Cornelius O'Callaghan (1740/41-1797) was an MP for Fethard between 1761 and 1785. In 1774 he married Frances Ponsonby. In 1785, he was created 1st Baron Lismore of Shanbally, county Tipperary. His eldest son, Cornelius O'Callaghan (1775-1857) was appointed Privy Counsellor of Ireland in 1835 and also held the office of Lord Lieutenant of county Tipperary from 1851 to 1857. He was created Viscount Lismore of Shanbally in 1806. Two year later, he married Lady Eleanor Butler, daughter of John Butler, 17th Earl of Ormonde. He was succeeded by his only surviving son, George Ponsonby O'Callaghan (1815-1898), as 2nd Viscount Lismore. The title became extinct upon the 2nd Viscount's death, his two sons having predeceased him. The family seat, Shanbally Castle, passed to his cousins, Constance and Beatrice Butler, daughters of the 3rd Marquess of Ormonde.
Ester O'Brolchain was born in Dublin. She studied ballet with Valentina Dutko and later with Patricia Ryan at her National Ballet School. In her early teens she moved to Tunbridge Wells to train at the renowned Legat School. She returned to Dublin to perform with the National Ballet Company. Following a knee injury in 1962, which halted her dancing career, she moved to Italy to study opera production at the Rome Opera House. She later opened her own ballet school in Italy. In 1996, she returned to Dublin and became assistant artistic director at the College of Dance, teaching ballet and dance history. She returned to Italy in 2010.
Victoria O’Brien started her dance training at the Irish National College of Dance in Dublin and is a graduate of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds. She undertook further studies at the Laban Centre, London and completed a PhD in dance history at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. She is currently Dance Adviser at the Arts Council. An active dance historian and consultant, Victoria continues to research, lecture, and publish in the areas of Irish ballet history and cultural memory.
A pioneer in Irish fiction, Kate O’Brien was born in Limerick on 3 December 1897 to horse-dealer Thomas O’Brien and his wife, Catherine Thornhill O’Brien. One of ten children, O’Brien had three older sisters, Mary, Clare and Nance (or Anne), and six brothers, John (or Jack), Thomas, Eric, Michael, Michael Alphonsus and Gerard William. Tragedy struck the young family in 1903 when Catherine O’Brien died of cancer. Kate O’Brien was just over five years of age at this time and was to become the youngest boarder at Laurel Hill, a French convent school in Limerick. O’Brien’s father passed away in 1916, and in that same year Kate received a county council scholarship to read French and English in University College Dublin.
Kate O’Brien graduated from University College Dublin with a B.A. degree in 1919, moving to England where she worked as a free-lance journalist for The Sphere, followed by a position in the foreign language department of The Manchester Guardian Weekly. In 1921, O’Brien moved to London, and taught at St. Mary’s Convent in Hampstead for approximately six months before travelling to the United States as a companion to her sister Nance and her husband Stephen O’Mara. O’Brien returned from the States in 1922 but this did not mark the end of her travels, moving to Spain that same year to work as a governess in Bilbao. O’Brien taught the children of the Areilza family over a ten-month period, forming a deep attachment to Spain that was to remain with her for the rest of her days. Returning to London in 1923, she married a young Dutchman, Gustaff Renier. However, this union was only to last eleven months before the couple separated.
Spanning nearly fifty years, Kate O’Brien’s literary career commenced in 1926 with the play Distinguished Villa. O’Brien’s first work was the result of a bet with a friend that she could write a play within a number of weeks. It was performed at the Aldwych Theatre in London on 2 May 1926 and was met with wide acclaim. Several other plays followed in 1927, including The Silver Roan, The Bridge and Set in Platinum. It was her first novel, Without My Cloak (published in 1931), however, that established O’Brien as a significant Irish writer. A chronicle of the Considine family, this work was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 1934, O’Brien produced her second novel, The Ante-Room. This was followed two years later by its unsuccessful adaptation for the stage in London’s Queen Theatre, and in addition, the first of two works to be banned by the Censorship of Publications Board in Ireland, a novel entitled Mary Lavelle. Also addressing the subject of Spain is the highly personal travelogue Farewell Spain published in 1937, largely in response to the events surrounding the Spanish Civil War. This work was subsequently banned in Franco’s Spain and the author was forbidden access to the country until 1957 with the intervention of the Irish Ambassador to Spain. O’Brien’s play The Schoolroom Window was performed that same year at the Manuscript Theatre Club in London.
In 1938, O’Brien’s fourth novel, Pray for the Wanderer was published, and followed two years later by The Land of Spices, her second work to be banned in Ireland. O’Brien spent the early years of the Second World War in Oxford and London, working for the British Ministry of Information. The writer moved to Devon in 1942 boarding in the house of novelist, E.M. Delafield, and over the next year published The Last of Summer, which was performed as a play at the Phoenix Theatre in London and the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin between 1944 and 1945. The publication English Diaries and Journals was produced in 1943. O’Brien’s seventh novel, That Lady, was published in 1946. A great success, this work was published in North America as For One Sweet Grape. The novel was adapted for the stage in November 1949, directed by Guthrie McClintic and starring Katherine Cornell as Ana de Mendoza. The play opened in the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway, and in 1955, the novel was made into a motion picture.
