Mary Kenny

Mary Kenny is a leading journalist, author and broadcaster, publishing on both sides of the Irish Sea and writing for a variety of newspapers in Dublin and London, including the Irish Independent, The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Spectator, as well as the Catholic Herald and the Irish Catholic.

Mary has previously written books about feminism, religion, abortion and drug abuse. Mary’s social history of 20th-century Ireland, Goodbye to Catholic Ireland is used as a textbook in the teaching of social history. In 2003 she published Germany Calling, a critically acclaimed biography of William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’.

Mary’s most recent book is a fresh and surprising exploration of the actual, rather than the received relationship between the British monarchy and the people of Ireland – Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy. It sets the context for the anticipated first visit by Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic  of Ireland, the first by a reigning British Monarch since 1911, and was published in September 2009.