Sir, – Amid all the twaddle emanating from the much over-hyped summer school season, the attempts to force parallels between John F Kennedy and Charles Stewart Parnell were, to my mind, particularly silly.
The only real parallels between the two men were that both died at an unduly young age and that both were adulterers.
As regards being Lost Leaders, Parnell was a spent force politically when he died; if Kennedy had lived he probably would have won re-election in 1964 but it is highly unlikely that he would have been able to deliver the programme of civil rights and other progressive legislation put through by his successor Lyndon Johnson. – Yours, etc,
CIARÁN CONNOLLY,
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St Assam’s Avenue,
Raheny,
Dublin 5.