isdell, a student at UCD. They would soon start a relationship and married in 1963. Over the next 10 years they had four children, Kevin, Oonagh, David and Alan.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VOHL3PPKRFEPBCDBWZ6NI7PUAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166926},"content":"In 1976, Audre was diagnosed with breast cancer. After a successful operation she went into remission, but it reappeared in 1980. She defied expectations at the time and lived for another six years. Her death in December 1986, at the age of 50, deeply affected Toner. One of the ways he dealt with his grief was by increasing his work commitments. In 1984 he had become the president of the Federated Union of Employers, which later became Ibec. In 1986, Brooks Watson was sold to Irish Distillers, and Toner joined the board. Several other directorships followed over the years, including Arnotts, Bank of Ireland, Tullow Oil, Irish Continental Group and Inishtech.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D7PWINWMTNAJDIDNASXSQGC2NA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166928},"content":"Delivering the eulogy at the funeral Mass, Alan said his father enjoyed arguing both as an analytical method and a recreational activity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4GIFOLSFKNHL7INX4SJIKFQ2VE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166929},"content":"Toner was a savage critic of the Irish State from its independence to the 1980s. He believed that economic growth was a precondition for a fair society. According to Alan, he often quipped, “too many people talk about dying for Ireland rather than living for it”. One of the main reasons he took on the Forfás role was to help solve the crushing unemployment problem.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BETCTFISFFACDJVJ6B2QAIPPAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166930},"content":"Sport remained a passion throughout his life. He followed Ireland to both rugby and soccer World Cups. He travelled widely and developed a love of Cuba. He would learn Spanish in his advanced years. In 2018 he moved from the family home in Leopardstown Road to Sandymount, where he enjoyed he last years.","type":"text"},{"_id":"L4SIXR6BMVGWLIUMFT4ICNCUJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1732016166931},"content":"Warm tributes were paid following his death by Ibec, many former colleagues and friends. He is survived by his four children, seven grandchildren and wider Toner family.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"He often quipped that ‘too many people talk about dying for Ireland rather than living for it’"},"display_date":"2024-11-23T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Tom Toner obituary: Former chairman of Forfás who believed economic growth was a precondition for a fair society","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"VE7S6Y3KU5EDJDK6TIXOQ3F2RM","auth":{"1":"da469ac8ec15eedf09cfe0cb4e86ca1b892fbc3ebecd2d1b08edcc864db699bb"},"focal_point":{"x":1422,"y":606},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VE7S6Y3KU5EDJDK6TIXOQ3F2RM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/23/tom-toner-obituary-former-chairman-of-forfas-who-believed-economic-growth-was-a-precondition-for-a-fair-society/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"PPY2BKPS6RFDPKYWWFKCI6PNNE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":473,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/b2759bd9-19a1-47a5-8d66-fc7632bf3523/versions/1732105130/media/7c52a151cea9cd11376c6593a7b3ee59_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/20/jon-kenny-obituary-portraits-of-irish-eccentricity-that-mingled-hilarity-with-sadness/","content_elements":[{"_id":"QEBUSEGLQRFFXB4ULWOHWJNSAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>September 28th, 1957","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 15th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHYVS5VEJVE3NEMR6NYRIZCM4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578425},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/jon-kenny/\" target=\"_blank\">Jon Kenny</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/19/jon-kenny-sprinkled-laughing-love-wherever-he-went-funeral-told/\" target=\"_blank\">who has died at the age of 66</a>, was one of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland</a>’s most beloved comedians. His <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/2024/11/16/best-known-as-one-half-of-dunbelievables-jon-kenny-was-both-an-anarchic-comedian-and-a-soulful-presence/\" target=\"_blank\">humour</a> fondly celebrated archetypes of small-town and rural Ireland but was often electrified by a surrealist streak suggestive of a more uproarious <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/flann-o-brien/\" target=\"_blank\">Flann O’Brien</a>. He was also a respected screen actor, appearing both in comedies such as Father Ted and straight dramas including Angela’s Ashes and Les Misérables and the Oscar-nominated animation Wolf Walkers.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z6WYRWNTIVDCBDQLGGYWGDPM24","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578426},"content":"Kenny will be best remembered as one half of the D’Unbelievables, a duo he began with <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/16/actor-and-comedian-jon-kenny-dies-aged-66/\" target=\"_blank\">Pat Shortt</a>, whom he met in the late 1980s. They met when Kenny was looking for a saxophone player to add a splash to his comedy routines. They hit it off, and after several months of coaxing, Shortt, saxophone in tow, agreed to join his collaborator on stage.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HW5WSHW6PJEGJBTP37RHC7BRJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578427},"content":"They were a chalk-and-cheese pairing. Kenny was naturally voluble, always with a gag or impersonation to hand, while Shortt could be shy when the spotlight was off. In an early interview on Bibi Baskin’s <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rte/\" target=\"_blank\">RTÉ</a> chatshow, it is Kenny who does most of the talking and tells all the jokes, while Shortt plays the straight man.","type":"text"},{"_id":"43XZINCSIRAGHBFRQQZJEDHE6M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578428},"content":"But Kenny wasn’t just a natural comedian. He was a talented musician who continued to write and perform songs throughout his life. He also had a successful screen and stage career. His screen roles tended to be cameos – but he always made the most of them. In a 1996 episode of Father Ted, he carved out a piece of Irish comedy history as Eurovision presenter Fred Rickwood – a hilariously baroque figure who rambled incoherently offstage yet was as slick as lightning when the cameras rolled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"DFAH57FBEVDZTFBGZEUW2Y4IQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578429},"content":"He will be forever associated with Father Ted but he excelled in straight parts too. As brutish Thénardier, he traded lines with Liam Neeson’s Jean Valjean in a 1988 adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. He voiced a woodcutter in Wolf Walkers and portrayed Gerry the fiddler in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, his deadpan performance a perfect conduit for McDonagh’s bittersweet dialogue.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H7GPTG34KPPZX75OHTMH243CH4","additional_properties":{"_id":"QYGMXOPS7ZHHJCRTNOQA6VJQFY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"CTGBM4NOIZD3RP3Q3LJG4GXZPA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732105029732},"content":"Kenny was born in 1957 in Hospital, 30km south of Limerick city. He had a brother, Tom, and sisters, Anne, Joan and Deirdre. His parents ran a family drapery on the main street and a pub at the opposite side of the town. Kenny’s father, John, died when Jon was young, and his mother, Mary, raised the family while running the business. “She was an amazing woman,” he would later say. “I don’t think I realised it at the time, how difficult it was.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"RYYOUACQZNAZBL3T4WAHNARKGY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578431},"content":"His childhood in Hospital would prove a huge influence on his comedy. A shop in rural Ireland was the perfect ringside seat from which to observe the quirks of ordinary people. It helped him develop an ear for the eccentricities and joys of small-town life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"46TRYXSQFFF2TNTIWBQB3GEXWY","additional_properties":{"_id":"ATLWYQGQS5FEXGE53CXWKKMCUA"},"content":"Best known as one half of D’Unbelievables, Jon Kenny was both an anarchic comedian and a soulful presence","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"GIAX536EFJBLHJWYUOA3J5D7SU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578432},"content":"Kenny had dyslexia as a child and left school, the vocational secondary in Hospital, before his 16th birthday to pursue his love of performance. The following year he and some friends formed the glam rock group Gimik. With Kenny playing bass and singing, they made a splash, appearing on Shay Healy’s Hullaballoo on RTÉ and supporting the Bay City Rollers around Ireland. But they were a band out of lockstep with the emerging punk scene – as they soon discovered.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XIONZTUBGZGD5P3BJL4LINFI6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578433},"content":"“There were times when we were in places we shouldn’t have been at all,” Kenny told Hot Press in 2003. “You’d sit down and look out at the audience and say, “what the f***” are we doing here. There’s 400 punks at the gig and here we are doing glam rock!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6VC6LSFKIFHINHLENN63S32F4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578434},"content":"Gimik would break up within a few years. In 1983 Kenny joined Limerick’s improvisational dance company, Theatre Omnibus. He was also becoming successful as a stand-up, carving out a career through sheer force of will at a time when Ireland was a comedy backwater.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LTHLIMFFARB7HAJACTMOIQHAHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1732105029738},"content":"“I was on a stand-up circuit that did not exist,” he remembered. “I was young and slightly insane. Here was me going around wearing TV sets around my head, riding pantomime horses. Once at a gig, I drove in on a Honda 50 ... down the audience.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LLPODS2UMBDYZOMKRY4FWF4TM4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578436},"content":"He crossed paths with Pat Shortt, from Thurles, on the small midwest comedy scene. Some of their earliest shows together were at Costello’s Tavern in Limerick, where owner Flan Costello offered the scrappy duo a midweek gig aimed at students. They were soon packing the upstairs room, and after a memorable performance as two confused gardaí on Gay Byrne’s Late Late Show, became a sensation across the country.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPPMEZOZDFGYTH6PQ2DWUZAAIA","subtype":"youtube","type":"oembed_response"},{"_id":"HNXP5RKOWNBDFAFYHM4YGEI6HY","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578437},"content":"Kenny’s characters were often based on people he knew from Limerick. In an interview with Hot Press, he explained how a Costa del Sol lounge singer named Pablo Maloney, who became part of his solo routine, was an amalgam of real-life individuals.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ORO6ROB3LBGADPAAWS34AWOO2M","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578438},"content":"“He was actually a composite of two different people,” he said. “One guy was a lounge singer, and then there was another fellow I knew who actually went to France, but he wasn’t a singer at all – he was a chef. Anyway, he had gone away and spent a little time in Europe, not very long. But from the time he came back from Europe – which was many, many years ago – he had adopted a completely new persona.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TNZULLBD3RA63J2X4C5MWOU2CU","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578439},"content":"D’Unbelievables, as the duo were known from 1993, were one of the biggest names in Irish comedy, their rise coinciding with the dawn of the Celtic Tiger. Suddenly people had money to spend on luxuries such as a night out at a comedy show and Kenny and Shortt played to packed houses all year round. There was no let-up – until Kenny was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2000 and took a step back.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GLPYMMMG5W2IQRTJBLU7EOEFTI","additional_properties":{"_id":"4N2BIJKBFJAPJB4GRYWORSCZY4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"5OB5BLMYRFGWRDIOVQJYVV25T4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578440},"content":"“I go to take a holiday and I’m not feeling the best and I get checked and they tell me I have cancer,” he told RTÉ in 2022. “I had to stop. I wasn’t able to do it, even emotionally I couldn’t do it.” He felt that overwork had led him to neglect his health.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MCXTR65FJ5EXNGXUGPDYRP772E","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578441},"content":"“It’s so frantic, you just keep doing it but there was something inside saying, ‘you should take a break’. My body was suffering because of it. I wasn’t going to go back to it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YDSRMCYWRNH6LKEL6QW447FJIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578442},"content":"He had to stop performing while receiving treatment, though he would return to a successful solo career. He and Shortt reunited for a sell-out D’Unbelievables tour in 2011.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EO3RJAUMXJEXBLO4AXXLTFBFL4","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578443},"content":"Kenny and his wife Margy lived in Dublin for many years before returning to Limerick and an estate located in a 20-acre forest close to scenic Lough Gur, 10 kilometres from Hospital.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F4VLRIFQYBG3PE5TWEICJGBS6A","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578444},"content":"Kenny was not the first comedian to look to small-town Ireland for inspiration. But his portraits of Irish eccentricity were frequently mingled with sadness. In an early D’Unbelievables show, One Hell of a Do, he played a character named Martin – an overbearing drunk whose ceaseless patter was gradually revealed to be a cover for the deep loneliness he felt after the death of his wife.","type":"text"},{"_id":"H3JWNIO6ENEIXNALA76BH72W54","additional_properties":{"_id":1732105029750},"content":"“It’s about people ... people are funny,” he would say of his comedic philosophy. “We are all funny. People do funny things. We just exaggerate it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JGHNHZEKQ5DDTDXNE7RFPINJIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1732099578446},"content":"He is survived by wife Margy, children Aran and Laya, and sisters Anne, Joan and Deirdre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EPW3MPRDF5BH3CCOCKWZS4WZEM","additional_properties":{},"content":"<i>*This obituary was amended on November 21st to correct the date of birth</i>","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"“It’s about people … people are funny,” he would say of his comedic philosophy"},"display_date":"2024-11-20T12:20:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Jon Kenny obituary: Portraits of Irish eccentricity that mingled hilarity with sadness","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NYNKMODUZZN3JJCGXDZXF72DXM","auth":{"1":"bba1fbdc7069263a8818d3fdf5692619aa119187650c9baf3663e3524e450308"},"focal_point":{"x":1114,"y":456},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NYNKMODUZZN3JJCGXDZXF72DXM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"},{"name":"Culture"},{"name":"TV & Radio"},{"name":"People"},{"name":"Life & Style"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/20/jon-kenny-obituary-portraits-of-irish-eccentricity-that-mingled-hilarity-with-sadness/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"FPLQR532Q5FM3PWJTDVASCBWC4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":266,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/10d48afa-f457-4328-ad92-5fc0fb9d0ec0/versions/1731853033/media/a0a2c7ac13821f863b7c05506ff4b09c_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/17/declan-mccourt-pioneering-entrepreneur-made-an-immense-contribution-to-corporate-and-charitable-sectors/","content_elements":[{"_id":"WPBTJZO5SFDRVC27YAJLTSPRRI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568201},"content":"The sudden recent death of Declan McCourt (April 15th, 1946 – October 18th, 2024) has left Ireland without one of its pioneering entrepreneurs.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4FPSDUGDABHFVJ7IHVK56JROU4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568202},"content":"Declan was the son of Kevin and Peggy McCourt. Kevin McCourt was one of a small group of business people who actively promoted economic activity in the Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s most notably in bringing together many of the distilleries under the banner of Irish Distillers and also as director general of RTÉ shortly after its establishment. It would be accurate to say that Declan was more than a chip off the business block of his father.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2C7KQFTUIRHY7EKSWZXSKE4W6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568203},"content":"Declan went to school at Castleknock College playing on the wing for its senior schools cup team. He studied economics to MA level at UCD, while also taking the law courses at the King’s Inns. He was called to the bar in 1968.","type":"text"},{"_id":"I6GWDJ3HMBACNDCCU7S5RNTZKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568204},"content":"Instead of a career in law, he opted instead for the commercial world. After some early experience with Goulding Fertilisers, he took the unusual step, at the time, of opting to study for an MBA at Harvard University.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WWPGFP2BINC55NTG5YDLF4PXXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568205},"content":"This experience enabled him to move into the world of international business, and his initial work was in the distillery and drinks industry when he became marketing director for Seagram’s in Rome and was later promoted to the position of vice-president in New York.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KU7F2ZH7NVDTRI564MVT7XDXS4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568206},"content":"Ever a fervent Irishman, he decided to return to Ireland when offered the position of chief operating officer with the TMG Group.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ISFNMAKBTJBO7CXEJFQVFDQLOE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568207},"content":"Later, in 1982, he was invited to join the OHM Group as partner and chief executive. So started a career in the motor industry for Declan which lasted until his death. He was a key driver in greatly expanding the group to become a leading automotive and power solutions business – it now employs over 500 people.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3SBTERCZT5FINPAA7STESGK54Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568208},"content":"His immense success in business attracted major Irish companies, ranging from the Bank of Ireland, Fyffes, Balmoral International Land Holdings and the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, to appoint him to their boards.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5TWAIP4E2JGKZJVX5QTAUFD2HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568209},"content":"Highlighting Declan’s outstanding career should not mask his exceptional contributions to two areas of social activity where he left lasting legacies, namely the Mater Hospital Foundation, on which he served for 26 years, and UCD’s School of Law Development Council.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KXCD5QMU4JGKFGAES6IEPYXF2Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568210},"content":"Mary Moorhead, the CEO of the Mater Hospital Foundation, wrote that “It is no surprise that during Declan’s tenure as chair, the Foundation remitted over €31 million to help fund innovative and transformational projects”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IJJHXAQQ25E3HBXXPZNXA6VGQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568211},"content":"His work for the Law School in UCD was marked by the university conferring an honorary doctorate of law on him in 2013. His dedication to his alma mater continued over the years and more recently he was a member of the President’s Advisory Board at UCD.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NB2J4UFSCRFLTBTJAKT5FGULME","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568212},"content":"Always the absolute gentleman, Declan, behind his ever-smiling face, demonstrated an extraordinary emotional capacity to confer his love on his family and friends. With his wife Margaret, to whom he proposed three weeks after having met her in 1967, he raised four children: Conal, Cian, Melissa and Melanie. He was devoted to Margaret and to their family. He enjoyed nothing more than holidaying with them and the grandchildren on Inishnee in Connemara during the summer.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7OETFXZWE5HWXGCCBH3JVNE4DU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568213},"content":"With his numerous friends he relished the occasional meeting at Moran’s of the Weir, golfing trips or fishing at Currarevagh. On one occasion in the latter setting, he took great pride in showing his friends a big black box which he said would enable him to communicate with the business world while fishing. This box, appropriate now for a museum setting, was the basis of a new phenomenon which would be called the mobile phone!","type":"text"},{"_id":"D4DR4RX5KNHZVL3BUS2ODE2MWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568214},"content":"Declan’s personality radiated warmth, generosity and a great joy for life. He had an innate gift to make friends and to be a great friend.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NEA36YNTSRCVZEDWS44AEABFBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568215},"content":"The huge attendance at his recent funeral in Foxrock bore testimony to this.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QU2JHKLDOJCUNA4GO42GJFBPXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731852568216},"content":"His work both at the corporate and charitable levels is a fitting legacy to a life well lived, sadly taken from his family prior to its completion.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Antoin Murphy"}]},"description":{"basic":"An Appreciation"},"display_date":"2024-11-17T18:59:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Declan McCourt – pioneering entrepreneur made an immense contribution to corporate and charitable sectors ","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"5KM4IJI7FBBEPC63QFUIMHQ3EI","auth":{"1":"552fcc86dc51c13325ecbd2bc3c303f7e7cca11d6a65287703700da595bd1703"},"focal_point":{"x":1010,"y":468},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/5KM4IJI7FBBEPC63QFUIMHQ3EI.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/17/declan-mccourt-pioneering-entrepreneur-made-an-immense-contribution-to-corporate-and-charitable-sectors/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"ENBXRVTDWVBOZBLYHBGGYIIJG4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":465,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/2e2b33fd-281b-464f-bea9-7922327f3f0d/versions/1731503343/media/10cf94e09582ec62eb7027eea35910b9_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/16/quincy-jones-obituary-music-kingpin-best-known-for-producing-michael-jacksons-thriller/","content_elements":[{"_id":"ZL2WBQ2MVJHBLOEGICMPTOKFDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>March 14th, 1933","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 3rd, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"4S2JLELXVVBELHNAASABMQY2ZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435071720},"content":"The career of Quincy Jones, who has died aged 91, was an odyssey like few others in the pantheon of popular music. In a dazzling, decades-long run of creative and commercial success, he established himself as a kingpin of many genres: jazz, pop, R&B, funk, disco, film scores and more. Above all else, however, he is remembered as the man who produced the biggest-selling record in history: Michael Jackson’s Thriller.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WKWTJ53EWNDBXNMS4S6LDW3GIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695787},"content":"Jones’s artistic journey was an eventful and glitzy one. A jazz bandleader in the 1950s and 1960s, he later moved into the world of film soundtracks, produced multimillion-selling records, presided over his own label and built a TV production and publishing empire. At the time of his death, he was worth an estimated half a billion dollars.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OORW2XO7QFECHAD4I2EB67KUJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695788},"content":"Quincy Delight Jones Jr was born on March 14th, 1933 – the same day as his subsequent close friend, the actor Michael Caine – in Chicago. His parents Quincy Sr and Sara were, respectively, a semi-pro baseball player and carpenter, and a bank worker. When he was a small child, Sara suffered a mental breakdown and was committed to an institution; his father remarried and moved the family to Washington State.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5RX6GRY7NFDRBXBRHK63QQDXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695789},"content":"Entering the music business aged 17 as a precocious arranger, Jones learned an early lesson when the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker failed to pay him back a loan. Before long, he found work with big names such as Dinah Washington and Tommy Dorsey, then joined Lionel Hampton’s orchestra as a trumpeter and toured Europe with Count Basie. In 1956, the legendary Dizzy Gillespie’s ensemble hired him as musical director.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XD5OM4M6LRDRZLVHBJKYVAJDGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695790},"content":"Jones released his first album, This Is How I Feel About Jazz, in 1957. His 1962 release, Big Band Bossa Nova, contained what would come to be regarded as his signature tune, the chirpy, Latin-flavoured instrumental Soul Bossa Nova.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5HKQJIWACVEQDAKLBSKAEBWXSY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695791},"content":"Jones had now become a bona fide mover and shaker in musical circles. In the mid-1960s, he produced four million-selling singles for British singer Lesley Gore; and a long-running creative relationship with Frank Sinatra peaked in 1966 when he conducted and arranged the elegant live album Sinatra at the Sands. He also branched out into film scores, beginning with Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker in 1961; his credits over the next decade and a half included soundtracks for The Getaway, In the Heat of the Night, Roots, The Italian Job, The Anderson Tapes and In Cold Blood.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQFA6GSAORCF3OMLV5VMKMU3YI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695792},"content":"The 1970s saw Jones survive a brain aneurysm and make some of the most compelling music of his career. He produced the soundtrack for The Wiz, a film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Its star, Michael Jackson, asked Jones if he knew any potential producers for Jackson’s next album. Jones volunteered his own services, and despite the misgivings of Epic Records (who felt Jones was too jazzy for it to work), Off the Wall was a spectacular success, launching Jackson as a household-name solo artist.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OVTRMTPIRVALDKKCWLA3FSBIXU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695793},"content":"An irresistible collection of disco anthems penned by Jackson and the low-profile English songwriter Rod Temperton, Off The Wall was given a heady gloss by Jones’s mixing-desk magic. “Everybody said, ‘You can’t make Michael any bigger than he was in the Jackson Five,’” Jones recalled. “I said, ‘We’ll see.’”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JNSPBF4FGJGW7CZEMRVSHQOJ64","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695794},"content":"Released in August 1979, the record went triple platinum in the US within months.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6F4RLASIINDU3NNUIKQL533CGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695795},"content":"Unwilling to rest on his laurels, Jones then worked on a string of accomplished R&B albums by Rufus and Chaka Khan, George Benson, The Brothers Johnson, Patti Austin and Donna Summer. In 1980 he founded Qwest Records, a label whose roster contained artists as varied as Sinatra and New Order. The following year, he released the well-received album The Dude under his own name. Then came Thriller.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GIV7QXA6NFCSRMQUV5YRISP5TY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695796},"content":"Jones spent most of 1982 in a studio where Jackson’s outlandish menagerie of pets roamed free (to his displeasure), and endured sleep deprivation as he toiled to make the record sound as close to perfect as possible. “That’s where the creative stuff comes in, the unconscious mind,” he said. “It was tough. But we did it.” Songwriter James Ingram recalled how Jones often fell asleep on the mixing board, awaking to answer a question: “He works in the alpha state a lot.” Jones’s imaginative ideas – bringing in Eddie Van Halen to play a rock guitar solo on Beat It, hiring horror movie legend Vincent Price for a spooky voiceover on the title track – helped turn a very good record into a legendary one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXKY2TEJUNDWNEUOSDM2PP7KK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731503011325},"content":"Released in November 1982, Thriller exploded like no record before or since, with all seven of its singles cracking the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. At one point in early 1983, it was shifting a million copies per week, and is today estimated to have broken the 100 million barrier. (An ungrateful Jackson tried to block Jones’s Grammy nomination for Thriller, arguing that “this is my record”; Epic Records refused, and Jones won Best Producer.)","type":"text"},{"_id":"LRFDN7QAPFGQNMW53O3NC65GVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731435071721},"content":"Jones shaped many more hits as the 1980s rolled on. He also oversaw the USA For Africa charity single We Are the World, later recalling the “power” he felt as he commanded a studio full of guesting superstars. But this stratospheric success took a psychological toll, and his marriage to actress Peggy Lipton began to crumble as he became hooked on sleeping pills.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NTGO4MCH4RG2RPMHR7PE3QZNN4","additional_properties":{"_id":"2NWQR3CZ4NGNHI3Q73RF3WXXMM"},"content":"Quincy Jones, producer and giant of US entertainment, dies aged 91","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HESLVLDHDVH3BJI5H5HWC7WPPE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695798},"content":"After composing the soundtrack of Steven Spielberg’s drama The Color Purple, he fled to Tahiti, where he kicked his addiction. In 1987, Jones patched up his differences with Jackson to produce the follow-up to Thriller. The result, Bad, was an awkward and unsatisfying mélange that lacked cohesion. Though reviews were mixed, it moved seven million copies in its first week of release anyway, making it the fastest-selling album ever.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YVENOROO7VDKNG5ZNVCB5DFMR4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731497695799},"content":"With his fortune amassed and his reputation unassailable, Jones moved into TV. He set up the production company Quincy Jones Entertainment, which was behind NBC’s hugely successful Will Smith sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, giving him another lucrative revenue stream for the rest of his life. He also organised Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration concert in 1993 and the Academy Awards telecast in 1996.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N55MWTMNQJCENE6JW3E2GUCJQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731503011330},"content":"In retirement, Jones occasionally courted controversy by making waspishly provocative comments about other musicians in interviews, and raised eyebrows in 2009 by dating an Egyptian fashion designer 52 years his junior. He was married three times, to Jeri Caldwell (1957-1966), Ulla Andersson (1967-1974) and Peggy Lipton (1974-1990). He is survived by seven children, including the actress Rashida Jones and the music producer Quincy Jones III.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"In an eventful and glitzy career, he performed with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, arranged for Frank Sinatra, and scored films including The Color Purple"},"display_date":"2024-11-16T00:15:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"Quincy Jones obituary: Music kingpin best known for producing Michael Jackson’s Thriller","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"PQAFJ7CXO72PEWLCWHWJLM3MUM","auth":{"1":"b8c8214c4e37fcfcf2813687a7cf5bfc21e48e7e8968719b6539ee718c889843"},"focal_point":{"x":3344,"y":1270},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/PQAFJ7CXO72PEWLCWHWJLM3MUM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/16/quincy-jones-obituary-music-kingpin-best-known-for-producing-michael-jacksons-thriller/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"TAUK4X4PCJA6ZID6ILZWDBKXUI","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":499,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/5beee197-da24-4bc2-92d7-b90e3fd3bf8a/versions/1731449113/media/0b3e8df081ce3ddbd134f6f38c53aef4_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/12/kathleen-watkins-obituary-broadcaster-author-and-one-half-of-the-original-power-couple/","content_elements":[{"_id":"YAAHOKMMCZBTJHLYHZFMULB7GI","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born: </b>October 17th, 1934","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died: </b>November 7th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"W45GXN335JBBFEFWHQT7MXDH4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131045},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/kathleen-watkins/\" target=\"_blank\">Kathleen Watkins</a>, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/11/07/kathleen-watkins-broadcaster-and-author-has-died-aged-90/\" target=\"_blank\">who has died aged 90</a>, was a broadcaster, award-winning author, musician and patron of the arts. She became part of the original power couple when she married broadcaster <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/gay-byrne/\" target=\"_blank\">Gay Byrne</a> and together they were a familiar sight at arts and cultural events around Dublin for many decades.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3E6MIJG2BBHEHGL6LE4T4TDKEM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131046},"content":"From Saggart, Co Dublin, she was the second of four children born to Tom Watkins, from Tallaght, and Dinah Fitzgerald from Brittas.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MZ4GSGMBL5APDM7D7P5CVPFI54","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074514},"content":"Her father ran a sand and gravel business in Brittas and had a small farm in Saggart. He was in the 4th battalion of the old IRA and was interned at the Curragh during the Civil War. On the day of his wedding, he avoided capture by the British Army by escaping through the sacristy. His new bride did not see him for six weeks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QY35L2FZHJH2TMWSXRPOUSETYY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131047},"content":"Kathleen Watkins contracted TB twice as a child, spending six weeks in a nursing home at one stage. She attended the local national school in Saggart and credits this with awakening her interest in music. On the Senior Times podcast in 2020, she told her friend and former <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rte/\" target=\"_blank\">RTÉ</a> colleague Mike Murphy how she and her fellow pupils were taught to recite the words of Thomas Moore and put them to music.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TUADIV6LDZA3JCR466FVJ55NUE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074516},"content":"“I loved the rhythm of the words, the way the words lay line after line. I loved the rhythm of the music,” she recalled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZK7D3FR3DJEAPLW54GTJXEE3QQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131048},"content":"Secondary school was in Sion Hill, Blackrock, where she learned the harp by ear from Máirín Ní Shéaghdha (Mrs Feiritéar after marriage). She also learned the cello and piano at school and her music education continued after school, when she studied the concert harp with Sheila Larchet.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4QE7NUJPKBGNPKFAK6BECU62BY","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131049},"content":"She worked in Dunlop Tyres as she honed her craft as a harpist and singer. She would later spend six weeks travelling through the US with her harp to promote Irish Distillers. Her numerous appearances on US television included an interview on Good Morning America.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Y43FVHMGRNE3RAKA2POADO25E4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131050},"content":"She was working in Dunlop’s when she was introduced to Gay Byrne in the Safari Café on Dawson St by optician Donal MacNally. Her future husband was an insurance clerk at that time but would soon join what was then known as Radio Éireann, in 1958.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EAKG6573DNH4XP2OBVYIBVN4PA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074520},"content":"In 1961, she too joined the broadcasting world and quickly became one of the leading continuity announcers on Telefís Éireann. She made history as the first continuity announcer to appear on screen on the opening night of Telefís Éireann on New Year’s Eve, 1961.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IFWWRCIX3QSXBNPG466QG67NZE","additional_properties":{"_id":"V7NZLINKJRGCDMZNGRKRYGPOTQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"VIUWCHFJFRAIFMJFSFHG4L64HQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131052},"content":"Businessman Gavin Duffy, who was her co-presenter on the television show Holiday Ireland, once described her as the consummate professional.","type":"text"},{"_id":"INYYCKYBJNAENN5EXI7Z3ZGJJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074523},"content":"“Her measured delivery, infinite vocabulary, perfect diction with the breathing of a trained singer meant every link was perfectly enunciated with warmth and engagement on television,” he wrote in the Sunday Independent in 2014.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZKPMOGG6LVDVBJAAP3RERAJ5F4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131053},"content":"Breakdowns in transmission were a regular occurrence in the early days of television but she had a weapon in her armoury that most continuity announcers did not have. To avoid dead air, she would take out the harp and sing an Irish song.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F2R4K6V5WJFBZDVDPXKGN7HKBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131054},"content":"When she married Gay Byrne in 1964, such was their combined star power that gardaí had to cut a pathway through the large crowds gathered outside the church in Saggart to allow their car to leave.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7UHFRCISIBFPBFUYFVC7LFJYX4","additional_properties":{"_id":"LRMJO3TAWBEYFGZY3YC2XZ4WMQ"},"content":"Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"XLQ2HT7IFJHP7DZNM5TH6LLXVA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131056},"content":"She played Grace Gifford in the 1966 docudrama Insurrection and was the first woman to host the Rose of Tralee in 1977. But apart from occasional projects and voiceover work, her career took a back seat while her husband worked long hours presenting his daily morning radio show and the weekend Late Late Show on television. She focused on rearing their two children, Crona and Suzy, only taking on projects when they fitted around family life.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AKASEDY2SJAILK2SPEDTVECYAU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131057},"content":"When she presented the radio programme Overseas Requests, she rehearsed by reading the letters from emigrants to the girls as bedtime stories. When they were teenagers, she began presenting her longest-running television series Faces & Places, on television. It ran from 1986 until 1991.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XOVT5ZJBO5GIHITP45DDPZ5OMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131058},"content":"In 2011, she accompanied her husband on the Gay Byrne Live on Stage tour. He talked about his life in broadcasting while she read poetry. Over a six-year period, they performed to more than 13,000 people all over Ireland.","type":"text"},{"_id":"V6JEPHJCWJDDNGOTM3B25D75FM","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131059},"content":"Her role as grandmother led to an unexpected career swerve in 2016 when she became a children’s author at the age of 82. She wrote three children’s books, based on stories she told her grandchildren about a piglet about town, called Pigín. The first of the books, which were all illustrated by Margaret Anne Suggs, won an Irish Book Award.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ICR7CAZWZBPVVLTJSVDJH6RFOE","additional_properties":{"_id":"DL54W2TIEVGETN2FDQB5FWJVQY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"IWF7SE52NJAM5AZOUNK7WMT5S4","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131061},"content":"Of all the roles she took on, the one she truly relished was becoming Nana Kit to her five grandchildren.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QNTVCZO3YRH67I3W2J266TWI6I","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074533},"content":"“Some people are not interested in grandchildren. We are all different but I can’t understand that,” she told Sheila Wayman in this newspaper.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JK3FZZIIPBDQRCTUOQKPCD4R3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131062},"content":"She had a passion for poetry and she reread her favourite poems so often that she knew them from memory. Whenever there was a gathering of friends, she could be relied upon to recite a poem that perfectly chimed with the occasion.