Book Reviews by Frank O’Shea
THE MURDERER AND THE TAOISEACH. By Harry McGee. Hachette Ireland 2023. 358 pp. €15.99
The subtitle of the book is Death, Politics and GUBU – Revisiting the Notorious Malcolm Macarthur Case. It is the story of two adults, one a man who killed two young people and the other described here with neither apology nor apostrophe, as a ‘vain, greedy and corrupt politician.’ It is the story of Malcolm Macarthur and Charles J Haughey.
Macarthur is the main subject of the book, Haughey only coming into the story in his vague attempts from his island of Inishvickillane to find out from his attorney general Paddy Connolly what that man’s role was in the whole affair. Connolly was on his way to an American holiday and did not change after a phone call in London; it took a firm direction to him from Haughey when he was in New York to get him to return to Ireland. At the very end, when Macarthur was finally captured at Connolly’s guarded home in Dalkey, the seriousness of his situation came home to him after Macarthur’s gun was found in his flat.
In a long television interview, Haughey described – at different points in his answers – the events as grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. His long-time political enemy Conor Cruise O’Brien combined the four words into one, GUBU, the word by which the affair would subsequently be described and the word that would spoil the remainder of Haughey’s time as Taoiseach. As mentioned earlier, it is notable how often the author uses the word ‘corrupt’ when writing about him.
The murders described in the title happened in 1982, my last year in Ireland before settling down in Australia, and I must say that I was not aware of the particulars with which the author deals in some detail. He points out that while we may mock the politics and the society which spawned such awful acts and marvel at the persistence of the Gardai in trying to find the killer, the main story is the death at the ages of about 28 of two unconnected young people, one in Dublin and the other in Offaly.
The book gives a detailed account of the attempts to find the strange man with a polished accent who had beaten a young nurse to death with a hammer and then went on to shoot a young man with a gun he was buying from him. There did not seem to be any logical reason to connect both murders, but that is the story of much of this book – a lack of logic by the killer. ‘His methods were as shambolic and baffling as his approach was barbaric,’ the author writes. Certainly, despite his posh accent and background in universities like Trinity and Cambridge, he seems to have been a very stupid young man.
In his statement, Macarthur admitted killing nurse Bridie Gargan and farmer Donal Dunne, but by the time the learned lawyers were finished with it, he was sentenced only for the Gargan killing. The book deals fully with how that came about, surely a negative for the law and those who practise it. At one stage, his people went for automatism as a defence. They seemed to have had little trouble finding two psychiatrists or psychologists who would support that argument and even the state’s similar experts were in agreement – so much for the rubbish that these ‘professionals’ go on with. In the end, it was only after the Gardai found evidence that Macarthur was preparing to kill his own mother in order to get some money, that common sense prevailed. The killer was given a ten-year sentence, but no subsequent government was brave enough to release him at the end of that time. In the end, he served 30 years and now, aged 77, lives out his supervised years somewhere near Dun Laoghaire.
This is a fascinating story, the writing clear and objective. Recommended reading.
HEROES, REBELS AND RADICALS OF CONVICT AUSTRALIA. By Jim Haynes. Allen & Unwin 2023. 322pp. $32.99
On the second page of this book, you will read the following: ‘… in 1617, Elizabeth’s successor, King James I, issued a proclamation concerning those sentenced to death in his kingdoms of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland…’ The bother here is not what the royal proclamation was, so much as the implication that a place called Northern Ireland actually existed more than 300 years before it was created. It is a small criticism, but a book such as this which, in a few places, corrects the accepted wisdom about early Australia, would be expected not to make such a major blooper.
The book deals with a number of issues concerning early Australia, doing so in a highly detailed way. If someone is named, we learn about his (usually his) family and background and schooling and apprenticeships. For the non-Australian reader, it may be a bit too detailed, with the assumption that the reader knows things like what or where was Batavia, New Holland or Cape York.
The early chapters deal with the various attempts and failures to set up a penal colony in New South Wales, a necessity after America no longer took criminals and convicts following the American Revolutionary War. The early hero was Joseph Banks, but chapters are also devoted to James Matra (as in Matraville), surgeon John White from Fermanagh and Captain John Hunter. There is a long description of the problems with the native inhabitants of Australia, troubles that were often down to the different background and culture of Britain and the aboriginal people. We meet Bennelong and Pemulwuy who was killed by Captain Hacking (as in Port Hacking).
