Shane Leslie: Sublime FailureShane Leslie (1885 1971) diplomat; man of letters (novelist, biographer, poet, historian, pamphleteer); Irish, Anglo Irish and half American aristocrat; religious devotee; first cousin of Winston Churchill, Irish nationalist, British subject. Using new archival material Otto Rauchbauer of the University of Vienna provides a scholarly context for understanding and appreciating this neglected writer, observer and witness of his turbulent times. Third

alive to the idiosyncrasies and vagaries of his profession

Christianity not Mysterious was burned in Dublin by order of Parliament

He founded the Killarney Players

a native of Killarney

Ten months later he was waging civil war against many of the men he had once fought with

richly documented life of Lady Lavery relates how one beautiful American woman reinvented herself as ‘a simple Irish girl’ came to personify Éire on Ireland’s banknotes

He shows how signifying elements of the Irish Revival mutated from world theatre to global cinema

to the final one

‘Another first in my life: at the age of thirty-one I brought a girlfriend home

intensively individual style of life developed by the advanced industrial nations

wit and commitment

taking as his point of departure Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Church Going’ – a richly meditative essay of extraordinary resonance that begins with a visit to the island of Inis Fallen on Loch Leine: