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Edward Patrick McGrath was born in New York City on 8 December 1929, the son of Edward Patrick McGrath and Elizabeth née Breen. His parents had emigrated to the United States from Belfast. He received a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1958 and a master’s degree from Brooklyn College in 1960.

Edward McGrath began his career in journalism at the New York Herald Tribune in the 1950s. Over the years, he worked in publishing and public relations. During the final twelve years of his life he was president of McGrath Associates, a corporate communications consulting firm. Edward was also a writer. His published non-fiction works included articles on such far-ranging subjects as whaling and witchcraft. He had an interest in Irish literature and wrote fiction for personal pleasure. In 1974, Edward and his wife moved from New York City to Weston, Connecticut where among other things he held the position of chairman of the Library Board. Edward McGrath died in Weston on 23 August 1994.

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.

Not known.

Irish Modern Dance Theatre, also known as John Scott Dance, was founded in 1991 by Dublin-born John Scott to create and commission new works to expand the experience of dance theatre for audiences in Ireland and abroad. Since its instigation, the company has operated the policy of employing Irish dancers in its work whenever possible and seeking Irish dancers living abroad to bring them back to work in Ireland. It has also forged links with international choreographers and other artists, including Meredith Monk, John Jasperse, Thomas Lehmen, Sara Rudner, Sean Curran, Chris Yon, Deborah Hay, and Charles Atlas. The Irish Modern Dance Theatre has produced several ground-breaking works which break traditional theatre and dance conventions, leaving audiences thrilled and sometimes shocked. They have been performed in theatres, art centres and schools across Ireland. International venues include PS 122, Danspace Project at St Marks Church, La MaMa (New York), Forum Cultural Mundial, SESC (Rio De Janeiro), l’Étoile Du Nord (Paris), Pustervikstheatern (Göteborg), Varna Summer Festival, Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Estonia), Scenario Pub.bli.co (Sicily) andAl Kasaba Theatre (Ramallah).

Thomas Spring Rice was born in Limerick on 8 February 1790, the only son in a family of three. His parents were Stephen Edward Rice of Mount Trenchard, county Limerick, and Catherine Spring, only child and heiress of Thomas Spring of Castlemain, county Kerry. He had a distinguished career as a politician, representing Limerick in Parliament from 1820 to 1832, and the borough of Cambridge from 1832 to 1839. He was made Under Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1827, and served as joint Secretary to the Treasury from 1830 to 1834 under Lord Grey. His other appointments included Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1835 to 1839, and Comptroller of the Exchequer from 1835 until his death in 1866. He was raised to the peerage as first Baron Monteagle of Brandon in the county of Kerry on 5 September 1839. In his role as politician, Thomas Spring Rice was instrumental in the authorisation of the ordnance survey of Ireland at six inches to a mile in 1824, and the establishment of the Irish National School system in 1832.

Thomas Spring Rice married twice, firstly (in 1811) Lady Theodosia Pery, second daughter of the first Earl of Limerick, by whom he had eight children. In 1841, following the death of his first wife in 1839, Lord Monteagle married Mary Anne Marshall. There were no children from the second marriage. Following Lord Monteagle’s death on 7 February 1866, the title passed to his grandson and namesake, Thomas Spring Rice (1849-1926).

Thomas Spring Rice enjoyed great popularity in his native city of Limerick. In 1820, he was invited to stand as an election candidate against Charles Vereker in an attempt to free the borough from the corruption of its Corporation and the tight control exercised by the Vereker family. When defeated, Thomas Spring Rice appealed to parliament to have the election result overturned on grounds that many of the Vereker voters were non-resident in the city. The enquiry which followed his petition resulted in the imprisonment of the city Recorder for prevarication and the declaration of Thomas Spring Rice as MP for Limerick. In parliament, he instigated an investigation into the affairs of the old Corporation of Limerick, which resulted in the passing of the Limerick Regulation Act of 1823.

In 1832, Thomas Spring Rice declared that he would not be seeking re-election in the city, mainly owing to his opposition to the proposed Repeal of the Act of Union. From 1832 to 1839, he represented the borough of Cambridge in the parliament. His many contributions to Limerick city are commemorated in the painting The Chairing of Thomas Spring Rice, MP, by William Turner, commissioned by the Limerick Chamber of Commerce in 1822, and a statue by Thomas Kirk, erected by the Barrington family at Pery Square in 1829 on top of a monument designed by Henry Aaron Baker.

Dancer and choreographer Mairéad Vaughan (b. 1971) graduated from Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Leeds with a degree in Performing Arts (Dance) and from the University of Limerick with an MA in Contemporary Dance Performance. She was a co-founder with composer Dara O’Brien of Shakram Dance Company. Mairéad Vaughan is the recipient of a number of Arts Council awards and bursaries, including Dance Ireland’s Choreographic Development Initiative in 2008, and an Arts Council bursary through four consecutive years to fund her doctorate in Arts Practice (2016).

Patricia Crosbie was born in Cork in 1958 and began her early dance training in Joan Denise Moriarty’s school of dance. She danced with Cork Ballet Company, founded by Moriarty in 1947; and in the Irish Ballet Company, founded by Moriarty in 1973 and renamed Irish National Ballet in 1983. Her many roles included Odette/ Odile in Swan Lake; Sugar Plum Fairy/ Snow Queen in The Nutcracker, and Widow Quin in The Playboy of the Western World. She is ballet mistress with Cork City Ballet.