Ruth Dudley Edwards

Ruth Dudley Edwards (born 24 May 1944, in Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish revisionist historian, Irish Unionist and writer of history, biography and crime fiction.[1][2][3] One of several positions she holds is columnist with the Irish Sunday Independent.

Background

Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin and educated at University College Dublin (UCD), Girton College, Cambridge, and Wolfson College, Cambridge. Her father was the Irish historian Professor Robert Dudley Edwards. Her brother Owen Dudley Edwards is a historian at the University of Edinburgh. Her sister, Mary, is deceased.[4] In 1965, she married a fellow UCD graduate, the journalist Patrick Cosgrave; they later divorced.

Her grandmother, Bridget Dudley Edwards, was an Irish suffragette and a member of Cumann na mBan, a women's organisation designed to support the Irish Volunteers. Members of Cumann na mBan gathered intelligence, transported arms, nursed wounded men, provided safe houses, and organised support for IRA men in prison. They also boosted attendance at election rallies, funerals and protest marches. In 1922 the organisation overwhelmingly rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Works

Her non-fiction books include An Atlas of Irish History, James Connolly, Victor Gollancz: A Biography (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist 1843–1993, The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions (shortlisted for Channel 4/The House Politico's Book of the Year) and Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil King and the glory days of Fleet Street. Her Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure (winner of the National University of Ireland Prize for Historical Research), first published in 1977, was reissued in 2006 by Irish Academic Press.

In 2009 she published Aftermath: The Omagh Bombings and the Families' Pursuit of Justice, a book about the civil case that was won on 8 June 2009 against the Omagh bombers. The Faithful Tribe was criticised by Ulster Protestant journalist Susan McKay as "sentimental and blinkered",[5] but the New Statesman contributor Stephen Howe described it as "engrossing and illuminating"[6] and the Irish Independent journalist John A. Murphy described it as "enormously readable, entertaining and informative", but "[her argument] 'extremely disingenuous'", and he quotes Shakespeare, 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks', when describing one of her counter-arguments as 'exaggerated'. He added "Historically in Ireland, Protestant 'liberties' tended to mean Protestant 'privilege,' and many Protestants (even including some United Irishmen) doubted whether Roman Catholics were constitutionally capax libertatis capable of appreciating or enjoying liberty at all, because of Roman tyranny and priest-craft. In short, the Orange Protestant is still benightedly living in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the Southern Catholic, whatever his past intolerances, has moved on.".[7] In 2016 she published The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic (Oneworld), a re-examination of the Easter Rising, addressing the fundamental questions and myths surrounding the 1916 leaders.

Also a crime fiction writer, her novels include: Corridors of Death, The Saint Valentine's Day Murders, The School of English Murder, Clubbed to Death, Matricide at St. Martha's, Ten Lords A-Leaping, Murder in a Cathedral, Publish and Be Murdered, The Anglo-Irish Murders, Carnage on the Committee, Murdering Americans, and Killing the Emperors.

Positions and controversies

Unionism and Irish unification

Dudley Edwards has stated that she is "not in principle against Irish unification".[8]

Film review / commentary

In a British newspaper in 2006, she wrote a scathing review of The Wind that Shakes the Barley by Ken Loach. The film was widely praised and went on to win the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. She later admitted she had written the review without seeing the film.[9]

Directorships and voluntary posts

References
  1. Dudley Edwards, Ruth. "Confessions of an Irish Revisionist" in (Homberger, Eric; Charmley, John ed. "The Troubled face of biography") New York : St. Martin's Press, (1988). ISBN 9780312013295.
  2. [@ruthde (23 November 2015). "Every historian should be a revisionist, i.e. someone who constantly revises opinions in the light of new evidence" (Tweet) – via Twitter. ]
  3. "Ruth Dudley Edwards urges Queens University audience to ignore 'well known eccentric' - Indymedia Ireland". www.indymedia.ie.
  4. https://notices.irishtimes.com/death/dudley-edwards-mary/42714301
  5. Susan McKay Northern Protestants p.138
  6. "South Africa's military meltdown". www.newstatesman.com. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  7. "The Orangeman as decent skin". Independent.ie. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  8. Irishness can truly be a many splendoured thing, Sunday Independent, 6 July 2008, p 22
  9. "Better to put the past behind us". The Irish Times. 9 June 2006. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
  10. "Failure Page". wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
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