Peter Murtagh

Peter Murtagh

Foreign Editor

Peter Murtagh is Foreign Editor of The Irish Times. Previously he has been Opinion Editor and News and News Features Editor for the Saturday edition of the newspaper. He was the paper’s Security Correspondent in the early 1980s before moving to The Sunday Times in London where he was Editor of Insight, the investigative reporting team. In 1985 he moved to The Guardian where he was a reporter, deputy foreign editor and finally News Editor. He returned to Ireland in 1994 to edit The Sunday Tribune and rejoined The Irish Times in 1996.

He received the award for Outstanding Work in Journalism in Ireland in 1983 and was Reporter of The Year in the United Kingdom in 1986. He is co-author (with Joe Joyce) of The Boss: Charles J Haughey in government (Poolbeg, Dublin; 1983) and Blind Justice: the Sallins mail train robbery (Poolbeg, Dublin; 1984); author of The Rape of Greece – the king, the colonels and the resistance (Simon & Schuster, London; 1994); co-author (with Natasha Murtagh) of Buen Camino! a father/daughter journey from Croagh Patrick to Santiago de Compostela (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin; 2011); and he has edited 12 editions of The Irish Times Book of The Year.

A view of the Blasket Islands from Slea Head
There's only one word to describe the Dingle panorama: Awesome

ON THE WILD ATLANTIC WAY : Off Slea Head, the Blasket Islands lie calm, sleeping as they always have on the edge of our world…

Park Güell, Gaudí’s wonderfully eccentric park with its giant salamander made of brightly coloured tiles, was finished in 1900. Photograph: Getty
Riding into city of Gaudí where architecture divided opinions

‘Irish Times’ intrepid biker signs off in Barcelona

Dr Gregory W Frazier, the man who rescued from historical amnesia the story of Carl Clancy and his pioneering around-the-world on a motorcycle achievementeg Frazier
CS Clancy Centenary Ride

‘Frazier’s two-wheel travels have taken him over 1,000,000 miles and he has literally ridden a motorcycle to the ends of the earth(...)

Le Perthus: Pyrenean frontier village “shopping hell”. Photograph: Peter Murtagh
Fromage to Catalonia: following Clancy’s route over the Pyrenees into Spain

For the first time since leaving Belfast in the snow, the temperatures are consistently in double figures

“I will never buy Chenonceau, even though, were there any justice in the world, it would be mine, all mine.” Photograph: Peter Murtagh
Into the valley: riding through the Loire rain to Carcassonne

The route south through France followed by Carl Clancy in 1912 takes in the enchanting Château de Chenonceau

Chartres Cathedral: “One could stay for weeks, months even and still not notice everything or feel one had done justice to the achievement of the architect, builders, masons and stained-glass makers who had created it.” Photograph: Alain Jocard
Breathtaking beauty of Chartres Cathedral nourishes the soul

Bikers following Carl Clancy’s 1912 route nourish their bodies with lunch at La Toque Blanche in Marboué

The other side of the Motorcyle Adventurer

Thanks to his films, we can follow in the trail of the pioneer Carl Clancy without a bike

James Joyce. While staying at the Grand Hotel Corneille in 1902/03 he hoped for, among other things, some regular work with The Irish Times. Photograph: Getty
Paris hotel where Joyce plotted career in journalism

Around-the-world bikers Carl Clancy and Walter Storey enjoyed a steam-heated room in the Corneille

The former Grand Hotel Corneille (now apartments) in Paris (right) and ajoining bookshop. Carl Clancy stayed at the hotel in 1912/13; as did, at other times, James Joyce, JM Synge and WB Yeats. Photogaph: Peter Murtagh
Pioneering motorcyclists promptly set about sampling the many pleasures in City of Light

Would that Carl Clancy could see Paris now, with its swarms of motorcycles

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