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South China Morning Post
16-07-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
Former La Salle College principal on his tenure in Hong Kong
I WAS BORN IN 1942 on a small farm in the west of Ireland. We were poor; no toilet, no electricity. We did have animals, cows and pigs, turkeys and hens, but it was hand to mouth, because we were a big family. There were 12 children and I was No 12. We sold milk and eggs. It was a village called Snugboro, near Castlebar in County Mayo. Castlebar is the county town and there was a La Salle school there and that's where I went. In Primary Six, a recruiter (for the Catholic La Salle order) came in and said, 'Would you like to join the brothers?' I raised my hand. That was the beginning, 70 years ago. My oldest brother, Thomas, also joined the La Salle brothers. Brother Patrick's novitiate group, 1958-59, at Castletown, County Laois, Ireland. Photo: courtesy Brother Patrick MY MOTHER HAD to go shopping for pyjamas, shoes and football boots; I really wanted those. We didn't have a football apart from in Primary Four, when Brother Conleth organised the town into street leagues. That was Gaelic football, of course. I was sent to Mallow, in County Cork, to this place run by the brothers and then on to County Laois to prepare for O-levels. Then we had to do one year of spiritual formation. That was tough. There was a lot of prayer, a lot of chapel and a lot of manual labour as they had big grounds. There was a lot of silence. Brother Patrick (left), Sister Maria, principal of Sacred Heart Canossian College, and G.J. Grant, of the University of Hong Kong, attend a geography exhibition at St Joseph's College in 1977. Photo: SCMP Archives LA SALLE IS ALL ABOUT education. (The De La Salle Brothers, officially called the education. (The De La Salle Brothers, officially called the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools , was set up in France in 1680 and is a Catholic order dedicated to education.) So the mission basically is educating young people, hopefully for the betterment of society in the future. To me, it's the most beautiful vocation in the world. We're dealing with young people who help us to be young also in mind and heart. SO THAT WAS THE novitiate year and we were asked, 'Would anyone like to go to the Far East?' And up went my hand. First we went to England, and it was there that we did our A-levels and teacher training college. Two years in the beautiful Berkshire countryside in a village called Kintbury. And then three years at a teacher training college run by the brothers in Middleton, on the outskirts of Manchester. This was the early 60s, and that's where some of us fell in love with Manchester United, because you had these legends there. You know, 1963, 64, you had Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, George Best. We were sometimes allowed to go to Old Trafford and watch them. We hardly ever saw them lose, not like nowadays, where they're losing quite a bit. Brother Patrick as a student at University College Dublin in the late 1960s. Photo: courtesy Brother Patrick IN 1964, TWO OF US were were selected for Hong Kong . My first assignment was St Joseph's College. In 1967, I had a very good view from the roof of our college, which is on Kennedy Road, looking down at the Hilton Hotel intersection where rioting occurred . I also had a very good view of the students marching up, chanting and holding up Mao Zedong's 'little red book'. I TAUGHT for four years – English, religious studies and PE (physical education). Then, after a holiday with my family in Ireland, I was sent to University College Dublin, where I studied English literature and history, mainly of Europe. We had a great time at university. I got into bad habits, including smoking. Everybody smoked. You could not imagine having a Guinness without smoking. But I got rid of all that later. We were also sent to help out in orphanages or homes for delinquents because we ran some of these. I was sent to Northern Ireland and again, wow, 69 was the riots in Northern Ireland. It was a bad time but we continued to run the schools. By the time I finished university, it was the early 70s and I carried on teaching at St Joseph's. Then the principal had to go to our secondary school in the New Territories, and I was kicked upstairs (made principal of St Joseph's College in 1974). The old boys still talk about how they got out of the shanties of Lion Rock, Diamond Hill, Sham Shui Po and so on, when they were accepted here, and the huge change it made in their lives. We had a nice mix of them, the middle class and then some who were rather well off. Brother Patrick (right) with his eldest brother, Thomas. Brother Patrick is the youngest of 12 siblings. Photo: courtesy Brother Patrick
