Banagher - Culture - Literature and The Arts - James Pope Hennessy

James Pope Hennessy

James Pope-Hennessy came to Banagher in 1970 to write his biography of Anthony Trollope. Pope Hennessy had published his first book, London Fabric in 1939, for which he was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and was a well-established biographer and travel writer by the time he arrived in Banagher. Among his more notable works were a biography of Queen Mary for which he was rewarded by being created a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1960, Verandah (1964) a biography of his grandfather, the Irish colonial governor John Pope Hennessy and Sins of the Fathers (1967), an account of the Atlantic slave traffickers.

Like Trollope before him, Pope Hennessy took rooms at The Shannon Hotel, near the river and set about trying to capture the essence of the town which had inspired Trollope's first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran. He proved to be a very popular figure in the town, evidenced by the fact that he was asked to adjudicate at a local beauty pageant and the horse fair. Pope Hennessy gives particular mention to the Corcoran family, the proprietors of The Shannon Hotel in the 1960s and 1970s, for their help in the production of his work. They sold the hotel in 1977.

Pope Hennessy stayed in Banagher from March 1970 to April 1971 and largely completed his study of Trollope during this time. The finished biography, Anthony Trollope, won the Whitbread Award for Biography in 1972 and is largely regarded as Pope Hennessy's finest work since Queen Mary. Pope Hennessy grew very fond of Banagher and returned to stay at The Shannon Hotel a number of times before his premature death in 1974. This is illustrated by his description of Banagher in Anthony Trollope: "...in Trollope's words, Banagher then seemed 'little more than a village'. It retains a quality of friendly village life to this day and can have changed little since Trollope's time, save that its population has declined to eleven hundred."