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CVCI2SQPEBBYTOQF5AUJS7RLSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074535},"content":"She compiled two books of poems – An Ordinary Woman, in 2019 and One for Everyone, the following year. Interviewed in this newspaper about the second collection, she told Róisín Ingle that poetry should be for everybody.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QYLFRXATX5E6RAY3MLN6ZPJ6ZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074536},"content":"“If the poems paint pictures for me, that’s all I need. Some people are very high falutin’ about poetry but I’m not a bit like that,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BGPO5P7L4BAZFIQI45FWLJGITA","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131063},"content":"She accumulated a wide circle of friends with ease and they talked of how endlessly entertaining her company was. Close friend Marie Louise O’Donnell described her as a Renaissance woman and “a lady to her fingertips”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5A5ZNLWTGVBODL5N5TZCEC6C3M","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074538},"content":"Mike Murphy described her as a refined, erudite, graceful woman who was always interested in things. Speaking on RTÉ's Liveline, he said she loved how their friends teased her husband and she would laughingly tell them to “leave my Gaysie alone”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EPKHKFLPP5APTC22RQJSBN4UKU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131064},"content":"Of all the arts, ballet was her favourite discipline. She went to the Royal Opera House whenever she could and spoke of how lucky she was to have seen Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev performing together in Covent Garden.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBA2LTPQR5BFVB4DF6LWFU742Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131065},"content":"Her passion for the arts led her to serve on the Arts Council, on the board of the National Gallery and as president of Feis Ceoil. She was an avid theatregoer, she championed struggling artists and she promoted new artists whenever she could. Mike Hanrahan of Stockton’s Wing said the band never forgot her role in getting them onto The Late Late Show after she had seen them perform in Limerick.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U4OZB6722ZEH3M2YTC2P3QQFGQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131066},"content":"The loss of her husband just before the Covid-19 pandemic was a major blow, but her daughter Suzy said she never knew anyone who was so relentlessly positive.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YQH4ZKUBORDBLNDFJIDFO3S4HU","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074542},"content":"“Into every life a little rain must fall – I think that would be a saying I remember most of her,” she said. “She believed that, compared to many, her life was a charmed one and so she was ever grateful for that.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"OCWMZBNE4NET5HH7LHYSJHM7IQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074543},"content":"She said her mother was their father’s greatest supporter and friend. She graciously accepted the public interest in her husband but always insisted that show business stayed outside the home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GF53VWCHFNFKLC3LOUYJYKR3QE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731449074544},"content":"“Ours was a normal, happy home with a mother that was present for us in every way,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IOIV3CAANFDBXMBX6P7BNTB2UE","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131067},"content":"After she fell on her way to mass last Christmas Eve, she was forced to slow down but it didn’t stop her working with writer Alison Walsh on her autobiography which was due to be published next spring.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4P5CDAQ2KRE5VMR3MBUU5U6YNI","additional_properties":{"_id":1731448131068},"content":"Predeceased by her husband Gay Byrne, and brother Jim, she is survived by her daughters Crona and Suzy, grandchildren Cian, Sadhbh, Kate, Saoirse and Harry, sisters Clare and Phil and sons-in-law Philip and Ronan.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"She loved how their friends teased her husband, Late Late Show host Gay Byrne, and she would laughingly tell them to “leave my Gaysie alone”"},"display_date":"2024-11-12T22:04:59.143Z","headlines":{"basic":"Kathleen Watkins obituary: broadcaster, author and one half of the original power couple","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"FX65QKBWD5G3SZESMO6GNZUU7Y","auth":{"1":"9c506a56e4eeb6f641332639419f0985f2cbe647a4ee7bf02ff30f93ca80008c"},"focal_point":{"x":1453,"y":918},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/FX65QKBWD5G3SZESMO6GNZUU7Y.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/12/kathleen-watkins-obituary-broadcaster-author-and-one-half-of-the-original-power-couple/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"IZHZQDH4VBBZJAFR7N4XPMRMII","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":448,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/e4c1b3f6-778c-4c71-a00e-0049a6b34859/versions/1730893590/media/f804e6f431acb7f1692df18321f4e26f_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/09/david-davin-power-obituary-a-trusted-and-impartial-political-correspondent-for-rte-during-a-golden-era-in-broadcasting/","content_elements":[{"_id":"VTEQY5FAR5BWTMHQB55XDWVI2Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>April 24th, 1952","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>October 31st, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"SO3SD3UX2JAPJIDSBIDB3BCXQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536086},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/david-davin-power/\" target=\"_blank\">David Davin-Power</a> was one of the best known faces on television and a trusted commentator on <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rte/\" target=\"_blank\">RTÉ </a>during the golden age of public service broadcasting. He reported on some of the momentous events in modern Irish history and explained them in an incisive and impartial manner to the viewing public.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HRPKXUD2HJCTDNZ3T7NTHJJBPM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536087},"content":"During a long and varied career he was – from 1984 – the first co-presenter of the groundbreaking Morning Ireland programme in RTÉ, along with David Hanly, and went on to be the station’s Northern Editor during the peace process and political correspondent from 2001 to 2017.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZSE6DIBF4FAYJB2BVCYNEW3Y4A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536088},"content":"While he was noted for his impartiality, Davin-Power didn’t simply recite the facts of the big events he covered but provided concise explanation and context delivered with wit and brio. His calm demeanour and precise use of language were the hallmarks of his broadcasting style.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SOOCS3532RD3HNGFG2N7DABOFE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536089},"content":"In private he was great company and a wonderful raconteur who appreciated the absurdities of life. David McCullagh, his long-time colleague on the RTÉ political team, summed up the feelings of those who worked with him over the years. “The most erudite, witty colleague, always great fun and wonderful company. Gone far too soon.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6USFKIKZHNAWNBJV4GPQ4UYT3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536090},"content":"David Davin-Power, or DDP as he was known to media colleagues, was born in 1952. His father, Maurice, was a GP who earned a reputation for the time and attention he gave to poorer patients. He was also a playwright, drawing on his professional experience in his work. He won the OZ Whitehead award for one-act plays twice, wrote episodes of the first RTÉ soap Tolka Row in the 1960s and was drama critic for the Irish Medical Times.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2XUV7UTAO5BW3FWBT27K4KMJ3I","additional_properties":{"_id":"AFXMESUI4FEU7PGFVTH64RAIWA"},"content":"Former RTÉ broadcaster David Davin-Power ‘showed bravery to the bitter end’, son tells funeral Mass","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"HVQR2ODUEVA3RNU32TA4NE42JU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536091},"content":"The family lived on the South Circular Road in Dublin and David attended the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College in nearby Ranelagh. On leaving school he enrolled as a pre-med student in UCD but decided after a year that medicine was not for him. His younger sister Mary continued the family medical tradition and became a GP.