- Mary Kenny
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Mary Kenny
Mary Kenny (born 4 April 1944, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish author, broadcaster, playwright and journalist. She was a founder member of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement, though she has modified her radical past, but not rejected feminist principles.[1]
In 1969, at a party in her home, Michael D. Higgins, the future President of Ireland, met his wife Sabina Coyne.[2][3]
In March 1971 she walked out of Haddington Road church after the Archbishop of Dublin's pastoral was read out from the pulpit, confirming that "any contraceptive act is always wrong", saying "this is Church dictatorship".[4] In a follow-up letter to The Irish Times she explained her actions by saying Ian Paisley was right: "Home Rule is Rome Rule".[5]
In 1971 she travelled with Nell McCafferty, June Levine and other Irish feminists on the so-called "Contraceptive Train" from Dublin to Belfast to buy condoms, then illegal within the Republic of Ireland.[6][7]
Later that year she subsequently returned to London as Features Editor of the Evening Standard.
Mary Kenny has written for many UK and Irish broadsheet newspapers, including The Irish Independent, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator and has authored books on William Joyce and Catholicism in Ireland. In the past she wrote for the now defunct Irish Press where she was women's editor, and she also writes for the weekly Irish Catholic. She is known in the UK as a Roman Catholic journalist. Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy (2009), described by Roy Foster as "characteristically breezy, racy and insightful".[8] She is married to the journalist and writer Richard West, and is the mother of the journalists Patrick West and Ed West.
She is author of the play Allegiance, in which Mel Smith played Winston Churchill and Michael Fassbender played Michael Collins, at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006.
The poet James Fenton coined the euphemism 'Ugandan Discussions', first used by the magazine Private Eye on 9 March 1973,[9] to mean sexual intercourse, after an alleged encounter between Kenny and the former electricity minister in the Ugandan President Milton Obote's cabinet in 1973, before her marriage to Richard West.[10]
Mary Kenny lives in Kent and Dublin.
See also
References
- ^ For example, as explained on McGurk and Company, 12 July 2008 on RTE Radio 1
- ^ Boland, Rosita (5 November 2011). "New lady of the Áras". The Irish Times. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/1105/1224307090859.html. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
- ^ Kenny, Mary (31 October 2011). "I have earned my footnote in history". Irish Independent. http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/mary-kenny-i-have-earned-my-footnote-in-history-2921270.html. Retrieved 31 October 2011.
- ^ Irish Times, 29 March 1971, p.4
- ^ Irish Times, 30 March 1971, page 13
- ^ Irish Times, 18 October 2008, p.14
- ^ http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/obituaries/2008/1018/1224233211995.html
- ^ Roy Foster "Strong family feelings", The Spectator, 6 January 2010
- ^ Adrian Room Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable, London: Cassell, 2000, p.714-5
- ^ Adam McQueen Private Eye: The First Fifty Years, London: Private Eye Productions, 2011, p.286
External links
Categories:- 1944 births
- Irish activists
- Irish journalists
- Living people
- People from County Dublin
- Irish Independent people
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