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Swashbuckling and cheeky': island festival celebrates Ireland's ‘pirate queen'
The Atlantic foamed, the wind gusted and the pirate queen swung from the rigging. She was ruler again, at least in spirit, of this corner of the west of Ireland. Five centuries after Grace O'Malley defied convention, and the English, by leading a renegade fleet, her descendants and admirers gathered on Achill Island this weekend to re-enact and celebrate her feats. An all-female circus of performers and acrobats depicted her life – and famous encounter with Queen Elizabeth I – in an open-air show by the shoreline where she once sailed. 'Grace is our anti-goddess. What makes her different from the other red-headed female figures of Irish history is that she wasn't a goddess or a fairy. She was real – a powerful, real woman,' said Dea Birkett, the creative producer of the Day of Grace, which mixed circus, music and storytelling on the County Mayo island. Saturday's theatrical premiere was the latest sign that Ireland has rediscovered a figure who was once written out of history to the point of being deemed mythical. Now her trailblazing life is the subject of tours, books, plays, documentaries and DNA investigation. Born around 1530, Graínne Mhaol, or Granuaile, as she is also known, was the daughter of a Gaelic chieftain who led her seafaring clan through tumultuous conflicts with rival clans and encroaching English forces. She reputedly had a fleet of 20 ships and took a shipwrecked Spanish sailor as a lover between her two marriages. Grace's practice of intercepting and demanding tributes from vessels infuriated Ireland's would-be Tudor overlords, leading to clashes and the capture of Grace's son, who was held hostage. She sailed to London and gained an audience with Queen Elizabeth, who could have executed Grace but instead freed her son and allowed them both to return home, where Grace continued to intercept ships and died, in her 70s, in 1603. 'She's swashbuckling and she's cheeky – the brass neck, the resilience, no wonder her story gets an amazing response,' said Deborah Newbold, who performed a one-woman show, Dauntless, overlooking Achill's Dugort beach. Despite a long, taboo-busting life, Irish chronicles made no mention of Grace, who became a figure of folklore, until a historian, Anne Chambers, found references in English state records and published a biography in 1979. Now in its 11th edition, the biography has inspired artists, poets, musicians, sculptors and composers. 'Grace will never let me go,' said Chambers. 'She shines as an inspirational beacon to what women can achieve, like her, even in the most demanding and difficult environments.' Grace's story featured in a Broadway musical and in folk and punk band renditions. Interest is surging anew in the run-up to Grace's 500th birthday in 2030. The Mayo town of Newport unveiled a statue last year and has restored Rockfleet, a castle associated with the pirate queen. A luxury hotel named the Grace is to open in nearby Westport. Brands of whiskey and gin named after the clan chieftain are now on sale in about 30 countries. A stage play and TV documentary based on Chambers' book are being planned and a feature film is in development. 'There's a zeitgeist about Grace at the moment,' said Birkett. 'People used to think she didn't exist but she used to sail right past here. Her power over the English was that she knew every bit of water, every harbour.' The circus performers defied a strong breeze – and interloping sheep – to turn the pirate queen's story into an acrobatic show for several hundred people. 'Just like a ship, a circus is at the mercy of forces you can't control,' said Polina Shapkina, who played Grace. 'This is our spin on the story – it's about female power.' The show, partly sponsored by Mayo county council and performed by members of the production company Circus 250, is expected to go on tour. The audience included two coachloads of O'Malleys from around the world – members of the O'Malley Clan Association, which held its 69th annual gathering this weekend. Randall O'Malley, 58, from Los Angeles, recently gave a DNA sample to the association's Finding Grace project. It aims to identify her descendants through the Y-DNA signature – which is easier to track than the female chromosome – of Grace's immediate male forebears. 'It would be a hoot to able to tell the rest of my family that we're related,' he said. Maurice Gleeson, the genealogist leading the project, said people named O'Flaherty and Burke may also have a genetic link via Grace's two husbands. The clan's current taoiseach – an elected post – is Grace O'Malley, a Dublin schoolteacher.