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UNRIOYEYZ5EAPMAUTJNT5RQP24","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536092},"content":"David switched from medicine to history and politics in UCD and became a well-known figure in the college during the early years of the Belfield campus. After graduation he began his career in journalism with the Irish Medical Times, and in 1976 he moved to the Irish Press as a subeditor, where one of his colleagues was the writer David Hanly.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YBSMBJ3H6FDTVGG5YEYSEEDWHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536093},"content":"The two of them moved to RTÉ in the late 1970s and, after cutting their teeth in the newsroom, they were appointed as the first presenters of Morning Ireland, which went on air in November 1984. The programme gave a new dimension to RTÉ’s news coverage and quickly developed a wide listenership, making household names of its two presenters.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EOK7VBK725GUPBQKZONV2XAWRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536094},"content":"When Ireland’s first commercial broadcaster, Century Radio, was established in 1989 Davin-Power was approached to head up its news operation. After serious consideration he decided to take the plunge and took charge of the news division at the station. It was an ill-fated move, as Century closed after a little more than two years due to financial difficulties.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FPK7POK57NEB5HPBLGFW5EO6OY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536095},"content":"Davin-Power was quickly snapped up by the Evening Press, where he was appointed political correspondent. He returned to his old haunt on Burgh Quay, intending to make his future as a newspaper journalist but faced an immediate dilemma when RTÉ offered him the job of Northern Correspondent. After agonising over the matter he decided that broadcasting was where his future lay, and he left the Evening Press after less than three weeks. He would later tell friends that his meeting with the paper’s highly respected editor, Sean Ward, to inform him of the decision was one of the most difficult and embarrassing encounters in his professional life. In the Press newsroom he was immediately dubbed “David Gone-in-an-hour.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NRYCOG7IKZHTTMOJKOZNWQ322E","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536096},"content":"As Northern editor of RTÉ during the 1990s he had a ringside seat at the evolving peace process and kept the Irish public up to date with the succession of events that ultimately led to the Belfast Agreement. He developed contacts right across the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland and was trusted by politicians of all parties for his fair minded commentary.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NJA7ALXUP5AZXE5GM3JO5JKACE","additional_properties":{"_id":"FDP27DL6LJFV3AMBNQJBL62LVM"},"content":"Bertie Ahern pays tribute to late broadcaster David Davin-Power","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"KHRKHODPLBCJHPDZ2VEZKXHF2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536097},"content":"During the 1980s he had to contend with a serious trauma in his personal life when his first marriage ended and he had to take care of his three children. At his funeral Mass his eldest son Nick paid tribute to the way his father had juggled a demanding work schedule with devoting himself to the welfare of his children.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UU6CYQB4INFBRHYUZMYMHTBZCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536098},"content":"In 2001 he returned to Dublin as RTÉ’s political correspondent and he brought his skills as a knowledgeable and impartial commentator to the station’s coverage of Irish politics. He already knew all the main players before he arrived in Leinster House and was deeply respected by all sides of the political world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JBWNQYZR6FC53MGAGCVVMGEAWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536099},"content":"His wonderful grasp of the English language sometimes had viewers, and colleagues, reaching for the dictionary. In one television news bulletin he described the late Brian Lenihan’s attitude during the financial crisis as “Panglossian”. That relatively obscure word could not have been bettered in the circumstances.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RV3KU3GVLVCRRDEDKSQF6BVH5E","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536100},"content":"As well as his use of language, television viewers were intrigued by his vigorous curly hair. There was unfounded speculation that it was not his own and occasionally passers-by would tug at it to check as he stood in Merrion Street waiting to do a broadcast. He once received a neatly typed letter with the message: “Have you no family or friends who would tell you that the wig you are wearing is terrible? It is so obvious it is funny. Why don’t you buy a new one or just be bald?” Davin-Power was so amused he had the letter framed and it hung in the downstairs bathroom at his Dublin home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FG2XFI3QLVHARFS2F3L7A65N3Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536101},"content":"That home was the venue for an annual Christmas party given by David and his second wife Dearbhla, whom he married in 2001. There, journalists, politicians and judges mingled with family friends and relatives. Near-neighbours Bertie Ahern and Richard Bruton were regulars at the event, to which an invitation was much coveted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PALJGIAQPJA3PK3CEMKM6LFKGY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536102},"content":"In 2017 when he reached the age of 65 David was forced into retirement by RTÉ’s rigid rules. It was something he deeply resented as he felt he still had a lot to contribute to journalism. In recent years he was a frequent contributor to Newstalk, and in the past year began a regular political column in the Sunday Independent in which his insight and sparkling prose began to win a wide audience.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4IZR3BIFCFBZTIGIM25S5JTHDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536103},"content":"He was diagnosed early in the year with cancer of the thyroid. While the treatment appeared initially to work, by late summer it was evident the cancer had spread and he died on the last day of October.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NKTX7KXXLZDTDCYVUOMFWJMVXM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730890536104},"content":"He was married twice, first to artist Christine Bowen, with whom he had three children, Nick, Caroline and Julia, and, subsequently to Dearbhla Collins, a renowned musician with whom he had two children, Ben and Emily. He is also survived by his sister Mary.","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[]},"description":{"basic":"As Northern editor of RTÉ during the 1990s he had a ringside seat at the evolving peace process that culminated in the Belfast Agreement"},"display_date":"2024-11-09T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"David Davin-Power obituary: A trusted and impartial political correspondent for RTÉ during a golden era in broadcasting","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"MVVY4K52POKOFLYQ2QSRI4KVKM","auth":{"1":"7eb0438574b40a86c16995377e575d8c10d62b03e0d775bcbf5c46a20e8ef5af"},"type":"image","url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/MVVY4K52POKOFLYQ2QSRI4KVKM.