Former Irish Times deputy editor, author and historian Dennis Kennedy has died.
Born in Lisburn, Co Antrim, in 1936, Kennedy graduated in modern history from Queen’s in 1958 and began his long career in journalism as a reporter for the Belfast Telegraph in 1959.
In 1963 he secured a fellowship with the World Press Institute in the US state of Minnesota, spending more than a year in the US, including three months working with the Newark News, in New Jersey. He documented this year in the book Yankee Doodles which includes his account of being in the White House on the day of President John F Kennedy’s funeral.
In 1964 he returned to the Belfast Telegraph as chief leader writer, leaving in 1966 to take up a position with the Lutheran World Federation as assistant news editor at their radio station, RVOG, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
READ MORE
In 1968 he returned to Ireland, joining The Irish Times as a reporter. He was appointed diplomatic correspondent in 1969, European editor in 1972, assistant editor in 1974 and deputy editor in 1982. In 1985 he ended 17 years with the newspaper and returned to Belfast to head up the European Commission office in Northern Ireland from 1985 to 1991. In 1993 he joined the academic staff of Queen’s University Belfast as a research fellow, and later lecturer, in European studies. He retired in 2001.
An authority on Northern Ireland history, politics and culture he wrote several opinion pieces for The Irish Times in the subsequent years. He wrote a number articles on the aftermath of Brexit vote in 2016, but the final article he wrote for the paper, in 2018, was a lighter piece based on his childhood memories of visiting Belfast’s Botanic Gardens.
He was president of the Irish Association for Cultural, Economic and Social Relations from 1999 to 2000 and president of the Belfast Literary Society from 2006 to 2007. He was the author of several books including Climbing Slemish: An Ulster Memoir and Square Peg: the Life and Times of a Northern Newspaperman South of the Border
He is survived by his wife Katherine and three children.
