MARYKENNY

Mary Kenny is an experienced journalist, author and broadcaster working in England and Ireland. She has written for over 30 newspapers and magazines over the course of her career. Her books include “Germany Calling”, a personal biography of William Joyce, “Lord Haw-Haw”, (currently commended by the University of the Third Age for the original exploration of Joyce’s Irish background), “Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy” (which was used as an information template for Queen Elizabeth’s historic visit to the Irish Republic in 2011), and “Goodbye to Catholic Ireland”, a social history of Ireland over the lifetime of her parents. Her play “Allegiance”, about Winston Churchill’s private meeting with Michael Collins in 1921, was performed at Edinburgh (and has since toured in Ireland). At Edinburgh, Michael Fassbender played Collins (and the late Mel Smith was Churchill).

Mary wrote a “selective memoir” in 2013, “Something of Myself – and Others”, which included a long autobiographical essay about being a carer for her husband, Richard West, after he suffered from a stroke. (Richard, a noted journalist and author, died in 2015.) “A Day at a Time,” is a collection of reflections, published in December 2016.

Mary writes a column for the Irish Independent Magazine each Saturday on a wide range of issues – personal, historical and culture – as well as publishing in the Catholic Herald and the Irish Catholic newspaper. She also writes an advice column in the monthly magazine The Oldie, and welcomes questions, answers, comments and complaints….

See also standard reference book: “Who’s Who”.

Public Speaking

Mary has given talks and lectures recently at: The Imperial War Museum (on Churchill and Ireland), the Royal Dublin Society (on Ireland and the Abdication of Edward VIII), the National Library of Ireland (on What Yeats Means to Me), at Microsoft Ireland (on the heritage of Irish feminism), at the Catholic Central Library in Dublin (on Catholic Ireland’s relationship to a Protestant monarchy) and at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, London (on the future of Anglo-Irish relations, as part of a series of lecturers which included former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Pat Doherty of Sinn Fein and Lord Ken Maginnis of the Ulster Unionist Party). In January 2010, she spoke at Trinity College Dublin about the American traditions of religion and in February 2010 at Dulwich Picture Gallery on “Mary Whitehouse – Mrs Grundy or proto-feminist?”

‘Click here to see Mary’s speaking events’

Mary Kenny is an experienced public speaker and would be happy to speak at libraries and bookshops on the subject of Lord Haw-Haw, and related topics.

Please email  with any requests for speaking engagements or with any feedback and response to her work