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Crown and Shamrock

Over the course of her long reign, Queen Elizabeth II has been to virtually every country in the world. Except the neighbouring one: the Republic of Ireland.

The last visit of a reigning British Monarch to Dublin took place in 1911. After that, no member of the British royal family set foot in the Irish Republic until Princess Margaret visited in 1965 – considered a radical appearance at the time.

Irish people have an ambivalent attitude to the monarchy: the Crown is a symbol of historic hostility: but the hostility is political, not personal.

Mary Kenny’s forthcoming book gives a comprehensive background intertwining the personal and the political in relations between Ireland and the Monarchy since the reign of Queen Victoria. Drawing on archival sources, it becomes a narrative of Anglo-Irish relations from an under-explored vantage point – the British monarch’s personal and constitutional involvement with the neighbour which was first a part of the kingdom, then a dominion, and finally a separate republic.

Mary Kenny is an author, journalist and broadcaster. She has a special interest in the relationship between England and Ireland, which she explored in her biography of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, Germany Calling, and more specifically in her play Allegiance, which explored the quixotic relationship between Winston Churchill and Michael Collins: it was premiered at Edinburgh in 2006, starring Mel Smith as Winston Churchill and Michael Fassbender as Michael Collins, and directed by Brian Gilbert - it had worldwide headlines when Mel Smith threatened to smoke the Churchillian.

Mary is currently working on a study of the relations between the British monarchy and Ireland – “Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy” – to be published early in 2009.

Mary Kenny Full CV