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Thomas G. (Tom) Nestor was born in 1936 in Coolcappa, Rathkeale, County Limerick as a farmer’s son and one of ten children. He was educated in St Flannan’s College, Ennis, in 1950-1954, and began his working career in 1955, first with Shannon Sales and Catering Service, and then with an American company in Ennis, where he lived from 1981 to 1990. Nestor later became self-employed and ran a training and consultancy programme for middle managers until his retirement in 2004. He married in 1964 and settled in Birr, County Offaly.

Nestor began his writing career in 1964 with two articles about rural Ireland, which were published in the Manchester Guardian. These were followed by Twilight in Suburbia, written for Donacha O’Dulaing for his radio programme A Munster Journal. The work was however rejected. His published works include three radio plays broadcast by BBC and RTÉ, some thirty short stories published in Scotland, USA and Australia, and three novels: The Keeper of Absalom’s Island (1999), The Blue Pool (2002) and Talking to Kate (2009). From 1964 to 1998 Nestor also contributed to The Limerick Leader with his column My Life and Times.

Thomas Nestor died on 22 December 2023 at the age of 87.

The National Council of Women of the United States was founded in 1888 by the social reformer and pioneering women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony to work for the advancement of of issues concerning women, including the right to vote. It is an affiliate of the International Council of Women (ICW).

The National Ballet School was set up in Dublin in 1954 by Blanaid and Eoin O’Brolchain and Cecil ffrench Salkeld. The school was located at 19 Ely Place, Dublin, and its first director was Valentina Dutko, a Russian ballet dancer and wife of an American diplomat Paul Dutko. Towards the end of 1955, Dutko moved to America and was replaced in 1956 by Patricia Ryan. In 1959, the company moved to new premises on Parnell Square. The standard of its students was exceptionally high, and by 1961 the school had evolved into a professional company named the National Ballet Company.

The National Ballet Company evolved as a professional body from the National Ballet School under the directorship of Patricia Ryan. In 1963, it fused with Joan Denise Moriarty's Irish Theatre Ballet to form the National Ballet.

The National Ballet was formed in 1963 through the amalgamation of Joan Denise Moriarty's Irish Theatre Ballet and the National Ballet Company directed by Patricia Ryan. Moriarty and Ryan were appointed co-directors of the company, but the two women and their visions for ballet were radically different, and the company disbanded in 1964, shortly after its first season.

Ingrid Nachstern is the daughter of English-born Evelyn Graham and Ukrainian-born Polish violinist Arthur Nachstern (1911-1999), one-time leader of the National Symphony Orchestra. She grew up in Dublin and studied French and Italian at Trinity College and German at the Goethe institute. She also learnt ballet from the age of 3 under the instruction of Muriel Catt but gave it up at 17. She took up dancing again in her 30s, taking ballet classes with Richard Sugarman in Toronto and Joanna Banks in Dublin. In 1996, Nachstern completed the Royal Academy of Dance teacher training course, and a year later she opened her own ballet school in Sandymount, Dublin. Nachstern’s career as a choreographer began in 1999 following the death of her father, which was a devastating blow but also a source of new creative energy. Her choreographic work, which fuses classical ballet with contemporary dance, has found expression through the Night Star Dance Company, which she founded in 2003.