Kate O’Brien returned to live in Ireland in 1950, buying a handsome property in Roundstone, county Galway. O’Brien continued to be productive in her new surroundings publishing her biographical work Teresa of Avila in 1951, followed by her eighth novel, The Flower of May in 1953. The writer travelled to Rome in Italy in the early months of 1954 in preparation for what was to become her ninth and final published novel, As Music and Splendour. A decade after her move to Roundstone, O’Brien returned to England, settling in Boughton, Kent. Whilst the 1960s did not yield any further fictional work, O'Brien produced another travelogue entitled My Ireland in 1962. A collection of reminiscences of her early family life, entitled Presentation Parlour, followed in 1963. In addition, the writer produced articles for different publications including her ‘Long Distance’ series in the Irish Times. O’Brien was involved with numerous literary organisations during her lifetime including P.E.N. and the Comunità Europea degli Scrittori (where she represented Ireland). Kate O’Brien died in Kent on 13 August 1974, aged 76, leaving behind a body of unfinished work including her memoirs and what would have been her tenth novel, Constancy.
Jeremiah Michael O’Neill was born on 27 September 1921 in Limerick, where his father was the city’s postmaster. He was educated at the Augustinian College, Dungarvan, County Waterford. He moved to England in the 1950s where he worked in Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas) and grew to specialise in colonial banking. He was posted to West Africa and ended up in Ghana and Nigeria. He returned to England with his wife Mary and his children, and became an agent in the building trade in London and the Home Counties. In 1967, he became the tenant landlord of the Duke of Wellington pub in the Ball’s Pond Road in Islington. There he established the Sugawn Theatre and Sugawn Kitchen, a well-known venue for plays and folk music.
In 1980, he left the pub trade and settled in Hornsey, where he wrote a number of plays and four novels. During this time he received two Irish Post/ AIB awards. His plays include God Is Dead on the Ball’s Pond Road, written for the Sugawn Theatre’s 1976-1977 season; Now You See Him, Now You Don’t; and Diehards. His first novels, Open Cut (1986) and Duffy Is Dead (1987), were hailed as truly original works, earning him the accolade of being ‘the laureate of the London Irish’. These first two novels were followed by Canon Bang Bang (1989) and Commissar Connell (1992). He moved to live in Kilkee, County Clare, where he completed his two last novels, Bennett & Company (1998) and Rellighan, Undertaker (1999). He died on 21 May 1999, shortly after being awarded the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year Award for Bennett & Company.
Irish playwright, some of whose best-known plays include Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926).
Edward Donough O’Brien was born on 14 May 1839 as the eldest son of Lucius O’Brien, 13th Baron Inchiquin of Dromoland by his first wife, Mary née Fitzgerald. He was educated at Cambridge and succeeded his father as 14th Baron Inchiquin in 1872. He served as Representative Peer of Ireland between 1873 and 1900 and held the office of Lord-Lieutenant of county Clare between 1879 and 1900. In 1862 he married the Hon. Emily Holmes à Court as his first wife and by her had four children: Geraldine Mary (1863-1951), Lucius William (1864-1929), Murrough (1866-1934) and Edward Donough (1867-1943). His first wife died in 1868, and six years later he married as his second wife the Hon. Ellen Harriet White (1854-1913). By his second wife, he had another ten children: Clare (1875-1950); Moira (1876-1957), Eileen (1877-1867), Maud (1878-1956), Donough (1879-1953); Beatrice (1882-1976), Lilah (1884-1968), Henry Barnaby (1887-1969), Doreen (1888-1960) and Desmond (1895-1915). Edward Donough O’Brien died on 9 April 1900 and was succeeded by his eldest son from his first marriage, Lucius William O’Brien, as 15th Baron Inchiquin.
Fearghus Ó Conchúir was born in the Gaeltacht region of Ring in County Waterford. He completed degrees in English and European Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford before training at the London Contemporary Dance School. He was the founder of Corp Deasa Contemporary Dance Company but later developed his career as an independent choreographer and dance artist. He has performed live and in film in Europe, North America, and China. In addition to his own work, Ó Conchúir has danced for other companies and collaborated with numerous dance and other artists. He has also taken an active role in the promotion and development of dance in Ireland and is a board member of Dance Ireland, Project Arts Centre, and Dance Digital. In January 2019, he was appointed Deputy Chair of the Arts Council. A more detailed overview of Ó Conchúir’s career and individual choreographies as well as recordings of his performances can be found at http://www.fearghus.net/.
Thomas Noonan was born on 23 December 1891 and lived with his parents Michael and Catherine Noonan together with his four older sisters and two younger brothers at Ballyguy, Barrington’s Bridge, Limerick. Thomas was educated at Murroe National School and later spent three years as an apprentice at McBirney’s Drapery Emporium in Limerick city. He was engaged in clerical work until May 1914, when the prospect of better opportunities, together with the added spur of relatives already there, encouraged his emigration to Sydney, Australia. In September 1914, he enlisted as a private in the Australian Imperial Expeditionary Force. Attached to the 13th Battalion, he spent periods of training in Australia and Egypt. In April 1915, Noonan was wounded in the landings at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula and was transferred to a military hospital in Cairo for treatment. In July, he was returned to front line duty in Gallipoli, where he was killed in action on 9 August 1915. He is buried at the 7th Field Ambulance Cemetery in Gallipoli.