A new history of The Irish Times has underlined its repeated ability to transform itself and remain relevant to a discerning audience, the editor of the newspaper, Kevin O'Sullivan, said at the book's launch.
Written by retired Trinity College academic Prof Terence Brown, it was launched at the National Library in Dublin.
Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the newspaper's foundation in 1859, Prof Brown was asked to chart what role The Irish Times had played in Irish life. He was supported in the project by The Irish Times Trust and the Irish Times board.
The Irish Times 150 Years of Influence has been published by Bloomsbury which was represented at the launch by Robin Baird-Smith and literary agent Jonathan Williams.
Welcoming guests, including “those who steered this great ship through turbulent waters, both in the editorial and commercial contexts”, Mr O’Sullivan thanked Prof Brown” for embracing such a major work in your first years of supposed retirement.”
He described the book as “a truly remarkable account of our past and positioning within Irish society though the prism of cultural history; much of it in parallel with the emergence of our Republic.”
‘Magnificent chronicler’
Tom Arnold
, chairman of The Irish Times Trust, described the book as “very important” and its author, Prof Brown, as a “magnificent chronicler”.
Mr Baird-Smith recalled when he first read the manuscript of the book he said to Prof Brown "this is really like a history of Ireland, to which Terence responded 'it is the story of a great newspaper's influence on the life of a nation'".
Broadcaster and historian John Bowman, who launched the book, said it was "an extraordinary book" and "a lens through which one sees history afresh".
Prof Brown said his first reaction on being asked to write the book was “alarm”, but it had been made so much easier by access to the electronic archive which had “truly transformed research”. He was surprised to discover the degree to which the newspaper had always found dealing with the northern part of the island “a tricky subject”.
It had been wrong in expecting former Northern Ireland prime minster Terence O’Neill to survive after 1970, and similarly where the powersharing Sunningdale executive was concerned, beyond 1974. It seemed to have “an aversion to that ugly sectarian place up there,” he said.
Another surprise was how “respectful to the Church of the majority throughout” it had been, and how it looked “on the Roman Catholic Church as a provider of stability and social order”.
What he had done in the book was narrate how “a unionist, Protestant newspaper of the 19th century adapted to modernity”. He also remarked how it had found Hitler’s anti-Semitism “deeply offensive and unChristian”.