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Obituaries"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/09/david-davin-power-obituary-a-trusted-and-impartial-political-correspondent-for-rte-during-a-golden-era-in-broadcasting/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/obituaries","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Obituaries"}}}},{"_id":"LMYB6LDQQZHGHHQXYVA2G7G6BE","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":470,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/610b6e09-8d58-40e7-93cf-5db71b798c9f/versions/1730799811/media/b0c8d21679ea2e73ef4c71ee34359b9d_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/obituaries/2024/11/09/mike-jackson-obituary-british-general-associated-with-bloody-sunday-killings/","content_elements":[{"_id":"RZEHRY5H7FAYXDFJ7L3EF4SL4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1655126212489},"content":"<b>Born </b>March 21st, 1944","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNE3SNLQBVFALJJSTTWIDDSI4A","additional_properties":{"_id":"2RS2GOKGRJB75PO3O7ZNETYZ2Y"},"content":"<b>Died </b>October 15th, 2024","type":"text"},{"_id":"2AQPZNYDXRB7HPTDYVZXXIBX34","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277365},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/10/16/british-general-involved-in-bloody-sunday-and-ballymurphy-massacre-dies/\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Jackson</a>, who has died aged 80, gained many honours and plaudits in his British army career of more than four decades. For many in Ireland, however, he will be associated with the Parachute Regiment killings on <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/bloody-sunday/\" target=\"_blank\">Bloody Sunday</a> in Derry on January 30th, 1972, and the killings at Ballymurphy in west Belfast in August the previous year by the same regiment.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HSVWH2CS6NCYHA2JAVG36CJJQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277366},"content":"Jackson was a captain on the ground when Col Derek Wilford gave the order for the paratroopers to charge into the Bogside in Derry, a decision that resulted in 13 innocent civil rights demonstrators being shot dead on the day, and a 14th man dying some months later.","type":"text"},{"_id":"WP2JOMWISNE4BMAKMXHCBRDSRE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277367},"content":"Jackson told the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday that as he “sprinted across the waste ground, I had an absolutely firm impression that I was being shot at ... What I thought was: ‘Some bugger is firing at me’.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JQ567YNDEJB2PPZGRWMJVBWBBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277368},"content":"Later when recalled to the inquiry to give evidence about documents called the “shot list” that he had compiled featuring explanations soldiers gave for why they had fired, he denied that the list was designed to “sanitise” the actions of the paratroopers. Lord Saville accepted Jackson’s evidence about the list and found “nothing sinister in the fact that it did not include details such as the names of the soldiers and the number of rounds fired”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4S77XDEAHZEC7E6CWS2ICC3SAQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277369},"content":"In his 2007 memoir, Soldier, Jackson wrote, “I hated the thought that our soldiers might have lost control ... I found it difficult to accept that there could have been any mass breach of discipline.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QIMORTJPCNDAHK6FMVBUHXUEDQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277370},"content":"Jackson nonetheless accepted Saville’s damning 2010 report of the soldiers’ conduct on Bloody Sunday and his exoneration of all those killed and injured. He joined in the then British prime minister David Cameron’s apology to the victims.","type":"text"},{"_id":"W5L5QJYSBFG6HBYVEQL4KC2RO4","additional_properties":{"_id":"U2CV3FT325FRFGCGMM3HIZLAMM"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"PN2E2GI3O5DYBFXFVHVXUJMZ5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277371},"content":"Similarly, Jackson had an indirect role in the killings in west Belfast in August 1971, which became known as the Ballymurphy massacre.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FMVUIJ66KVANHLCOA5OJUKWFHM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277372},"content":"The shootings happened during Operation Demetrius, the introduction of internment without trial. Over three days from August 11th to 13th, 10 people including a priest who went to the aid of one of victims and a 50-year-old mother of eight children were shot dead. An 11th victim, Paddy McCarthy, died from a heart attack after a soldier allegedly put an empty gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HFGT6B5GXNAU5INY2SNFD3HWQA","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277373},"content":"In 2019 Jackson said during an inquest into the killings that he probably was the unnamed British army captain who told the Belfast Telegraph in 1971 that the first two fatalities of the shootings were “gunmen”, adding that he was probably repeating information from fellow soldiers. “In retrospect, of course I should have said ‘alleged’,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HXTCZHMD25B6JBWODGG5LA77NY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277374},"content":"That same inquest in 2021 found that all those killed were innocent and that the killings were “without justification”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"S5IK2G3SNRGBLLKET4CCBF6VJY","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277375},"content":"Responding to his death, the Ballymurphy families said Jackson had started a “narrative that all those killed in Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday were gunmen” and had created a “lie that stayed with the Ballymurphy Massacre victims for over 50 years”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MW2Q3SHN4JCKTFY4TILEFXCXLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277376},"content":"In 2021 the UK supreme court ruled that the treatment meted out to the 14 “Hooded Men” during interrogation by the police and British army in 1971 would be characterised as torture by today’s standards. They were subjected to the so-called five techniques: hooding, prolonged wall-standing, subjection to white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and drink. In a BBC documentary two years later Jackson questioned “whether depriving somebody of sleep for two nights should or should not be illegal”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"G3GTUURT3RBPPKQAHMNAAYDNEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277378},"content":"“This question, can non-violent ill-treatment equal torture, is very philosophical as well as legal,” he said. “You might be better asking a bishop on such matters.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"2LKQ4URQRJAC5AQRM2LSDMSZ6A","additional_properties":{},"content":"He described the Ballymurphy killings as a “hugely regrettable” tragedy. “But I would also say that anybody who loses their lives as a result of violent conflict is also a tragedy. I too have lost friends. So be it.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DOKH4SJAHBC35HPWRYCPMBRYF4","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277380},"content":"That was probably a reference to the August 1979 Warrenpoint ambush known as the Narrow Water Massacre, in which 18 British paratroopers were killed and more than 20 seriously injured in a double-bombing by the IRA. He was incident commander in the immediate aftermath of the explosions, and one of his tasks was to identify the remains of his close friend, Maj Peter Fursman. He said he had never witnessed such “carnage”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HNFGGFLVWBADPEBYZ5W7L2KGQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277381},"content":"“It greatly disturbed me. Still does,” he said. “Once you’ve seen such appalling sights you can’t close your mind to them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"54NXGH5QJZC25C4756BLC727BM","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277382},"content":"Whatever about his reputation in Ireland he became probably Britain’s best-known post-second world War officer. With his craggy, lived-in face emphasised by heavy bags under his eyes he was known affectionately to his soldiers as Darth Vader or the Prince of Darkness and dubbed “Macho Jacko” by the tabloids. Apart from three tours in Northern Ireland he served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, although he missed out on duty during the Falklands War, instead working in London in military intelligence.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RVFDNQF2FBFSBIDF55DWBYTPSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"V2VXLQAAWZARXJHYTLKWA2ECWE"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"D4OGILZ2JJDCJIIDL2TRL4QRLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1730793277383},"content":"He was born into a military family in Sheffield in 1944. He attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and aged 19 joined the army’s Intelligence Corps, with some of his duties relating to the Cold War, his competence here aided by a degree in Russian he subsequently took at Birmingham University. 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