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Lorna Teresa Reynolds was born on 17 January 1911 in Jamaica as the eldest of five children of Michael Reynolds and Teresa Anne née Hickey. When her father died in 1921, she and her family returned to Ireland. Having spent three years in Birr, county Offaly, the family moved to Dublin, where Lorna completed her secondary education at the Dominican College on Eccles Street. She continued her education at University College Dublin, where she studied English, obtaining a BA in 1933, an MA in 1935 and a doctorate in 1940. Her doctoral dissertation dealt with the Bible. During her college years, she made lasting friendships with Mary Lavin, Cyril Cusack and Brian O’Nolan, better known as Flann O’Brien.

Shortly after graduating, Reynolds joined the teaching staff at UCD, where her striking presence, intense love of English literature and ability to listen made her highly popular among students. Her relationships with the college authorities was less successful, particularly so in the case of the then president, Michael Tierney, to whom she refers in her letters as ‘the snake in the grass’. In 1966, Reynolds was appointed Professor of Modern English at University College Galway. Here, she revitalised the department and organised a number of high-profile conferences, most notably the J. M. Synge centenary conference in 1971. She served as editor of the University Review (now Irish University of Review) in the 1950s. She also co-edited two books with Robert O’Driscoll, Yeats and the Theatre (1975) and The Untold Story: The Irish in Canada (1988).

In addition to being a distinguished academic, Reynolds was an accomplished poet and translator of Italian poetry, sometimes in collaboration with Gioia Gaidoni (1915-1993). Her poems and short stories were published in the Dublin Magazine in the 1940s and later in The Bell, Poetry Ireland, Arena, The Lace Curtain and Botteghe Oscure. She was a familiar figure at various international writers’ conferences and socialised with many of the leading European writers of the day.

One of defining aspects of Reynolds’ life was her strong belief in women’s rights and the importance of their contribution to Irish society. She was a leading member of the Women’s Social and Progressive League in the 1940s and actively involved in the UCD Women Graduates’ Association. She was also a popular after-dinner speaker at various women’s groups.

In 1978, Reynolds returned to Dublin to live in the old family home on Merrion Square. She derived great pleasure from entertaining friends and was an excellent cook, a skill which culminated in the publication of a cook book, Tasty Food for Hasty Folk, in 1990.

Lorna Reynolds died on 4 July 2003 aged 91.

Elizabeth Darina Laracy was born on 30 March 1917 in Rathgar, Dublin as one of four daughters of Patrick Joseph Laracy and Mary Cecilia née King. She studied history and political science at University College Dublin, graduating with a BA 1937 and an MA in 1939. In 1940, she moved to Sorbonne to study for her doctorate on the strength of a scholarship. In 1940, she moved to Italy, eventually settling in Rome to work as a correspondent to Herald Tribune and the International News Service. A vocal anti-fascist, she was forced to flee Italy to Switzerland in 1941. Here, she met the politician and prominent anti-fascist novelist Secondino Tranquilli, better known by his pseudonym Ignazio Silone (1900-1978), who was also in exile. The couple returned to Rome in October 1944 to work against fascism and married two months later. Following the death of her husband in 1978, Darina finished his last, uncompleted novel, Severina, which was published in 1981. Fluent in several languages, she translated her husband's works and became an important reference point for scholars of Ignazio Silone's life and works. Darina Silone died in Rome on 25 July 2003.

Journalist, author, bibliophile and aviator Michael O’Toole was born in 1938 in Hospital, County Limerick. He was educated by the Presentation Sisters and the De La Salle Brothers and then in the Polytechnic in Central London. He was a postgraduate student of literature at Trinity College, Dublin.

O’Toole worked as a journalist with the Limerick Weekly Echo, Leinster Leader, Limerick Leader and Limerick Chronicle before joining the staff of the Irish Press Group of Newspapers in Dublin. Here he worked as a senior reporter, aviation correspondent (during which time he learned to fly), news editor, features writer and columnist, winning a national award for his writing. He was a long time ‘Dubliner’s Diary’ columnist with the Evening Press. He also worked for the Daily Telegraph, RTÉ and the BBC and was Ireland correspondent for The Tablet for a number of years.

Following the closure of the Irish Press Newspapers, O’Toole was appointed as a columnist in the Evening Herald and also contributed to the ‘Irishman’s Diary’ in the Irish Times. His rich and varied journalistic career is aptly captured in his best-selling book, More Kicks than Pence (Swords: Poolbeg Press Ltd, 1992).

Although he lived in Dublin, O’Toole never forgot his Limerick roots. He had a holiday home in Kilkee in Co. Clare, from where he paid frequent visits to Limerick. He was deeply interested in the Limerick writer, Kate O’Brien (1897-1974), particularly her early career as a playwright and her journalistic work. He championed the resurgence in interest in Kate O’Brien as one of the most important and influential Irish writers of the twentieth century. He wrote and broadcast on her work, wrote the foreword to the 1994 reissue of Presentation Parlour by Poolbeg and was actively involved in the annual Kate O’Brien Weekend in Limerick.

In the early 1990s, O’Toole began the compilation of a Kate O’Brien bibliography and collaborated with her long-term friend Lorna Reynolds, who at the time was working on a biography of Kate O’Brien. Regrettably, both died before the work could be published. O’Toole’s second book, Cleared for Disaster: Ireland’s Most Horrific Air Crashes, was published posthumously by Mercier in 2006.

Michael O’Toole died on 17 April 2000 at the age of sixty-one. At the time of his death, he had been married for over 30 years to journalist and communications consultant Maureen Browne, with whom he had a daughter, Orla and two sons, Feargal and Justin.