About Desmond Fennell (1929–2021)

‘I respect Desmond Fennell’s moral courage in being a dissenting and often unpopular voice who has said much to try to make us reflect and debate as a people – something we are very bad at doing.’
Ruth Dudley Edwards

‘Desmond Fennell is one of the outstanding original thinkers of our time. Courage is perhaps his defining quality; he possesses a fine mind unadulterated by the whimsy of any particular day or any beguiling movement or politician.’
Eamon Dunphy

‘For Desmond Fennell an idea is an experience and an experience may fructify as an idea. His judgements are sometimes surprising – he was wrong about Heaney! – but always considered. They are written in a lucid prose which invites response and debate. For him autobiography in Ireland is necessarily also the autobiography of Ireland. He is that very rare thing – an intellectual who loves his country and takes it as a test-case of the entire modern world.’
Declan Kiberd

Desmond Fennell (1929–2021) was an Irish writer and thinker. He published 19 books and 13 pamphlets and was one of Ireland’s most important intellectuals.

Desmond was born in Belfast in 1929. He was educated at University College Dublin and Bonn University, and obtained an MA in Modern History from the National University of Ireland. From 1952 to 1961 he lived and worked abroad: he taught English in Spain, visited the Soviet Union, worked as a newsreader for German Overseas Radio, and was the European theatre critic for The Times. From 1961 to 1963 he lived in Dublin, where he worked as an exhibitions officer for the Arts Council, and was an active art critic. He has written for numerous journals and newspapers, including the Irish Times, the Evening Press, and the Sunday Press. He has lived in the Conamara Gaeltacht, where he was involved in the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement. From 1976 to 1982 he lectured in Politics and Modern History at University College Galway. In 1990 the National University of Ireland awarded him a doctorate in literature for his published work. In 1993 he retired from teaching English at the Dublin Institute of Technology.