Journalism:This is a family album. What a family! What an album!
Andrew Whittaker, himself a major member of the group of men and women who were The Irish Timesunder Douglas Gageby has brought together other sons and daughters from those heady days in a remarkable collection of essays. The complex, charismatic character who was the finest journalist in 20th-century Ireland emerges here, warts and all. People in the media - newspapers, radio and television - love talking and reading and writing about people in the media. We fool each other that the rest of the world finds us as fascinating as we find ourselves. The reason this collection is remarkable is because it has a relevance outside what can sometimes be the cosy, self-regarding world of day-to-day journalism. One of Whittaker's own essays is a fascinating insight into newspaper finances and the role played by the Bank of Ireland in the removal of an editor - Fergus Pyle - and the recall of the semi-retired Gageby brought back like Cincinatus from the plough to run the newspaper for the second time.
Paul Tansey nails the lie that Douglas Gageby was an editor and journalist not interested in the economics of newspapers. He was in fact acutely aware of marketing, understood budgets as well as any accountant ever did and used those skills to boost the circulation of The Irish Timesat a crucial phase in its existence. And James Downey, who of all the contributors here probably knew Douglas best of all, makes the most telling point when he writes of how Douglas managed to stop the newspaper being the house organ of the Church of Ireland and Trinity College: "If Gageby had not broken the mould the paper would not have prospered. It might not have survived. It owes its colossal successes, the standing it has since enjoyed in society, to the labour of many hands, but overwhelmingly it owes them to one man".
I had better declare an interest: I worked for The Irish Timeswith Douglas Gageby as my editor from 1968 until he retired for the first time in the early 1970s, giving way to Fergus Pyle. I loved him as a friend. I admired him beyond compare as a journalist, an editor and an inspiration. He gave me my head in Dublin in 1968 when I was the trainee reporter, in Belfast from 1969 until 1972, and he let me go to the Middle East to cover the October War in 1973. He ticked me off when needed but his encouragement and protection for me and my family, through all our time in Belfast was something I had never experienced before, nor since. Once when my car was fired on by the IRA and a few bullets punctured the petrol tank, the story made the news bulletins, including BBC World Service news. Douglas was in the south of France at the time and heard the broadcast. The next morning a telegram arrived to home: "God looks after his own. Love to all. Gageby". When he came back he sent us to London for a week at the newspaper's expense. I was in many ways one of his favourites and maybe it didn't endear me to some colleagues. But at least to my face they never complained. Douglas loved the fact that no sooner had I arrived in the newsroom than I wanted to go to Belfast. I had no idea at the time of his fascination with Northern Ireland but it put me instantly on side. My fascination with Northern Ireland had been born from my school trips, when Jesuit priests from my school - Belvedere - took us to Belfast, the Glens of Antrim and other glorious places on day trips. Years later when I wrote something he was uncertain about, he phoned to say he thought it would be better if a column I'd written didn't appear. He genuinely thought what I'd said about the Provisional IRA might get me killed.
IN CASE YOU think Bright Brilliant Daysis just for journalists, it's not. Andrew Whittaker has contributions from the accountant Derek McCullagh on the precarious position of the finances of The Irish Timesin the late 1960s. There is a full transcript of DG's 1998 RTÉ television interview with John Bowman and an appendix which includes Douglas's despatches from Germany in October and November 1946, and Col Ned Doyle writes about their shared experiences in the Army. There are insightful, witty and entertaining essays too from Maeve Binchy, Olivia O'Leary, Mary Maher and Conor O'Clery - many of them moving - all of them familiar names to readers of The Irish Timesover the last four decades.
It is to Andrew Whittaker's credit that he has included essays seriously critical of Douglas. Bruce Arnold, for example, has some uncomfortable things to say. A journalist and writer I read avidly and admire greatly, Kevin Myers, also has an essay here. We go back a long way, to University College Dublin in the late 1960s. He once did me an enormous favour when we were both working together in Belfast. He kept silent when others sneered. But I don't like his essay here, nor do I think it's either fair or reasonable. It is possible that as time passes Kevin will reflect on a bigger picture and think he has been unfair and ungracious to Douglas. Readers of this book of essays will judge for themselves.
This is an important collections of essays about the state of Ireland from the late 1960s to the present day. It embraces the things Douglas was passionate about: opening up the North in the pages of The Irish Timesby sending Fergus Pyle there in the early days when his Stormont reports gained a reputation for sometimes looking longer than the official Hansard; encouraging young reporters and writers; listening to ideas; giving the people who write here their head to write pretty much as they pleased so long as their writing obeyed the two Gageby rules: full of curiosity and accurate. The biggest blast I ever received was when I got a local election candidate's name wrong in a down-the-page report. The editor was very definitely not amused.
These essays brought back to me a jungle of memories and emotions. Again I smell the almond paste sub-editors used in the 1960s and the 1970s to paste down reporters' copy; I hear the noise from the printing presses as the first edition rumbled into life; and I go over again in my mind the operation that works manager Paddy O'Leary explained when The Irish Times, late in production, missed the trains from Kingsbridge leaving with country editions for the west of Ireland. Two pound notes in an envelope, one phone call and the level crossing gates at Ashtown mysteriously closed until the newspaper's lorry caught up. Envelope handed over, train on way, problem solved.
For most of us around The Irish Timesin the time covered here, they were indeed bright, brilliant days. I loved them and so did pretty nearly everyone who was there then. Douglas would be the first to pay huge tribute to Donal Foley, who would waddle to the newsdesk looking as if, even after three or four years, he was still trying to remember my name. We boy, brat reporters were always looked after by the late Dan Duffy ("are you with me or against me?" was Dan's question whether you were starting or ending a shift); and Gerry Mulvey who, I am absolutely certain, in his retirement is still munching on paper clips. Donal's name should be forever linked with Douglas as having been at the heart of the revival of the newspaper. One of the mysteries of my time at the newspaper was that Donal didn't become editor when Douglas left the first time.
All through these essays there are little gems: Sam McAughtry's wryness, Wesley Boyd's pragmatism and Michael Viney's opening up for us his own and Douglas's fascination with nature. I will leave the last word to the present editor, Geraldine Kennedy. In her appreciation of Douglas she writes: "He moved our newspaper from the margins to the mainstream of Irish public life . . . He left Ireland a great newspaper, a beacon of independence and trustworthy journalism in a world of media conglomerates, cross-selling and so-called synergies . . . he left us the tools with which to maintain that position: reliable reporting, fair commentary, freedom from any sectional interest, a platform for the voiceless, an endlessly inquiring mind and a determination to go on trying to make tomorrow's paper more interesting, more revealing, more incisive than to-day's".
I would not change a word of that assessment. Thank you, Douglas Gageby for letting me be a part, however small, of all that. I am grateful to this day.
Henry Kelly is a broadcaster and journalist. He worked for The Irish Times, where he had a variety of jobs, from 1968 until 1976
Bright, Brilliant Days: Douglas Gageby and The Irish Times Edited by Andrew Whittaker A&A Farmar, 242pp. €20