As Women’s Editor, horoscopes, etiquette columns and displays of pomp were pet hates
IN THE THIRD week of July 1974, a Greek military junta backed a coup in Cyprus, prompting an immediate response from Turkey in the form of a military invasion. The Irish Times naturally needed a correspondent in the war zone immediately.
As it happened, one staffer had just been in Cyprus. Maeve Binchy, who had been on holiday there with her partner Gordon Snell, was only two days back to the job in the London office. The obvious decision was to dispatch her straight back to what was now a war zone.
She was probably the last journalist on the staff who’d hope for such an assignment. Quite recently featured as a life member of the National Union of Journalists in the NUJ magazine, the Journalist, she said of the experience: “I was absolutely terrified. I got sick with nerves every day, lost all my belongings in the Ledra Palace Hotel, slept on a floor in an RAF camp and had to buy clean clothes from soldiers.”
The clean clothes were military overalls. She was still wearing them when her stint was over, and flew all the way back to London to an audience of staring eyes. Despite all that, she always said Cyprus was the proudest moment of her career, because she got a story into the paper every night.
Maeve grasped the base line of journalism from the day she started as editor of the Women First page in 1968, also the day she discovered the job required some mild mechanical skills. As a frequent freelance contributor, she’d written in longhand and hired a typist. As I remember, under John Horgan’s tutelage, she conquered the keyboard over the next weekend.
On stories she needed no guidance. The late 1960s was a time of great ferment, social and political, and the issues affecting women were plentiful. Maeve was a skilful editor, mixing heavy and light, and her own writing was never predictable; she wrote often and with grace of human folly and failures, and as often dented pretensions with hilarious wit.
She had a few pet hates, such as horoscopes, etiquette columns and any display of pomp and circumstance. On the first she suspected the writers were deliberately targeting their enemies with glum predictions and on the second she felt the writers were climbing social ladders which shouldn’t be there in the first place.
On the third, she fell foul of thousands of UK citizens with her report on Princess Anne’s wedding, which she felt was a cheerful but not overwhelmed account of royal ceremonies. While many of us may have rejoiced, the mountain of abusive letters were greatly upsetting for her at the time.
Maeve never gave up journalism altogether, although from the time she turned to writing fiction in the late 1970s, it seemed clear that she was on the road to great fame.
It had never affected her in any way except to enjoy life and give generously to others over the years.
She has also always been a patriot in the best sense of the word. Some years ago, when the great Celtic Tiger boom hadn’t even been thought of, I was with her in New York when she was besieged by a producer anxious to make a film out of one of her novels.
Maeve said that might be possible, as long as the film was made in Ireland. The producer wasn’t agreeable and suggested increasing his financial offer for film rights.
Maeve said: “I’m not interested in more money, I have enough money. I am interested in having a film made in Ireland and give some work to Irish people.”
The look on the producer’s face was unforgettable; perhaps no one had ever before said anything of the kind.
Rest in peace, Maeve. We will never forget you.