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Swashbuckling and cheeky': island festival celebrates Ireland's ‘pirate queen'
The Atlantic sea foamed, the wind gusted and the pirate queen swung from the rigging. She was ruler again, at least in spirit, of this corner of west Ireland. Five centuries after Grace O'Malley defied convention, and the English, by leading a renegade fleet, her descendants and admirers gathered on Achill Island this weekend to re-enact and celebrate her feats. An all-female circus of performers and acrobats depicted her life – and famous encounter with Queen Elizabeth I – in an open-air show by the shoreline where she once sailed. 'Grace is our anti-goddess. What makes her different from the other red-headed female figures of Irish history is that she wasn't a goddess or a fairy. She was real – a powerful, real woman,' said Dea Birkett, creative producer of the Day of Grace, which mixed circus, music and storytelling on the County Mayo island. Saturday's theatrical premiere was the latest sign that Ireland has rediscovered a figure who was once written out of history to the point of being deemed mythical. Now her trailblazing life is the subject of tours, books, plays, documentaries and DNA investigation. Born around 1530, Graínne Mhaol, or Granuaile, as she is also known, was the daughter of a Gaelic chieftain who led her seafaring clan through tumultuous conflicts with rival clans and encroaching English forces. She reputedly had a fleet of 20 ships and took a shipwrecked Spanish sailor as a lover between her two marriages. Grace's practice of intercepting and demanding tributes from vessels infuriated Ireland's would-be Tudor overlords, leading to clashes and the capture of Grace's son, who was held hostage. She sailed to London and gained an audience with Queen Elizabeth, who could have executed Grace but instead freed her son and allowed them both to return home, where Grace continued to intercept ships and died, in her 70s, in 1603. 'She's swashbuckling and she's cheeky – the brass neck, the resilience, no wonder her story gets an amazing response,' said Deborah Newbold, who performed a one-woman show, Dauntless, overlooking Achill's Dugort beach. Despite a long, taboo-busting life, Irish chronicles made no mention of Grace, who became a figure of folklore, until a historian, Anne Chambers, found references in English state records and published a biography in 1979. Now in its 11th edition, the biography has inspired artists, poets, musicians, sculptors and composers. 'Grace will never let me go,' said Chambers. 'She shines as an inspirational beacon to what women can achieve, like her, even in the most demanding and difficult environments.' Grace's story featured in a Broadway musical and in folk and punk band renditions. Interest is surging anew in the run-up to Grace's 500th birthday in 2030. The Mayo town of Newport unveiled a statue last year and has restored Rockfleet, a castle associated with the pirate queen. A luxury hotel named the Grace is to open in nearby Westport. Brands of whiskey and gin named after the clan chieftain are now on sale in about 30 countries. A stage play and TV documentary based on Chambers' book are being planned and a feature film is in development. 'There's a zeitgeist about Grace at the moment,' said Birkett. 'People used to think she didn't exist but she used to sail right past here. Her power over the English was that she knew every bit of water, every harbour.' The circus performers defied a strong breeze – and interloping sheep – to turn the pirate queen's story into an acrobatic show for several hundred people. 'Just like a ship, a circus is at the mercy of forces you can't control,' said Polina Shapkina, 31, who played Grace. 'This is our spin on the story – it's about female power.' The show, partly sponsored by Mayo county council and performed by members of the production company Circus 250, is expected to go on tour. The audience included two coach-loads of O'Malleys from around the world – members of the O'Malley Clan Association, which held its 69th annual gathering this weekend. Randall O'Malley, 58, from Los Angeles, recently gave a DNA sample to the association's Finding Grace project. It aims to identify her descendants through the Y-DNA signature – which is easier to track than the female chromosome – of Grace's immediate male forebears. 'It would be a hoot to able to tell the rest of my family that we're related,' he said. Maurice Gleeson, the genealogist leading the project, said people named O'Flaherty and Burke may also have a genetic link via Grace's two husbands. The clan's current taoiseach – an elected post – is Grace O'Malley, a Dublin schoolteacher.