One story that may interest Tinteán readers is that of John Donohoe, the so-called Wild Colonial Boy. He was born in Dublin and transported at the age of 17 or 18, possibly for involvement with one of the groups targeting landlords, but also possibly because he was a petty criminal. In NSW, he created quite a disturbance on his own and as one of a number of different groups of bushrangers – one of his early associates was William Underwood from Antrim – over half a dozen years. After his death, Governor Darling banned songs about him, as a result of which he became people like Jack Doolan or Jim Duggan, possibly the way we knew him in Irish ballads.
Towards the end are some chapters dealing with famous women from the early days. They include Sapy Lovell, the first indigenous Australian to be born in Britain, Elizabeth Fry who worked for convict women in Britain (but never came to Australia), Mary Reiby who made a fortune in Australia, despite her convict beginnings and Lady Jane Franklin, wife of the second governor of Tasmania. Again, we are given full family histories for each of these.
This book can be read more as a reference than a history book and will have interest for Irish as well as Australian readers.
IN BETWEEN WORLDS. The Journey of the Famine Girls. By Nicola Pierce. The O’Brien Press. 2023. 288 pp. €9.99
The secondary title gives the impression that this will be a book about the young women sent from Ireland to Australia after the Famine and how they survived in their new country. In fact, it is a different book altogether and I was not surprised to find it listed in Wikipedia under the heading Children’s Books. Written by Drogheda resident Nicola Pierce, it gives a detailed account of the effect of the potato famine and the journey to Australia of some girls from the workhouses. Unlike the other two books here, this is a work of fiction.
The main character is Margaret Gaffney, and as the book starts, she is at a celebration of her 100th birthday in 1935. She has had enough of life and would be quite happy to go to her next one, particularly to get away from the noisy merriment. The story then returns to her as a 12-year old in Skibbereen, living with her younger brother and her parents. When the potato crop fails in 1847 and again the following year, the family are in serious trouble. Her mother dies and her father is so close to death that he brings the two children to the workhouse to be admitted as orphans.
Margaret is fortunate that a neighbour named Sarah, two years older than her, is already there and looks after her. After some time, they are offered the opportunity to go to Australia. Margaret is not enthusiastic, because she does not want to leave her younger brother, but Sarah persuades her.
From here, the story is that of the actual journey, first by horse-and-cart to Cork, then train to Dublin and smaller boat to Plymouth. She and Sarah are to join the Thomas Arbuthnot where they will be fortunate to be cared for by the ship’s surgeon, a true historical character named Dr Strutt. The girls are put in groups of eight and are well cared for. The story describes the various problems and disputes between them and how those are cleared up.
The story effectively ends after they land in Sydney. Most of the group of eight are taken to Goulburn and Yass, but we learn nothing about what happens to them subsequently. Margaret moves to Victoria to join the gold rush, but is not successful. She marries someone who leaves her after some time and they have no children. She eventually sets up a small farm of her own and we learn nothing of what happens to her until we are at her one-hundredth party.
This book makes quick reading, and gives an idea of the horror of the Famine and the lives of young girls on a ship for the first time. It is indeed a children’s book, but it would be fair to question whether those were appropriate times in which a children’s story should be set.
EXTRA 1
In November 2021, we reviewed the story of Paddy Moriarty, see it at https://tintean.org.au/2021/11/10/looking-for-paddy-moriarty/.
We note that the story has been filmed in a two-part series on Netflix, titled
Last Stop Larrimah. It seems to suggest a possible person as the most likely one who took out Paddy. I recommend it.
Extra 2
Paul Lynch was awarded the 2023 Booker Award in London on November 27 for his book Prophet Song which we reviewed here in our last edition. He is only the fifth Irish writer to win the prestigious award, following Irish Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright.
Extra 3
In the recently announced Irish Book Awards 2023, the An Post Irish Book of the Year was The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, also reviewed here last edition. The winner of the Listeners’ Choice award was Katriona O’Sullivan’s Poor, reviewed here in our October edition. You can find it at https://tintean.org.au/2023/10/10/two-books-to-make-us-think/
Frank is a member of the Tintean collective.
Tinteán 