The Dublin of Magill Magazine: From Merrion Row to the Ballymun Towers

So there are lots of reasons to want to look at McGill Magazine in focus.

It had a tendency to do long form journalism in quite an extraordinary way.

And not just about the big political issues of the day, but social and cultural issues as well.

And it gave writers the space to properly tease things out.

But it's the cast of people who came through it that's interesting too.

This is a kind of who's who of Irish journalism at an extraordinary time.

And some of them are still part of the media landscape today.

The length of the articles, the reads that it was giving the people that were buying the magazine was certainly different from what was available in Irish journalism in the late 70s and early 80s.

I think what had made a difference from anything else that was there and what went before was also it was reporting on that bewildering decade of the 1980s so it had rich material to deal with see hawkey fitzgerald as political leaders and the divorce contraception abortion debates uh you know bitter disputes about the role of women in irish society northern ireland so that there was rich material for a magazine like mcgill which wanted to get its teeth into long-form observational journalism and you're right you know the names are like are, it's a stellar cast and was one of the privileges of researching and writing Fearless was actually spending time with many of these people.

I would have interviewed quite a few of them in previous projects as an academic, and I would also have interviewed quite a few of them in radio studios when I worked in RTE and presenting the Sunday This Week program.

But this time around was actually, you know, you were asking people about a long time ago to go into their memories and take out stories and analyze and put some context.

So it was a privilege to sit with people like Olivia O'Leary, Eamon Dunphy, Gene Kerrigan, the editors of McGill, Colm Tobin, Fintan O'Toole, John Waters, Brian Trench, uh, as a, as an author, as an academic, that's one of the, the, the, the really good parts of the job you do, you know, you get access, uh, and you spend time with people who have interesting things to tell.

And then my job was to mix all that together, uh, and produce a book and tell the story.

But yeah, the, the, the cast is, uh, the, the, the, the, the box office names of Irish journalism over the last 30, 40 years.

So there are lots of reasons to want to look at McGill Magazine in focus.

It had a tendency to do long form journalism in quite an extraordinary way.

And not just about the big political issues of the day, but social and cultural issues as well.

And it gave writers the space to properly tease things out.

But it's the cast of people who came through it that's interesting too.

This is a kind of who's who of Irish journalism at an extraordinary time.

And some of them are still part of the media landscape today.

The length of the articles, the reads that it was giving the people that were buying the magazine was certainly different from what was available in Irish journalism in the late 70s and early 80s.

I think what had made a difference from anything else that was there and what went before was also it was reporting on that bewildering decade of the 1980s so it had rich material to deal with see hawkey fitzgerald as political leaders and the divorce contraception abortion debates uh you know bitter disputes about the role of women in irish society northern ireland so that there was rich material for a magazine like mcgill which wanted to get its teeth into long-form observational journalism and you're right you know the names are like are, it's a stellar cast and was one of the privileges of researching and writing Fearless was actually spending time with many of these people.

I would have interviewed quite a few of them in previous projects as an academic, and I would also have interviewed quite a few of them in radio studios when I worked in RTE and presenting the Sunday This Week program.

But this time around was actually, you know, you were asking people about a long time ago to go into their memories and take out stories and analyze and put some context.

So it was a privilege to sit with people like Olivia O'Leary, Eamon Dunphy, Gene Kerrigan, the editors of McGill, Colm Tobin, Fintan O'Toole, John Waters, Brian Trench, uh, as a, as an author, as an academic, that's one of the, the, the, the really good parts of the job you do, you know, you get access, uh, and you spend time with people who have interesting things to tell.

And then my job was to mix all that together, uh, and produce a book and tell the story.

But yeah, the, the, the cast is, uh, the, the, the, the, the box office names of Irish journalism over the last 30, 40 years.