Vogue
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
John Alexander Skelton Spring 2026 Menswear Collection
John Alexander Skelton might make wonderfully alluring clothes, but he's also a masterful storyteller. The images from his latest lookbook spin an escapist yarn of a balmy summer in Ireland's County Mayo, where fisherman drag up their nets or gaze wistfully out to the sea, and villagers hike to a nearby waterfall and pluck wildflowers from the meadow, before gathering to sip a pint of Guinness in a local pub. Where Skelton has often found himself fascinated with a certain strain of moody Victoriana, this time around, it seems he's letting the light in a little. 'That part of Ireland, there's a softness to it,' Skelton told me at a preview, noting that he has family roots in that corner of the Emerald Isle and that the lookbook is a quietly nostalgic tribute to family holidays he would take there in the '90s. 'The mountains are not as big, and everything's extremely verdant and green, and the people are very welcoming. I wanted the collection to have a softness and a lightness to it as well.' Rather than pre-planning the casting, Skelton and photographer William Waterworth worked with a local intermediary who helped them scout along the way (they looked for 'a real range of people, farmers, fishermen, a couple of guys that were just retired—we even stopped someone who was passing by on a bike,' Skelton laughed), and the result is a palpable feeling that the clothing—even with its deep relationship to history—is grounded in a contemporary reality. That sense of 'softness and lightness' shone through in some of the collection's more playful details, such as a white linen double-breasted suit featuring a light cinch at the waist with the opening of the jacket fanning out across the waist, or an especially lovely dark green waxed jacket with a double row of buttons down the front. And it was equally visible in the slightly earthy color story of off-whites and pinks, expressed most vividly in a series of looks cut from a ditzy floral print. Anyone who has seen Skelton himself knows that he's a living embodiment of his brand, and the collection, he noted, was borne out of thinking more deeply about the relationship between his own wardrobe and that of his customer. 'I really just wanted to make exactly what I felt like wearing at the time,' he said. In particular, Skelton wanted to reiterate his commitment to the off-kilter formality that underpins his design ethos, in part as an act of resistance to the slow but steady rise of casual wear in recent years. 'There's just something about it that I really dislike, and it makes me want to do the complete opposite and wear something that's really crazily formal—and not necessarily polished,' he said. 'In fact, something that's completely the opposite of that. And it seems to kind of evoke quite a strong reaction in people. But I kind of quite enjoy that.' The collection—and the ravishing lookbook that accompanies it—is a testament to the kind of fashion alchemy that can only happen by going out into the world and engaging with real people, and allowing that to feed back into the clothes. 'One thing that I don't really like about my job is that I don't get to travel that much with it,' Skelton said, with a smile. 'Traveling for these shoots is quite a nice way to get out into the world, rather than being in the studio all the time.' That boundless curiosity is exactly what lends Skelton's clothes their curious magic.
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Popular Irish band kicks off St. Patrick's Day weekend
SHARON, Pa., (WKBN) — St. Patrick's Day weekend started Friday for one of the area's longest-running and most popular Irish bands County Mayo. County Mayo entertained people Friday at the Apollo Maenerchor Club in Sharon, which in itself is historic — having been founded in 1870. The trio of vocalist Ted Miller, guitarist Bill Lewis, and flutist Marcie Dubec have been the core of County Mayo for over four decades. 'They had the Irish jam sessions at St. Rose back in 1982 and I showed up. That's the first time I ever sang in public and Bill and Marcie were there and a bunch of other people and eventually we started a band,' Miller said. County Mayo will play Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. at The Block in Sharon. On Sunday they'll be at Double Bogeys in Boadman starting at 2 p.m. and on Monday, St. Patrick's Day, they'll play from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Penguin City Brewing in Youngstown. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
