The contradictions of Nell….

Ireland is partitioned politically – but there are also cultural divisions north and south. And one of the significant national achievements of journalist and feminist campaigner, Nell McCafferty, who died recently, aged 80, was that she was equally recognised, and equally relatable, north and south. The Derrywoman’s reputation went across 32 counties.

Many accolades have been paid to Nell, and justly so. She was a fearless campaigner who passionately fought for women, whether that be Republican women in Northern jails or Joanne Hayes of the “Kerry babies” tragedy: in her book about the latter, she demonstrated that the law looked for “a woman to blame”. (Although obviously it mustn’t be forgotten that an infant died cruelly.)

McCafferty

Nell was a deeply involved part of the Irish feminist movement of the 1970s, as was I – as were more elevated figures such as Mary Robinson, and the poet Eavan Boland. The civil rights activist Maírín de Burca, very committed to peace (though she had been in the Official IRA in her youth) was another key figure. Everyone was bewitched by Nell, I think, with her beguiling mixture of audacity and humour.

Nell was an Irish Republican, but not anti-British – she gave credit to the British administration for her education and for the NHS and the welfare state. She was a lesbian, but not a man-hater. She fiercely criticised the Catholic church, especially over clerical scandals, but I have heard it suggested that this was because she cared about the Church: and she had a comforting Catholic funeral at St Columba’s in Derry, with hymns in Irish, English and Latin – a female cantor giving an especially beautiful “Ave Maria” by Gounod.

She felt a loyalty to Martin McGuinness, an old family friend. But like him she genuinely came to support peace”

As it happened Nell had a Protestant grandmother, who converted on marriage. She joked that the legacy was a high Ulster standard of domestic cleanliness, as illuminated by the Nordie boast: “You could eat your dinner off my kitchen floor!”

She could have a go at southerners, jokily. I once mispronounced a place-name in Derry. “Free State idiot!” she expostulated.

Some friends did have certain reservations about Nell’s defence of the Provos, especially around the time of the Enniskillen bomb in 1987 – I think a real turning-point in consciousness about what political violence means. She felt a loyalty to Martin McGuinness, an old family friend. But like him she genuinely came to support peace.

We used to have annual group reunions, which Nell called, with her salty humour “The Dying Feminists’ Lunch”. God bless her memor

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The renowned English poet W.H. Auden was a schoolmaster in the 1930s, and, while teaching at an Anglican school in Kent, he “fell in love” with a 13-year-old boy, a new biography by Nicholas Jenkins reveals. The relationship didn’t become sexual – until the boy was 15, when it apparently did, nobody turned a hair. Such things happened.

Today, Auden would be outed as a paedophile, and disgraced from public life. At the BBC, a celebrity TV football commentator, Jermaine Jenas, has just been sacked, and his career prospects ruined, for sending suggestive texts to young women – no actual carnal connections took place, but the words alone were enough to condemn him.

Just an interesting measure of how attitudes have changed.

We can never assume anything about our future…

The drowning of Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and four of his friends plus a crew member on a private yacht moored just off Sicily has been a most affecting tragedy. Mr Lynch, aged 59, was something of a tech genius and a truly positive example of an Irish emigrant family who had flourished in England.

He had a Catholic Irish upbringing in a working-class part of Essex, and at 11, won a scholarship to a top private school. Despite his early brilliance, notably in Maths, his first job was as a cleaner in the hospital where his Tipperary-born mother was a nurse. His brains brought him to Cambridge and he became a billionaire through his tekkie skills. He married his Colombian-American wife, Angela, who survived the tragedy, in one of the oldest and most fashionable Catholic churches in London, St Mary’s, Cadogan Street, Chelsea.

Reports of how divers found the dead bodies – with evidence that they had desperately searched for pockets of air while the yacht, The Bayesian, sank after a freak tornado – were heart-scorching. Many questions remain about how it all happened and whether there had been human error or negligence.

It was highlighted that Mike Lynch regarded this holiday as “the beginning of a new life”, and a fresh future – he had endured 13 years of defending a business fraud case in the US, and been totally exonerated. But we can never assume anything about our future. We know not the day nor the hour. That’s why people used to say “D.V.” – Deo Volente – acknowledging the contingency which underpins every passing day.