Review of Smyllie’s Ireland: Protestants, Independence, and the Man Who Ran the Irish Times (2019), by Caleb Wood Richardson

Abstract

The first scholarly book-length account of Robert Maire Smyllie, editor of The Irish Times between 1934­ and 1954 and the central figure in a literary coterie to which Brian O’Nolan belonged, treats Smyllie as a lens on the historical experience of southern Irish Protestants in the twentieth century rather than providing a biography. Nevertheless, Richardson goes far beyond existing accounts to present the details of underexplored areas, such as Smyllie’s teaching of Irish or travels in Czechoslovakia. Richardson picks his way through the mass of Smyllie’s journalism by drawing out fresh perspectives on the Protestant orientation towards several interlocking themes, such as localism, censorship, British patriotism, Irish nationalism, and cultural patronage. Smyllie’s relationship to Brian O’Nolan’s Cruiskeen Lawn column receives most of a chapter dedicated to southern Irish Protestants as ‘Gaels.’ The book is a clarion call for scholars to turn to Smyllie as an important context for O’Nolan.