Name Mary Kenny | Role Author | |
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Books Goodbye to Catholic Ireland, Crown and Shamrock: Love and, Germany Calling: A Personal, Death by Heroin, Hidden Heads of Househol | ||
Commonwealth Day 2013 Dublin RIA
Mary Kenny (born 4 April 1944, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish author, broadcaster, playwright and journalist. She is a frequent columnist for the Irish Independent. She was a founding member of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement. She has modified the radical ideas of her past, but not rejected feminist principles.
Contents
- Commonwealth Day 2013 Dublin RIA
- Early life and family
- Career
- Irish Womens Liberation Movement
- Ugandan discussions
- Works
- Personal life
- References
Early life and family
Mary Kenny grew up in Sandymount, and was expelled from convent school at age 16. She had a sister, Ursula.
Career
She began working at the London Evening Standard in 1966 on the Londoner's Diary, later as a general feature writer, and was woman's editor of The Irish Press in the early 1970s.
Irish Women's Liberation Movement
Kenny was one of the founding members of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement. Although the group had no formal structure of officials, she was often seen as the "ring leader" of the group. In March 1971, as part of an action by the IWLM, 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". In a follow-up letter to The Irish Times she explained her actions by saying Ian Paisley was right: "Home Rule is Rome Rule".
In 1971, Kenny 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. Later that year she returned to London as Features Editor of the Evening Standard.
"Ugandan discussions"
In 1973, Kenny was allegedly "disturbed in the arms of a former cabinet minister of President Obote of Uganda during a party", which led poet James Fenton to coin the euphemism "Ugandan discussions" to mean sexual intercourse. The phrase was first used by the magazine Private Eye on 9 March 1973, but has been widely used since then and was included by the BBC in a list of "The 10 most scandalous euphemisms" in 2013.
Works
Kenny has written for many British 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. She also writes for the weekly The 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". 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.
Personal life
Kenny married journalist and writer Richard West in 1974 and the couple raised two children: Patrick West and Ed West, both journalists.