Is there a Summer School, a Street, a Bridge, a Long Eireannach or a Scholarship named after Alfred Wilmore, better known as Micheal Mac Liammoir?
Mac Liammoir was a genius, a London-born British Subject with no family connections to Ireland, who first trod the boards as a child with his fellow-Londoner, Noel Coward.
In his teens he chose to become Irish and took Irish citizenship when citizenship was established, learned to speak and write Irish, and served art, theatre and literature, and Ireland with distinction for many decades. He established an Irish Language theatre in Galway, and the Gate Theatre in Dublin, painted the sets. Gave the youthful Orson Welles and James Mason their first acting roles. Toured Europe with Welles and Eartha Kitt, and published his diary, in Irish on that post-war trip. He was gay and never hid in a closet and rubbed shoulders with Irish Cabinet Ministers such as Sean MacEntee and had the Gate Theatre put on an equal footing with the long subsidised Abbey Theatre after decades of existing on peanuts when an enlightened Finance Minister, Charles Haughey, recognised its contribution to civilisation.
James Joyce never became an Irish citizen nor acquired an Irish Passport. I don’t think Samuel Becket did either. Neither bothered to earn a word nor write a sentence in Irish,(Neither did W,B..Yeats.) Patrick MacGill was happy to stand for God Save The King on St Patrick’s Day when serving in the British Army,. Wounded in 1915 he moved to British Intelligence.
I believe he worked in the Library of Windsor Castle where George V was virtually illiterate. But neither Wikipedia nor any other record I can find says what he was doing in the years during the Black and Tan War.
Anyway he has at least one bridge and one Summer School devoted to him.
MacLiammoir’s contribution to Ireland is shamefully ignored.
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