Nell McCafferty

Nell McCafferty (born 28 March 1944) is an Irish journalist, playwright, civil rights campaigner and feminist. In her journalistic work she has written for The Irish Press, The Irish Times, Sunday Tribune, Hot Press and The Village Voice.

McCafferty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, to Hugh and Lily McCafferty, and spent her early years in the Bogside area of Derry. Although her family were not wealthy, she had a comfortable upbringing and entered Queen's University Belfast (QUB), where she took a degree in Arts. After a brief spell as a substitute English teacher in Northern Ireland and a stint on an Israeli kibbutz, she took up a post with The Irish Times.

In 1990, McCafferty won a Jacob's Award for her reports on the 1990 World Cup for RTÉ Radio 1's The Pat Kenny Show. McCafferty lives in Ranelagh, an area of Dublin. McCafferty published her autobiography, Nell, in 2004. In it, she explores her upbringing in Derry, her relationship with her parents, her fears about being gay,^[1] the joy of finding a domestic haven with the love of her life, the Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain, and the pain of losing it.

In 2009, after the publication of the Murphy Report into the abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese, McCafferty confronted Archbishop Diarmuid Martin asking him why the Catholic Church had not, as a "gesture of redemption", relinquished titles such as "Your Eminence" and "Your Grace." Nell has recently courted controversy with a radio declaration that the Minister for Health Mary Harney is an alcoholic, a spat with Beaumont hospital over her treatment for a brain aneurysm, a nude photoshoot, and a public offer to euthanize with her stash of morphine any ailing friend who asks.

The Irish Times wrote that "Nell's distinctive voice, both written and spoken, has a powerful and provocative place in Irish society."^[2]

Bibliography

• A Woman to Blame: the Kerry Babies Case
• Peggy Deery: A Derry Family at War
• Nell (Penguin, 2004)

References