obituaries


who worked in the London office of The Irish Times. They took an adventurous


hovercraft trip to Boulogne together but found their conversation so engaging that they never saw the French city. The couple got married in 1977


Gordon Snell


Prolific author of children’s books, TV scriptwriter and lifelong member of the NUJ Gordon Snell has died at the age of 93. Gordon Thomas Frederick


Snell was born in Singapore, which at the time was under British control. As a young boy, he was taken


to Australia by his mother in order to find him a boarding school. Singapore was invaded


by Japanese forces in February


1942 and Gordon and his mother both remained in Australia. Back in Singapore, Gordon’s father was taken prisoner by the Japanese. After the war, the family moved to the UK where Gordon completed his secondary education at Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire. He later attended the University of Oxford. Gordon went on to become a freelance producer at the BBC in London. It was there he met the journalist and author Maeve Binchy


and later moved to Dalky, a coastal town near Dublin. At home they wrote in the same room, enjoying a warm and loving relationship that lasted until Maeve’s passing in 2012. Maeve was a well-liked and warm-hearted individual, who had become famous for her witty and well-written journalism in The Irish Times and also as the author of numerous bestselling novels. Gordon’s first book for children, The King of Quizzical Island, was published in 1978. His total output amounted to more than 40 books, published in Ireland, England, Australia, Canada and the US; some were adapted for BBC and RTÉ radio and TV programmes. He also wrote TV scripts for Wanderly Wagon, a children’s show on RTÉ. Gordon died peacefully at home


on April 29. His well-attended funeral service at the historic


Victorian Chapel in Dublin’s Mount Jerome cemetery and crematorium combined sadness at his passing with uplifting and amusing reminiscences of his happy life with Maeve.


Mourners included the Irish Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik, the Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle and many other friends and relatives. At the service, Sean Dromgoole,


whose parents Patrick and Jenny were close friends of Gordon and Maeve, recalled Irish Times journalist Donal Foley telling colourful stories at the wedding and famous poet Adrian Mitchell reading “a beautiful poem about love that he had written just for them”. In a tribute at the ceremony, Sarah Binchy, RTÉ Radio producer and niece of Maeve, recalled how “entering Gordon and Maeve’s house was like stepping onto a magic carpet: a place of laughter, adventure, endless celebration of the small things as well as the big things in life”


Deaglán de Bréadún


his last column two weeks before his death. McDowell – he was known by his


surname – was best known as editor of the tabloid Sunday World’s Northern Ireland edition. After the murder of his colleague Martin O’Hagan, McDowell used the paper to campaign for justice for O’Hagan. He named the people he believed to be the killers and published their photographs. That was his style. On becoming


Jim McDowell


Belfast Branch member Jim McDowell, who has died in his 77th year after a period of ill health, was a major figure in Northern Irish journalism. He spent more than half a century in newspapers, filing


22 | theJournalist


editor, he turned the Sunday World towards investigation. It took on criminals and paramilitaries, named names and exposed injustices.


He and his paper suffered.


Journalist Jim Campbell was shot and badly injured. The offices were petrol bombed. McDowell received more than two dozen death threats. His house was fortified and he was beaten up in Belfast City Centre. At one stage, he had to leave Northern Ireland. In 1993, which seemed one of the


worst years of the Troubles, he decided a phone poll for peace was


needed. The editors of both Belfast’s morning papers joined with him. More than 160,000 rang in within 24 hours – extraordinary in the time before mobiles. McDowell was born in August 1949 in the working-class Donegall Pass area of Belfast, near the city centre, one of four children to Jim and Cherry McDowell. His father was a labourer. He was educated at the local primary school. When he passed the 11 plus, the local clergyman came to the house and berated his mother. Who did she think she was, assuming a boy from an unskilled working-class background could go to Annadale Grammar School? His mother chased the clergyman away. McDowell’s life-long love of print


began in the home. His father was a greyhound-racing enthusiast who bought three daily newspapers to follow the sport. His son devoured them. McDowell entered journalism because he rescued a young boy from a river. A journalist from the Newsletter interviewed him. He


said his ambition was to be a journalist on that paper. The editor interviewed then hired him. After some years on the


Newsletter, McDowell became editor of its Sunday title, the Sunday News. He was supportive of colleagues


and principled. In the early 1980s, journalists on Newsletter and Sunday News walked out. As editor, McDowell chose integrity over career and struck with his colleagues. He lost his editor’s job. For a time, he and two friends were the Ulster Press Agency. Big in build and personality,


McDowell enthusiastically lived life to the full. In his earlier years, he was a useful rugby player. In his 30s, he ran a marathon in less than three hours. At his funeral service, a friend summed McDowell up with lines from Flower of Scotland – ‘When will we see your like again’. His wife, Lindy, daughter Faye and sons Jamie and Micah survive him.


Anton McCabe


KEVIN COOPER


NUJ


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